San Jose - Welcome to the world’s happiest country, announces a big sign as you step into Juan Santamaría International Airport, which, like everything else in Costa Rica, is painted in bright pastel colours – the palette of tropical holidays. The sign might be advertising a brand of local rum, but it’s not hyperbolic adspeak – the tiny Central American country has been ranked the planet’s most joyful, and it doesn’t take long to figure out why.
There’s a lot to be happy about in Costa Rica. The country, wedged between Nicaragua and Panama and shouldered by the Pacific and Caribbean on each side, has good life expectancy, a stable democracy (the nation’s army was disbanded in 1949, and it’s been one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America ever since) and a low ecological footprint with plans to be the first carbon neutral country in the world by 2021.
Happiness seems firmly entrenched in Costa Ricans’ cultural make-up. The national motto – the most spoken two words in the country – is pura vida, which is literally translated as “pure life”, but which ranges in meaning from “life is good” to “everything’s going great”, and is invariably uttered with a big grin by the most friendly, laid back people I’ve ever met.
But what I found most joy-inducing and the reason that Costa Rica lures more than two million tourists a year (a number equal to half of its population) is the country’s natural riches. Costa Rica is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world: with less than 0.1 percent of the world’s landmass, it’s home to half a million plant and animal species – 4 percent of the world’s total. Bird species alone number a whopping 900 – more than the US and Canada combined.
Costa Rica pioneered eco tourism in the ’90s before it was a travel buzzword, so the increase of visitors has gone hand-in-hand with conservation. That means that today more than a quarter of the Switzerland-sized country, a spectacularly beautiful land of smoking volcanoes, mist-wreathed cloud forests, dense rainforests, cappuccino-coloured rivers, cascading waterfalls and golden beaches, is protected. To a nature nut like myself, this sounded like paradise and seemed well worth the journey halfway across the world.
I joined a Contiki trip in San Jose – the surprisingly friendly capital city much maligned by guidebooks – jumping on a bus the colour of a kiwi fruit, for a 12-day trip along roads winding through mountains like the folds of a soft green blanket and past curtains of giant trees. It turned out we didn’t have to go far to find wildlife. At our first roadside stop for a breakfast of sweet fried plantains, beans and rice and luscious mango, we spotted two three-toed sloths in the car park – one nonchalantly sleeping centimetres away from our camera lenses, and the other passed out precariously at the top of a tall palm tree. Totally unique looking, sloths are the most unlikely adorable animals I’ve ever seen, with movements slower than a bank queue on a Saturday morning and teddy-bear eyes.
This was just the start of a wildlife extravaganza. On the Caribbean side we cruised the Amazon-like brown canals of Tortuguero National Park – a humid rainforest next to the sea, spotting caimans, spider monkeys, herons and a dozen of species of birds I’d never heard of before including the elusive great potoo, and at night joining a conservation team in recording and tagging 500kg leatherback turtles as they laid their eggs – a thrillingly magical experience which felt like watching dinosaurs in action.
Three species of turtle nest on Tortuguero’s 30-km stretch of beach, and it’s the most important site in the Western hemisphere for green turtles, who come by the hundreds each night during the nesting season from April to October. These 100-million-year-old creatures are severely threatened, and by being on the beach while they nest we deterred poachers who would steal their eggs – a small contribution to help their survival.
Heading inland, we travelled to Monteverde Cloud Forest, named by National Geographic as the the jewel in the crown of the world’s cloud forest reserves. Cloud forests are, as the name suggests, mostly covered in low-level cloud caused by the precipitation of air currents saturated with moisture.
I love forests at the best of times, but this was more atmospheric and beautiful than any I’d been in before, with fern-covered trees stretching like a sea of green in all directions. Walking in the cold air, on the long suspension bridges that hang above the trees as swathes of thick fog blew across and clouds built up like cotton wool, time seemed to stand still.
The air was alive with the gentle whirring and tweeting sounds of insects and birds and everything smelled alive. Unlike in the hot, dense rainforest of Tortuguero, which has a faintly ominous tinge to it – you often feel that something could eat you at any moment – the cloud forest was as serene as a Sounds of Nature CD.
On the western Pacific Coast, our final stop, Manuel Antonio National Park proved to have the most beautiful beach of the trip: a long curving stretch of icing-sugar sand edged by a vivid green forest. But the best thing about it was not its brochure-perfect looks, it was how you get there: by walking through a park filled with scarlet macaws, sloths, squirrel monkeys and iguanas, all of which we spotted on our stroll. After a morning spent swimming in the bathwater-warm ocean, a snorkelling session and sunset catamaran cruise with dolphins revealed more marine treasures.
As well as being a natural wonderland, Costa Rica is an adventure lover’s dream destination. Just about everywhere you go in the country there seems to be some kind of adrenaline-stimulating adventure on offer, from white water rafting to swinging Tarzan-style through forests.
Canyoneering (or kloofing) in the Lost Canyon near the smoking hulk of Arenal volcano, which involved abseiling down sheer rock faces, scrambling through the canyon and jumping into cold pools under a cover of huge trees was so much fun I had a smile stuck on my face for hours, while ziplining through the Monteverde Cloud Forest was a near spiritual experience.
Once I’d overcome the sudden onset of a fear of heights – and stopped screaming – I let go of the need to wrap my glove-protected hand around the wire and hurtled down one-kilometre-long lines, feeling like an ungainly bird flying through the clouds high above a dizzying panorama of tree tops.
It was while preparing to fly down the final zip line, checking that our GoPros were strapped on and our harnesses in place, that we were treated to a sighting of a resplendent quetzal, a magnificent shining green-and-red bird considered to be the most beautiful in the world, and the reason for many a twitcher’s trip to Costa Rica.
Resplendent quetzals are only found in Central America and are threatened due to the deforestation of tropical forests. Costa Rica’s cloud forests provide an important protected habitat for the birds.
A Spanish conquistador on a successful quest for gold named this place the “rich coast” in the 16th century, but little did he know that the country’s real wealth had nothing to do with the shiny stuff.
Hundreds of years later, in an over-developed, consumerism-driven world, Costa Rica stands out as a natural haven, where conservation, wildlife and happiness are celebrated and living the pura vida is as important as currency.
l Duff travelled with Contiki (011 280 8400, www.contiki.com), which offers a 12-day trip to Costa Rica for R20 455 including accommodation, meals, transport, guides and activities.
If You Go...
Getting there
To get to Costa Rica you need to either fly via the US – where you need a transit visa – or through South America, where you don’t need visas. The best option is from Joburg to São Paulo in Brazil on South African Airways, and then via Colombia or Panama to San Jose.
Visas
South Africans don’t need a visa for Costa Rica, and can stay up to 90 days.
When to go
Costa Rica has two seasons: dry and rainy. It’s ideal to visit during the dry season, which runs from December to April, when you’ll have the best weather. The rainy season (May to November) is less crowded and sometimes there are only a few hours of rain in the afternoon, but be prepared for week-long downpours. If you want to travel to Costa Rica for the turtles on the Caribbean coast, the best time to see leatherbacks nest on is April and May, while green turtle season is from April to October. - Saturday Star