Costa Rica - Central Pacific Coast - Rainforests, beaches, and wildlife! Pura Vida!
The Central Pacific coast is a beautiful area with cloud-covered mountains, rainforests, palm tree-lined beaches, and incredible places to explore. The area is generally lush and green with jaw-dropping views and plenty of wildlife in the forests. Pura Vida!
Our home base was spent in the Central Pacific Coast at Playa Herradura. While here, we made day trips to Manuel Antonio National Park, Carara National Park, Quepos for scuba diving, and south to Dominical and a long day trip to Montverde. We were much younger then, if we were to do it again, we would have added a night or two in Montverde instead of trying to do it one day. We also spent a couple of nights outside of La Fortuna, near the Arenal Volcano.
Manuel Antoniois the most popular attraction in the Central Pacific Coast area, for good reason. In 2011, Forbes named Manuel Antonio one of the 12 most beautiful national parks in the world. The rainforest meets the beach here. Monkeys play in the trees, two and three-toed sloths are visible here, along with other reptiles and mammals and loads of tropical birds. Manuel Antonio, despite being the country’s smallest national park, is the second most visited national park. There are easy hiking trails through the rainforest, past mangroves, marshes, and lagoons, and access to the two beaches in the park. The trails are great for wildlife viewing, you may see four different monkey species: howler, spider, white-faced capuchin, and endangered squirrel monkeys.
How to Get to the Central Pacific Coast
After getting to San Jose and getting your rental car, if you have time you should head to Volcan Poas. While this is the opposite direction from the Central Pacific Coast, it's the perfect side trip and you’ll get used to driving in Costa Rica. Volcan Poas is an hour from San Jose. If you skip Volcan Poas and head to the coast, it’s an hour and 15 minutes to Jaco. From Poas to Jaco it’s 2 hours and 15 minutes. Whether you go to Volcan Poas or not, you should stop at Rio Tarcoles and the crocodile bridge as you are heading to the coast.
Where to Stay in the Central Pacific Coast
We stayed at Los Suenos Marriott Ocean & Golf Resort for a week. A beautiful resort, easy to relax and enjoy views of Bahia Herradura, plus a golf course, luxury marina, and good restaurants nearby. Other areas that would be good to stay in are the towns of Jaco, Quepos, or the surf town Dominical.
What We Did here
Manuel Antonio National Park We hired a professional guide for our hike through the park. They are experts in spotting anything lurking in the trees above you and on the ground. They will also educate you about what you are seeing. Plus, they have high-powered telescopes to get you the best view. A picture taken through their telescopes is so much better than the most powerful zoom on any cell phone or small camera.
We saw spider monkeys, squirrel monkeys and white-face capuchin monkeys, two-toed sloths, three-toed sloths, anteaters, pacas, coatis, raccoons, spiders, and other insects plus toucans, pelicans, hummingbirds, and many other birds. You will not regret spending extra to hire a guide. If wildlife viewing isn’t your thing, take the trails to one of the pristine sand beaches and throw down your towel! Or, do both, take a guided tour through the park and then hit the beach to relax. Keep in mind, throughout the park the monkeys and raccoons are expert thieves. Keep your backpacks closed at all times and don’t leave any valuables unattended. There are lots of smaller boutique hotels near the entrance to the park, plus restaurants and souvenir shops.
After we finished exploring Manuel Antonio, we went up into the hills above the park to El Avion. This cargo plane has a fascinating history, being involved in the Iran/Contra scandal in the 1980s and was abandoned at the San Jose airport after another cargo plane was shot down in Nicaragua. The plane has been converted into a bar and restaurant that has been built in, around, and above the plane. The panoramic views from this high above the Pacific Ocean are amazing! We weren’t here for sunset, but El Avion is known as one of the best places to watch the sunset.
Quepos is a harbor town and is the gateway to Manuel Antonio. From this harbor, there are whale-watching tours (humpback whales are in the area from July through November), sport fishing tours, and scuba dive trips. We dove with Manuel Antonio Divers. The dives were nice, although the visibility was poor. The service here was excellent. The sport fishing from Quepos is some of the best in the world. The town of Quepos has a small-town feel and has plenty of open-air restaurants serving freshly caught seafood. Have some ceviche while here!
Jaco is one of the most popular beach towns in the country, due to its proximity to San Jose and the Central Valley. This is a good place to learn to surf, dine at a good restaurant and enjoy some nightlife. Jaco has had a reputation for drugs and hookers, but it has been working to become a more family-friendly tourist area. Watch for the scarlet macaws that can often be seen here. Just south of Jaco is Playa Hermosa, the best beach in the area.
Dominical is another place where the rainforest meets the beach. When we visited, the road from Quepos to Dominical wasn’t paved and was slow going. It took over an hour to make the 25-mile drive. Narrow bridges, sharing the small road with semi-trucks, and arriving at “bridges” where we had to get out of the car to arrange the wood planks to the width of our car in order to cross made this an incredibly interesting drive. This road is now paved, which has apparently reduced how long it takes to reach Dominical.
Playa Dominical is a vast stretch of untouched powdery beach and is a great place to surf. The Nauyaca Waterfalls outside of town are popular, and, as with other things in Dominical, you can expect far fewer tourists there than at other places in Costa Rica. The hike to the falls is a bit challenging, but there are also horseback riding tours to the falls. Bring your swimsuit and take a refreshing dip in the deep pools at the base of the falls. Our favorite activity in Dominical was finding a bar on the sand and enjoying a cold Costa Rican brewed Imperial beer.
Carara National Park is on the southern banks of the Tarcoles River and is home to one of the largest populations of wild scarlet macaws in the country. Despite the park’s proximity to San Jose and the Central Valley, it does not attract a large number of visitors. The park is a favorite with bird watchers, partly due to a macaw rehabilitation program that began in the mid-1980s, including rangers patrolling against poaching.
The park is a favorite with bird watchers, partly due to a macaw rehabilitation program that began in the mid-1980s, including rangers patrolling against poaching. The park is a transitional tropical forest and is one of the most important wildlife corridors in Central America.
In addition to the variety of birds that nest in the dense trees, including scarlet macaws and toucans, there are large and small mammals, plus a wide array of reptiles and crocodiles! We hired a guide here, which again was well worth the cost. While we aren’t bird-watchers, we really enjoyed our visit here. Our guide was a bird expert and we saw so many different bird species and learned so much about them. This was an informative guided tour, with the highlight being able to see some scarlet macaws. We heard a bunch of howler monkeys but never saw one.
Tárcoles river (the crocodile bridge) is a fun place to stop on the way from San Jose to the Central Pacific coast. (Actually, we stopped at this bridge every time we crossed it, coming and going from Playa Herradura). After being in the car for an hour from San Jose, stop here to stretch your legs to safely observecrocodiles, some up to 10 feet long, from the bridge. Rio Tarcoles is one of the most densely crocodile populated rivers in the world.
This is a popular place to visit and there are souvenir stores and restaurants here. If you’re hungry, this is a good place to grab some pinto gallo. Due to its popularity, the vendors here are all over the place. You’ll need to dodge people selling t-shirts, cell phones, accessories, and other crap to make your way to the bridge. Be careful after parking, as you will need to cross the highway to get to the bridge. When we visited, there was a risk walking on the bridge as you were just a couple of feet from the traffic, including semi-trucks and their huge mirrors that were whizzing by and coming within inches of pedestrian traffic. Since our visit, they have added a four-foot-wide sidewalk with a concrete pedestrian barrier running the full length of the bridge. We drove across this bridge many times and never got tired of seeing the crocodiles. On our last trip across the bridge, heading to Arenal Volcano, we stopped one last time and told them goodbye.
Where We Ate
The most memorable restaurants on this trip were;
El Pelícano, Playa Herradura
Patagonia Argentine steak house, Playa Herradura
San Clemente, Dominical
Steve and Lisa’s, north of Playa Herradura
Los Amigos, Jaco
Rio Oasis, Jaco
El Avión bar, Manuel Antonio