Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica – One Costa Rican resort recently won some awards for its sustainable tourism approach, while a new eco-tour in the Limon province involves a forest tram and chocolate.

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A 30-kilometre beach of fine white sand, coconut groves, mangrove swamps, pink flamingos, herons, alligators and, above all, sea turtles, make up the scenery of this unique haven located in Tortuguero National Park on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast.

This eco-lodge is more than a simple reflection of its setting, a unique landscape criss-crossed by waterways that, at certain times of year, offers the amazing natural spectacle of giant turtles laying their eggs on the beaches.

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Source: Visit Costa Rica

Opportunities abound to go horseback riding almost everywhere in Costa Rica, and climbing onto the horse’s back, can be a wonderful way to spice up your vacation.
The choice of horseback excursions ranges from morning trail rides taking you into the mountains above San Jose, which brings you back to your hotel in after lunch, up to all-day expeditions through the rain forest, from which you could leave walking like John Wayne.

Though you might not associate it with a tropical country, Costa Rica has quite a cowboy culture. Guanacaste, one of the country’s first zones to be conquered by Spaniards, is the province with more tradition in this regard, where many cattle ranches cover the forest-draped hills.
Nevertheless, mountain resorts and nature lodges located all over the country offer horseback riding trips, going through pastures, tropical forests, or down the beaches, and often stopping at waterfalls and lakes. Horseback riding tours are also an excellent choice for bird watching and getting close to nature, and the people leading the tours often have eyes peeled for interesting critters.

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Source: Visit Costa Rica

A growing number of tours let visitors explore the rain forest canopy’s high-altitude ecosystems, a luxuriant and little-known realm that is home to most of the jungle’s plant and animal species.

Ecologists started only two decades ago to seriously study these high-altitudes, using sophisticated devices as mountain climbing equipment and construction cranes, that tourists now have the chance to use to cross the biological frontier.

Those chances include from boarding an aerial tram that goes through the tree tops of a tropical forest, over 100 feet above the jungle floor.

All those tours offer a monkey’s-eye view of the rain forest canopy, where thick branches serve as platforms, and an incredible diversity of smaller plants, and such animals as tree frogs, vine snakes, sloths, and hundreds of bird species can be seen.
Adventurous travelers may want to try one of the more rustic canopy tours, which entail strapping on a mountain climbing harness and pulling yourself along suspended cables to a series of small wooden platforms built in the tops of trees.
Several private biological reserves also have platforms in the canopies of large trees, where people are hoisted up to. One private reserve even has a small hotel room built in the top of a tree, for those who want to spend a night in the canopy.

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Photo: Four Seasons Resort Peninsula Papagayo

Source: Time.com

BY: Carolina A. Miranda

Just 10 years ago, visitors to Costa Rica consisted largely of adventurous shoestring backpackers and wave-hungry surfers who stretched their beer money by holing up in cheap dives. It’s not difficult to see what attracted those hardy travelers. Jagged, high-altitude cloud forest inland gives way to steamy jungles lining the coasts. Visitors can spot wild scarlet macaws in flight and rare sea turtles nesting on isolated beaches. There’s no reason to watch National Geographic when you can live it.
Costa Rica is coming of age–and grappling with new challenges to the environment that has fueled its growth. As word about its staggering natural beauty has slipped out, the country has become one of the world’s leading eco-destinations, attracting a million visitors a year. With this boom, upscale resorts are establishing beachheads up and down the Pacific Coast, offering championship golf courses, world-class restaurants and plenty of spas. But as hotels and other tourism businesses increasingly set up shop in remote and pristine areas, the government–which lacks the resources for effective enforcement–is facing issues such as deforestation and waste disposal.
Some of the country’s leading hoteliers have decided that tourism and conservation don’t always have to be at odds. They have begun to work on ways to protect the environment. The  Four Seasons Resort on the Papagayo Peninsula sacrifices nothing in the way of luxury. The earth-colored hotel was designed to blend into the tropical dry forest of the northwest Guanacaste region, and its breezy, low-slung buildings overlook tranquil white-sand beaches below. There are tennis courts, pools and a golf course. The hotel has made concessions to the environment too: 70% of its land area will remain in its natural state, and the golf course uses a type of grass that can be irrigated with a 50% ocean-water mix, conserving valuable freshwater.
In a similar nod to the eco-ethic, Hacienda Pinilla a 4,500-acre resort and residential community on the Nicoya Peninsula, will maintain extensive tracts of its terrain undeveloped. Hidden in the heart of cattle country–Costa Rica’s Wild West–this tropical dry forest is inhabited by dense populations of howler monkeys, iguanas and birds. Guests who take advantage of the resort’s seaside golf course can expect to encounter plenty of the local wildlife, including a boa that has taken up residence in a heavily wooded patch of trees by the 14th hole. This has come at no sacrifice to amenities. Accommodations and services around the ranch are top-notch.
Smaller boutique hotels, such as El Remanso on the Pacific Coast, have found ways to be environmentally conscious from the ground up. Fallen wood was used to build El Remanso’s roomy cabins, so no rare hardwood trees were logged. Each unit is surrounded by a moat of moving water that keeps ants out of the rooms, eliminating the need for pesticides.

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Source: Desmoines Register

Originally published, Sun Jul 12, 2009

By JANA WARREN

Costa Rica beckoned my brother, Jeff Kitterman, and me last December for our first ever brother-sister adventure outside the United States.

Ecotourism in Costa Rica fit our goal of exploring an exotic natural world. We chose two areas for our eight days of travel: first, the Osa Peninsula, home of Corcovado National Park, and then cloud forest reserves near Monteverde.

Costa Ricans have found a kindred spirit in ecotourists, attracting people from all over the world to see their verdant land. This has also rekindled national pride in the many natural treasures and stimulated their economy.

In an airport line, I met Alvaro Ugalde, father of Costa Rica’s national parks, who has led his country to commit more than 25 percent of its land to national protection. He told me of his continued efforts to work with his “problem child,” Corcovado, where his goal is to sustain the natives, while saving the jaguars and reclaiming the ecosystem from hunters and grazers.

After a six-hour flight from Minneapolis to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, our first stop was an overnight stay at the Bougainvillea, an oasis of splendor high on a mountainside in northeastern Santa Domingo.

Our choice couldn’t have been better, for the grounds had voluptuous gardens, sculptures and a haven for bird-watching. Inside the hotel, an extensive art collection was full of Costa Rican antiques and modern art.

Little did we know what an adventure the next day would bring as we traveled to our ecolodge. We boarded an air bus, which flew us from San Jose south over the verdant coffee plantations in the Cordillera de Talamanca mountains. We had a stupendous landing in green Golfito, followed by a water taxi ride across a bay where whales birth their calves, arriving in Puerto Jimenez, all before 8 a.m.

There we met other hungry travelers, and ate breakfast together on fresh mango juice, eggs with hot sauce and handmade tortillas.

Enter our taxi driver, who handed me his cell phone with a call from Lana, the proprietor of Luna Lodge, telling us how we would make the last leg of the journey. We climbed into a 1973 Cessna for an eye-popping ride over Golfito Bay and down the coast.

Macaws flew under our plane, and we spied whales and dolphins in the ocean. After landing in an airstrip doubling as a horse pasture, our lodge driver met us for a four-wheel trek up the seaside mountain, fording a swollen river four times before reaching our ecolodge.

Luna Lodge was built using local materials and is full of plants, birds, trails and waterfalls. We ate wonderful organic food, and the congenial staff of nationals served us with gusto and shared life stories. We listened to Costa Rican history and discussed current events at congregate meals. Jeff hired a guide to take a day trip to Corcovado National Park while I bird-watched and photographed flowers and birds, after doing my yoga in the oxygen-saturated air.

Among the highlights were the annual arrival of Samantha the sloth – she comes every year to have her baby – viewing poison arrow frogs, walking the volcanic sand beach and glimpsing Morpho butterflies.

We took a van transport to our next adventure in the Monteverde cloud forest in the central portion of Costa Rica. Our bed and breakfast hostess’ son was a licensed guide. The next eight hours were filled with an enchanted walk through an endangered ecological forest where dozens of hummingbirds whizzed by, and the national flower, the orchid, bloomed at every bend in the path.

My brother stayed for six more days, beaching it on the Pacific side, with forays to Manual Antonio National Park for beach walking, surfing and boat excursions. I left with a renewed respect for the diversity that makes up life on Mother Earth.

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Canadians are looking for a little adventure – and they’re finding it in the Central American hotspot of Costa Rica, says Sean Shannon, managing director of Expedia.ca.

“Costa Rica, better than anywhere else, has branded the adventure experience,” says Shannon, highlighting findings of the annual survey of travel patterns by Canada’s most visited online travel service website. The relatively new destination, famous for its beaches, lush rainforest and eco-tours, has convinced a growing number of Canadians “to come and explore the top of the trees,” he added.

No longer content to just “fly and flop on the beach,” Canadians are packing their bags for other off-the-beaten-path destinations as well, including Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific region – most notably China – where they’re looking to experience the culture and soak up the sights, the survey shows.

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