Jodi Lai The breathtaking Cataratas Llanos del Cortes is a secluded waterfall and beach near the city of Liberia
When you ask a Costa Rican how she is doing, she doesn’t reply with a curt “Fine, thanks.” Instead, she smiles and replies, “Pura vida!” And why wouldn’t she? The uniquely Costa Rican motto sums up what the beautiful country is all about.
Pura vida means pure life and the country is full of it. It conveys a sense of living in peace and harmony and appreciating nature. It’s the laid-back mentality that is really contagious when traveling in the country. Costa Rica is so peaceful, it doesn’t even have a military. It sees fire ants as its soldiers, armadillos as its tanks and toucans as its air force.
Sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, Costa Rica is aptly named the Rich Coast in English because it is home to an astounding 5% of the world’s biodiversity. The mixture of dry flatlands, coastal plains, beaches, lush rainforest’s, mountainous regions and ancient volcanic regions not only account for this unique biology but also make for an interesting, scenic and unforgettable drive.
Costa Rica has won awards for the best coffee in Latin America and is becoming famous for the coffee that grows in its high-altitude volcanic regions. These high altitudes, however, also mean that cars in these regions are robbed of valuable horsepower because of the thinner oxygen. Rental cars in the country are mostly Japanese SUVs (as the average gas price in the country is $1.04 a litre, which is high considering the average Costa Rican makes only about $12,500 a year) that have big hood scoops to feed as much oxygen as possible into the engines. Some of them are equipped with turbochargers, needed for the boost to get up steep inclines in mountain-area roads such as those found in Monteverde’s remarkable City in the Clouds. All-wheel-drive SUVs are a must for driving Costa Rica, especially for rural areas and places where tourists don’t normally visit.
Although SUVs will make travel-ling much easier and safer, there is no better four-wheel-drive beast than a horse. To get to some secluded areas such as one of Costa Rica’s many astonishing waterfalls, horseback is the best and only way to go unless climbing up a rocky incline for half an hour is your cup of cafe con leche (coffee with a shot of steamed milk, a Latin American specialty). Although every step of the trek would be worth it to see the clear, secluded and stunning waterfalls, at the end, horseback will save you time and allow you to take in the scenery during the ride.
This might be the only time on the road that you can stop and smell the Red Ginger flowers (roses pale in comparison with the colourful indigenous flowers). The corkscrew mountain roads are mostly paved, but they are extremely narrow, undivided, flanked by large trees or cliffs and are usually unlit at night. A driver has to be on constant alert with high beams on for oncoming drivers and for stray monkeys and armadillos that are prone to wandering on to the road.
Costa Rican drivers, who are courteous and follow traffic rules well, seem to have an affinity for keeping their eyes open on the road. One of our van drivers was whipping down a winding road near the Arenal Volcano in the late evening when he suddenly slammed on the brakes. He slowly began to reverse the van.
Everyone on the bus was beginning to get nervous, when our guide stood up and asked, “Have you ever seen a sloth?” With a shared sigh of relief later, the passengers stepped out of the van and the guide pointed up to a two-toed sloth that was crawling slowly upside-down on a telephone wire. It was OK; the amazing thing was that the driver could fly down a steep and dark road into blind corners like a roller coaster, avoid accidents and still be keen enough to spot a dark sloth hidden by some trees.
If the driving is left to a hired driver, you can keep your eyes open for animals. Lizards and iguanas are as common in Costa Rica as squirrels are in Canada. Monkeys are less common in populated areas, but if one is spotted, try not to smile. Showing teeth is a sign of aggression for monkeys, and what they say about angry monkeys is true, even in beautiful Costa Rica.
Nature and wildlife preservation in the country is serious business, so venturing into some parks such as the Palo Verde and Rincon de la Vieja national parks promises a glimpse of howler monkeys (whose call can be heard from about a kilometre away), Capuchin monkeys, toucans, crocodiles and a lot of colourful birds and butterflies.
A week of exploring Costa Rica’s astonishing rainforests, volcanic hot springs, stunning waterfalls and diverse national parks and zip lining across tree canopies and canyons was incredible. My new dream: To go back and live la pura vida.
