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As I didn't have time to do any serious traveling around the country, I picked out a couple of day trips from the brochures by the desk at Sportsmen's and asked Ray to book them for me.
Both had me back in the room by supper time and I enjoyed both very much. Both tours had really good guides and safe, clean, buses with sane drivers.
Here's the scoop on the ones I took:
"Combo Tour" - Waterfall Gardens company
Included Poas volcano crater, the Doka coffee plantation and the LaPaz Waterfall gardens, which have a big butterfly enclosure and a hummingbird sanctuary. If you go on this one, try to pick a day when the forecast is for very dry conditions over most of the country. Otherwise, your chances of actually seeing the volcano crater are slim. The coffee plantation tour is really interesting - will give you an entirely new appreciation of what happens to get that bean to you for your morning buzz. Also interesting to note is that Costa Ricans won't do the picking any more, and haven't for years, apparently. The picking is done by migrant Nicaraguans. Sound familiar?
The waterfall place is a giant private preserve (owned by an American!) which was pleasant, but not exactly nature au natural. It was sort of zoo-like. Even the waterfalls seemed sort of "captured" for the Kodak moment. Don't scoff at the butterfly and hummingbird thing, though. The variety and colorations of species in Costa Rica really is something to see, even if you could care less about such things as a rule.
The real down side of this tour was that there was a really early pick-up at 6am. There were about eight hotel pickups and I was the first to be picked up and the last one returned at the end of the day. That sucked, but for the most part I enjoyed seeing what I could see from the bus, anyway, as this was my first trip.
"Sarapiqui Canopy Tour" - Costa Rica Fun Adventures company
Pick up at about 1030 - Ahhhh!
Boat ride down the Sarapiqui river - relaxing, saw lots of wildlife, etc.
Really nice way to spend some time after a night on the town.
After the boat ride, a nice lunch, then a short horseback ride on some rather pathetic looking horses (by US standards, anyway) to the start of the canopy tour.
This, as has been described before, involves getting into a climbing harness, climbing a ladder to a platform up in the trees, being clipped on to a cable which stretches through the trees for a hundred feet or so to a slightly lower platform, and then jumping off so that you zoom along the cable to the next platform. It's fun, safe, and not scary at all, especially after the first slide down the cable. In fact, if you've ever done any sort of adventure sport-type activity, like in my case, skydiving, it's a yawn.
But definitely fun. I think there were seventeen cable segments. Anyone who is really out of shape or carrying too large a chest-mounted beer receptacle might find a couple of the ladders you have to climb to get to the platforms a bit taxing.
All in all, both trips were good to get out of town and see a bit of the country, as well as to see more of the city and the apparently absurdly rich suburb of Escazu (Maserati dealerships and the like). If your time is limited, these are a good way to go. Both cost about $75 U.S.
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