Signed by Scarlett

Welcome to the next entry of my backpacking dairies, we had officially arrived to Costa Rica! Let’s just say our bank accounts knew too as we jumped to very expensive prices, including a small suncream at $33!

San Jose

Heading from Nicaragua to Costa Rica, we first got a ferry from Ometepe back to Rivas, where we then hopped on a bus to San Jose for the night before we continued our journey.

Much to Danni’s disappointment, we had booked a cat hostel and I was loving every minute!

Hostel: Stray Cat: £10.46 pppn

Our hostel friends were cats here, but the beds were comfy, bathroom was clean (except the cat who wouldn’t come off the toilet!) and there was a kitchen – all good for one night!

We headed back to San Jose bus station the next morning and were on our way to La Fortuna.

La Fortuna

Hostel: Poshtel Arenal: £10.82 pppn

This hostel was a bit more unique with the style of beds, tons of single beds all in one room and then one double bed – luckily it was all girls, so we didn’t mind the style too much.

The heated pool and bar were lovely and loads of places to chill.

To keep things cheaper in Costa Rica, we ate a few of our meals at Soba’s and we also headed to a local river for a swim.

On our second day, we headed to the Mistico Hanging Bridges, consisting of walking across hanging bridges high up in the trees in the middle of the rainforest as you spot creatures and see the views. It was very misty when we went but we said it added to the rainforest experience! Although it is a whopping $32.

We went to a local chicken place called Pollos Mena La Fortuna and it was actually really good and then picked up a slice of cheesecake near the hostel, which was even better.

Monteverde

One bus, a boat and then another bus later, we arrived in Monteverde.

Hostel: Outbox Inn: £17.33 pppn

Despite the beds here being different, a mattress on the floor with curtains in between – we loved this hostel!

The beds were extremely comfy, the bathrooms were great, the living area and kitchen were lovely and the outside bit was also nice!

Monteverde was definitely our favourite place in Costa Rica, the activities you could do were great and the town was very cute with tons of lovely shops, cafes and food.

Including Cafe Monteverde for incredible coffee, cinnamon buns and Nutella croissants!

We splurged out on two activities here that we both wanted to do, Zip lining and a night hike which = $90 in total! A lot but they were both worth it.

For the night hike, we got picked up at 6pm where we went further out of the town to a cabin where we all went on a 2 hour hike around the rainforest searching for creatures with our torches.

Whilst we had hoped to see sloths, we saw so many incredible animals including: Green glass frog, tarantulas, wolf spider, Northern Emerald Toucan, Kinkajou, Black Guan Turkey, fireflies, stick insects, grass hopper and more!

Our guide also had a telescope with a torch to show us animals in even more detail.

The zip lining experience took us on loads of different zip lines across the rainforest, including the longest one in Latin America at 1590 metres long. We took on superman zip lines where you lie on your stomach across, it felt like that one scene in Divergent, a rappel backwards and Danni even took on the Tarzan swing!

Both were incredible experiences that we still look back on today.

Puerto Viejo

Our last stop in Costa Rica took us to Puerto Viejo, a gorgeous beach town. An early shuttle of 5:30am from Monteverde to San Jose, then a bus to Puerto Viejo, we arrived at our next hostel and first all female hostel.

Hostel: La Tribu: £15.15 pppn

This was very different experience and was honestly a very sweet hostel with loads of hair appliances (never been so excited to straighten my hair!), comfy beds and nice bathrooms and a stunning kitchen with loads of cooking classes!

We had a lovely Caribbean meal at Joe Caribbean food before heading back to our hostel to join a class making ‘patacones’ and dips!

The next day we decided to have a beach day, as we first headed to Playa Negra and then to another beach as we sat in the sea and read – before getting some popcorn chicken from a vendor on the street. Oddly served in a plastic bag with mayo and ketchup also in their own separate plastic bags – but it was yummy!

We visited loads of the shops and bought some souvenirs of our trip so far, before heading for more Caribbean food and a sweet treat at Bread and Chocolate.

And that was our trip to Costa Rica.

Short and sweet (like the Sabrina Carpenter tickets I tried and failed to get at 5:30am in Monteverde) and expensive but a lovely time in Costa Rica!

Next stop: Panama