Having spent the past five weeks exploring the history and culture of southern Mexico, Belize and Guatemala, we’re now off to discover another side of Central America. Costa Rica’s riches lie less in its colonial past and far more in its eco-friendly present, as one of the most biodiverse and environmentally-aware countries on the planet. 

So our next two weeks are going to be a chance to explore nature from rainforest to volcano, jungle to beach as we venture from the humidity of the Caribbean coast, through the cooler, wetter mountains of the northern interior before ending at a surfer’s paradise on the sun-drenched Pacific.

It’s not my first time in Costa Rica, having made a very brief visit to the capital, San Jose, on a work trip fifteen years ago where I managed to cram in a few hours of sightseeing in the surrounding countryside, including zip-lining through a rainforest, driving up a volcano and visiting a hummingbird sanctuary. From that small taste of this fascinating place I had always vowed to return for a proper length of time with Coman.

So ending our ‘Mayan Encounters’ trip through Belize and Guatemala with Intrepid in Antigua, we leap straight onto their ‘Classic Costa Rica’ itinerary the same day by taking an evening flight from Guatemala City. As we don’t arrive into the Rincon Del Valle hotel in San Jose until almost midnight, it means we miss the welcome meeting with our new group and tour leader, Jonathan, but he messages us just before we board to say we have to be ready for a 6.15am departure. 

Bleary-eyed with about five hours of broken sleep, we meet him and 14 new faces in the lobby first thing in the morning. Thankfully he has some good news. Rather than have to take two separate, and long, journeys by public bus today to get from San Jose to the Caribbean coast as planned, Jonathan has sourced a last minute minibus replacement for us all. 

He’s been warned about various roadworks and weather conditions on the public routes which mean that if we went by public transport today we would be travelling for potentially four more hours than planned. And considering there’s still an hour-long boat trip to reach our lodgings once we get to the coast, he’s been authorised to hire a private vehicle for us all, more than halving our travel time today. 

We’re hugely relieved and take our place at the back of the bus, settling into the vibe of the group and delighted when, just a few minutes after leaving the city, a vivid rainbow breaks out over the valley bearing the promise of a great couple of weeks to come on our adventures. However we’re soon driving through rain clouds and wet roads, the bus windows steaming up with condensation as we cross a big brown river, which we’re told is known by locals prosaically as Rio Sucio (Dirty River) because the water comes from the muddy slopes of a volcano. 

At a pit-stop for fruit and coffee we start getting to know Jonathan, also known as Jonna, and our fellow travellers. Jonathan is a big, camp man who we later learn has a wife and two kids, which comes as rather a surprise. 

He also tells us that his family moved from Jamaica to Panama as the US government needed cheap labour to build the canal. From there they were moved to Costa Rica to build the railroads but the foreign companies involved failed to pay the labourers so his family, and many others, ended up penniless and stuck in Costa Rica, having to build new lives there. As a result of this exploitation there’s a large Afro Caribbean population now on the eastern coast of Costa Rica. 

While Jonathan does not have quite the same grasp of finer details as Aquilino did, and at times he sends us all contradictory information regarding our daily itineraries, he does have infinite reserves of patience, trying to shepherd our group from one place to another, telling us that we must say the ubiquitous Costa Rican phrase, “Pura Vida”, no matter what happens, and stay positive.  

Our fellow travellers are another mixed bunch from America, Canada, Australia and a variety of British residents, mostly of retirement age and some of increasingly questionable common sense. As the tour progresses both Jonathan, ourselves and a few others have to grit our teeth at the inane and repetitive questions and requests that a number of our party ask on a daily basis. Ah, the joys of travelling in a group!

Nevertheless, everyone is very friendly and we soon find ourselves descending from the higher ground around San Jose, which is 1500 metres above sea level, and moving through the lush green tropical land closer to the coast, with banana plantations stretching for miles, little cattle farms and small village communities. Showers fall as we drive, keeping everything lush and fertile, but thankfully when we get to La Pavona, the embarkation point for our boat, the sun is breaking through meaning we’re not slipping and sliding down muddy banks with our luggage as we load it onto our little vessel. 

The makeshift jetty is extremely busy with coachloads of tourists arriving at the same time, all aiming to get ahead of each other and secure their arrival in Tortuguero before lunchtime. We spray ourselves liberally with mosquito repellent and set off in one of the first boats, laden down with all our luggage and sitting low in the muddy brown waters. As we motor along the winding river the banks are rich with a huge variety of plant life, the jungle around us also home to all sorts of monkeys, birds, iguanas, snakes and insects, while the river has many crocodiles and caimans in it. We keep our hands firmly inside the boat. 

After half an hour the river suddenly widens as we enter the Penitencia lagoon which stretches north to Nicaragua. We’re continuing south-eastwards to Tortuguero, the very first national park in Costa Rica which was established in 1970 and kick-started the whole shift in the nation’s economy and psyche, from a country exploiting and destroying its natural resources to one that celebrates and protects them. As a result Costa Rica has become a major eco-tourist economy, and a world-leader in conservation. It even has pictures of its most famous wildlife on its bank notes. 

The town of Tortuguero, which sits in the wider Limón province of Costa Rica, was once a fishing village where the locals, like other subsistence dwellers throughout the country, would hunt and eat iguanas, birds and especially the green turtles from whom their community took its name. But with education and understanding they learnt to refrain from this and now all work hard to ensure that the turtles that breed on its beaches are safe and secure, rehabilitating injured turtles and setting up sanctuaries, staffed by volunteers, alongside the many eco-reserves and lodges that now play host to the ever-increasing tourism industry. 

It takes us ninety minutes to reach our destination, pulling up on the bank by our lodge, called Miss Junies, at 11.30am. It’s a very basic and rustic affair, with small rooms and cranky fans to circulate warm air, but with its own charm and pretty gardens, sitting at one end of Tortuguero town’s little main street. We are greeted with pineapple and starfruit juice and dumping our bags in reception all go to a rather lovely waterfront restaurant called El Patio for lunch.  

It’s been quite a journey to get here but as we soak up our surroundings and chat further with some of our new Intrepid group over lunch, we start to relax into the Costa Rican tempo of life. Once we’ve unpacked back at Miss Junie’s we all take another boat across the waters to Cerro Tortuguero, the remnants of a volcano whose explosion originally formed the bio-space we are in. 

The walk to its summit is populated with large and intriguing jungle plants, many related to the ginger family, along with monkeys and even a sighting of the red strawberry frog, also known in some parts of Costa Rica as the blue jeans frog due to it sometimes also having blue legs. Its red body comes from its diet of fire ants, which is also why its skin is toxic and licking it, as some indigenous shamans do, causes hallucinations, and potentially death. 

There are no psychedelic visions at the summit, which we reach after climbing over 450 steps, but the views across the Caribbean and the waterways are pretty spectacular, although marred within moments by a gang of girls in their late teens and early twenties who crowd on to the viewing platform and all take turns posing for identical selfies in front of the views, each of them desperate for the perfect Instagram shot, but oblivious to the beautiful nature around them. Their vanity goes on forever. 

We leave them to it and return to Tortuguero town, where we’re joined by a few of our group for a sunset drink at a bar called the Tree Coffee House. Nicole is the youngest person on the tour and hilarious company. She’s an Australian healthcare professional turned traveller who has spent the past five months or so working her way through South America, and we get on like a house on fire. Mark is a recruitment consultant in his early forties from Essex and taking a two month sabbatical, while Tracey from New Jersey and Jennifer from Toronto are separately both about to retire and having their own adventure. 

We share backgrounds and experiences over cold beers and as we leave I narrowly avoid walking into a large cobweb with an enormous spider at its centre which has been lurking unnoticed behind me. It’s a reminder that Costa Rica is teeming with wildlife and a lot of it is of the sting/bite/kill nature so extra care is taken on our meander up Tortuguero’s central street, which is essentially a dirt track, to the Budda Cafe where we have dinner. 

As we eat the heavens open and an absolutely torrential downpour cascades down. It’s thunderous in power, like a waterfall suddenly erupting out of the sky, but it’s warm and tropical so to get back to our lodging I take my shirt off and stuff it in a bag to keep it dry and then run through it. I’m not sure if I get back any drier than Coman who walks through the rain but it’s an exhilarating end to our first day in Costa Rica, and a taste of what’s to come!