OT: A week on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula

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You may know by now that I’m a frustrated travel writer (a goal for my next life!). I honestly love just about everything about traveling. I love people-watching in the airport lines. I love the tiny snacks on the plane (anyone else obsessed with those chocolate quinoa puffs that United has started distributing?). It’s the only time I drink tonic water. Things that other people find crazy-making, like Southwest’s open seating policy, I kind of get a kick out of. It’s also fun to write up blog posts about my travels, not least of all because it helps me remember the details of what I did!

Over New Year’s (2024 into 2025), my family (husband, 22 year-old daughter and I) took a really unique trip, to Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. This is actually the second time we’ve been there; the first time was in 2011, when my dream for my 40th birthday was to sit on the beach with a wild tapir (and I did!). On that trip, we met some people who had hiked into the ranger station we were staying at (my daughter was 9 at the time and we got there on a boat). We had always dreamed of going back to do that…and we did! Here’s the report!

Overview

In my opinion, you really can’t go wrong with Costa Rica unless you truly hate hot weather. It’s a really easy place to travel, it’s one of those countries that really does have it all (mountains, beaches, jungle, rainforest, animals, volcanoes, hot springs, and options at all price points). Costa Rica is generally more expensive than Belize (where we went last year), and to me it feels safer than Mexico (where we went in 2023) and you can also drink the tap water (no one got sick on this trip, compared to everyone getting sick in or after Mexico; I know that’s a stereotype, but in our case it was also true!).

The Osa Peninsula is a remote area in far Southwestern Costa Rica (near the Panama border). You can drive there (slowly!), but to save time we decided to fly. So we flew from Denver to Houston to San Jose on United (more on costs later), spent the night in an airport hotel, then the next day flew on Sansa (local airline) to Puerto Jimenez, which is kind of the base town for the Osa Peninsula.

Phase one: Jungle lodge

We spent our very first night at the Marriott Courtyard Alajuela. It’s nice! They have a free shuttle that picks you up right outside the airport, the staff speak Spanish and English, the rooms are clean and quiet, and they have an on-site restaurant that’s open early and late. We ate both dinner and breakfast there and it was tasty! I would definitely stay there again.

After flying to Puerto Jimenez, we stayed for two nights at Encanta La Vida, a jungle lodge that’s about a 45 minute drive down a bumpy dirt road from Puerto Jimenez. We didn’t rent a car, which was definitely the right decision for us; the roads around Puerto Jimenez are largely unpaved and also very washed-out from flooding, in some cases down to one lane, or you have to drive through streams, etc. Shuttle van was definitely the way to go. We loved Encanta La Vida. It’s set in the jungle, about a five-minute walk from two different beaches. The grounds are low-key but gorgeous, with a nice pool and a really great restaurant (shoutout to them for making special vegetarian food for us!). The prices include your food and there are no stores or restaurants in that area anyway, so your only choice is to chill out, go hiking (there’s a nice waterfall that’s about an hour walk down the dirt road), go to the beach, or take their twice-daily yoga classes (also included in the price).

We did all of the above and particularly enjoyed the waterfall (you can swim in the pool at the base) and the yoga classes. We rented the Treehouse Nest suite, a really cute setup with two bedrooms, a full bathroom, and a large covered porch with couches and hammocks. The place is (literally!) crawling with animals; monkeys watched us do yoga, we saw toucans right on the property, tons of iguanas, agoutis rooting around in the garden, the whole deal! We’re not big-time beach people but the beaches are very pretty to hang out on, and there were a fair number of people surfing; Encanta La Vida has surfboards and paddleboards available as well. For us, this was the perfect start to the trip, and the perfect amount of time. We met a few people who were staying there for a week, which I think might have been a bit too much total relaxation for us, but three days was fantastic.

One thing to note: Outside of Puerto Jimenez, the Osa jungle lodges largely rely on solar power and thus do not have air conditioning (Encanta La Vida has no air conditioning that we saw). I personally prefer open-air, but this is something to consider if you’re really sensitive to heat and humidity. Additionally, while it’s a great idea to avoid being outside at dusk due to mosquitos, most restaurants in the area are completely open-air with no real walls or screens, so it’s pretty much impossible to avoid mosquito bites.

Phase two: Trek across Corcovado!

After a few glorious days of relaxation, we headed back to Puerto Jimenez (same shuttle van driver!) and the offices of Osa Wild, through whom we did the three-day Corcovado Intense Trek. It lived up to the name (definitely intense!) and is was a truly incredible and unique experience in a really special place.

Day one: We had an orientation at the Osa Wild office (air conditioned!) where they described the hike, went over the gear requirements, and allowed us to store the luggage that we were not taking with us. We walked to the nearby supermarket to buy some additional snacks, then the Osa Wild driver took us in their Land Rover to pick up our guide (Leiner Garcia, can’t say enough good things about him!) and continue on to La Tarde, a lodge right on the edge of Corcovado National Park. La Tarde is a very well-kept and comfortable place, especially given that it’s in the middle of nowhere! They have a large open-air dining area and a number of individual cabins with mosquito-netted beds and outdoor showers. After checking in and having a snack and some juice, we headed off on a hike with Leiner where we quickly saw a prehensile-tail anteater (so incredibly cool), a kinkajou, a flock of scarlet macaws, squirrel monkeys, a few non-venomous snakes, and tons of other birds. Seriously amazing! We then hung out at La Tarde for a while, had dinner (totally decent) and went on a night hike with Leiner (more anteaters, including one climbing a tree, plus lots of frogs) and then went to bed. We slept well! It’s totally quiet out there!

Stuff in Costa Rica tends to get going early because it’s dark by 6 PM year-round. The next morning we got up around 5, had breakfast, and La Tarde packed us lunches to take with us. Then we set off on the long, steep, muddy hike to La Sirena, the ranger station in the middle of Corcovado. The guide had told us that this day could take around 11 hours of hiking (6 AM to 5 PM); we were motivated to get to Sirena with some time to hang out, so we moved pretty quickly without a ton of breaks and ended up arriving at 3:30. This hike is pretty amazing in terms of being totally immersed in the jungle, and you need to be prepared for serious mud (like you’re literally wading through mud for hours at a time), and the first few hours involve a lot of steep up and down as you cross a number of ridges between La Tarde and the Los Patos ranger station where you can refill water and use the bathroom. After that it gets flatter, but also muddier (if that’s even possible!) with a number of knee-high river crossings.

We were happy with the gear we brought: three-liter Camelbaks, into which we crammed our overnight stuff. Shoes for this kind of hike are a major dilemma, because you’re going to get very wet no matter what. The guides all wear knee-high rubber rain boots (seem like a good idea but I think I’d get blisters in the first hour), and we brought light (fabric, not leather) hiking shoes which meant you’re just hiking with wet feet after about the first 10 minutes. The one thing I would not recommend is heavy leather boots!

La Sirena is a really cool place; we were lucky to arrive early (3:30) and take showers before many people got there. There are 150 bunk beds with individual mosquito nets, everyone eats dinner between 6-7 (food was totally decent) and then they shut the electricity off at 8, so pretty much everyone goes to bed. Our guide told us, “There will be people snoring, shining flashlights, but you’ll be so tired that you’ll sleep anyway.” This was 100% accurate. The next morning we got up at 4, took our breakfast to go, and left at 5 AM for the really gorgeous hike out along the beach. This is honestly like being at the end of the world. You’re on the Pacific coast, so the next land mass is…I don’t know…French Polynesia? The Marshall Islands maybe? It’s stunning. In general, we found the second day much easier than the first, but the one sketchy moment is the first river crossing, where you’re about chest-deep in the water (holding your bag over your head), with the guide urging you on (let’s go let’s go let’s go) in case a crocodile makes an appearance. Fortunately we saw no crocodiles and continued on our way!

Day two involved walking along several gorgeous beaches and through the nearby jungle with minimum up-and-down, then eventually you get to La Leona Ecolodge, where you can get a cold coconut water or a soda, then you get to La Leona ranger station (water, bathrooms), and finally to the Carate airstrip, where the Osa Wild driver picked us up. This experience was really unique and special; we really enjoyed the “intense” version, but there are tons of ways to access the Sirena sector of Corcovado. In 2011 we took the boat both ways (from Drake Bay), and you can also take a boat one way and hike one way. Talk to Osa Wild and they’ll hook you up! We were 100% pleased with their services, and there are also very few guide services with permits to do the “intense” hike.

Phase three: Collapse in Puerto Jimenez

The Osa Wild driver very kindly picked our bags up at their office and drove us to our hotel, the very peaceful and scenic Cabinas Jimenez, right on the water. We got the Rancho Upstairs which has a nice balcony and two bedrooms with air conditioning (very welcome after the long, sweaty trek!). Puerto Jimenez is a pretty laid-back place, you can walk everywhere (including to the airstrip) and there are a couple of good coffee shops and restaurants. Interestingly enough, the Marisqueria Corcovado (theoretically a seafood restaurant) has excellent vegetarian food, and we really liked the fruit smoothies at Cafeteria Monka.

On our last day, we did a really cool tour of a chocolate farm where you get to see cacao beans grown, dried, and roasted, and then make them into chocolate! Definitely stay for the home-cooked lunch if you do this tour; it was outstanding!

Finally, we walked to the airstrip, and our somewhat dicey plan to fly home all in one day (Puerto Jimenez-San Jose-Houston-Denver) worked! There really is nothing I would change about this trip; it was perfect.

Logistical notes, in no particular order

• We had no real need for Costa Rican money; everywhere takes credit cards or US dollars. I brought US cash for various things (tipping the guide; Cabinas Jimenez only takes cash or PayPal) and that was useful, but you really don’t need much if any Costa Rican cash.
• I was semi-panicking because Sansa airlines has no visible way to check in ahead of time. They send you a receipt and that’s it. Don’t panic. Show up at the domestic terminal of the San Jose airport, show your passport, and they give you a boarding pass. Neither of our Sansa flights was anywhere near full, and in Puerto Jimenez some people literally showed up 10 minutes before the flight and just walked out onto the runway.
• If you fly on Sansa, check your e-mail as the flight approaches; if they change the flight time, they e-mail you and that’s the only notification you get.
• Speaking some Spanish is definitely helpful; probably not totally necessary but allows you to, for example, eat in local restaurants where the staff don’t necessarily speak English.
• Vegetarian food was no (zero) problem. Costa Rican food is not generally super-exciting, but we had some excellent “casado” plates (rice, beans, vegetables, fried cheese, fried eggs).
• We were glad we didn’t rent a car. Taxis are easy to get, and they gave us a fixed price and accepted US cash.
• We brought a good amount of snack food from the US (trail mix, energy bars) and this turned out to be a good idea: you can buy such items in Costa Rica but they’re expensive and it’s a smaller selection.
• There is not much food to purchase at La Sirena (understandable, given the location) and the dinner is a fixed portion (no self-service). BYO snacks!

Costs

Finally, here’s some information on costs! Costa Rica really does have options at all prices ranges. Particularly for lodging, you could spend a lot more or a lot less than these figures, but here’s what we spent:

• Roundtrip airfare from Denver to San Jose on United: $1,100 each, roundtrip
• One night at Marriott Courtyard Alajuela: $213 per room, per night. This includes their shuttle to and from the airport but does not include any food. The food there is good, but not cheap (breakfast buffet $25 per person).
• Sansa flights from San Jose to Puerto Jimenez: $329 each, roundtrip. For what it’s worth, I don’t love small planes, and Sansa was fine.
• Encanta La Vida Treehouse Nest (two-bedroom suite): $584 per night for three people, but this includes all of your food (three delicious meals per day). The only extra cost is transfers from Puerto Jimenez ($100 each way) and alcoholic drinks if you order them.
• Intense Trek with Osa Wild: $534 per person. This includes everything: shuttle to La Tarde, overnight at La Tarde with dinner, breakfast and packed lunch, overnight at La Sirena with dinner and breakfast, shuttle back to Puerto Jimenez, and your own guide (request Leiner, he’s awesome)). Tipping in Costa Rica is a bit amorphous; restaurants don’t even give the option to tip when you pay by credit card, some places add a service charge, Costa Ricans themselves don’t seem to tip in general, but it felt weird to me to not tip the guide for such personalized service, so I tipped him $150 in US cash ($50 per person).
• Rancho Upstairs suite at Cabinas Jimenez: $160 per night for three people
• Meals at local restaurants were pretty inexpensive, like US $50 for three people for dinner
• Chocolate farm tour: $200 for three people including the tour and lunch; just the tour is $45 each
• Taxi to chocolate farm tour: $20 each way, Cabinas Jimenez arranged it for us

That’s it! It was an incredible trip! Here are a few photos to wrap it up.

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. An ATA-certified French to English translator and Colorado court-certified interpreter, she also holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College. For more tips and insights, join the Training for Translators mailing list!