Costa Rica Guide by Paul Glassman
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Cruises
CRUISE THE GULF OF NICOYA
The yacht Calypso makes a daily cruise from the yacht club in Puntarenas to seven islands in the Gulf of Nicoya. This is a well-planned excursion that has been improved and refined and copied over the years. A stop is made at a deserted, palm-shaded beach for swimming, snorkeling, beachcombing, and a gourmet picnic lunch that includes fresh gulf fish. They even take a portable toilet ashore.
Fare is about $70, including overland transportation from San José, or slightly less if you're already in Puntarenas. Book the cruise through any hotel in Puntarenas, or call tel. 221-9414, fax 233-0401 in San José, or 661-0585 in Puntarenas. Longer runs are also available.
. . . AND THE COASTAL WATERS
The ship Temptress Explorer regularly carries up to 100 passengers along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica from Puntarenas. That's too small a load to offer casinos and dance bands; instead, you get the services of a biologist, video movies, board games, open-air bar, and film-processing lab. All cabins are on the outside, with large rectangular windows.
Nights are spent underway, days at anchor off national parks and in secluded bays. Two shore excursions, one strenuous and one less so, are offered daily. Both are softly educational, and emphasize wildlife and Costa Rica's natural diversity.
Several routes are available: a six-night southern cruise that takes in Manuel Antonio National Park and the Osa Peninsula; or either half of the full itinerary. The price of $250 to $300 per person per day includes travel from San José to port, water skiing, snorkeling, kayaking, shore excursions, laundry service, and local brands of liquor and beer. There are extra charges to arrange fishing, and for diving.
Contact Temptress Cruises, 1600 N.W. Le Jeune Rd., Miami, FL 33126, tel. 800-336-8423, 305-871-2663; or Cruceros del Sur, P. O. Box 5452-1000, San José, Costa Rica, tel. 232-6672, fax 220-2103.
Temptress@Worldnet.att.net; www.TemptressCruises.com
American Canadian Caribbean Line is another small-ship company, with less of a naturalist bent to its itineraries, and more plenteous food, on-board activities, and a genteel explorative approach that attracts a dedicated repeat clientele. Innovative features, such as a bow ramp, allow passengers to disembark with ease at the most remote locations.
ACCL's winter itineraries center on Panama, but at the change of seasons, they offer a wonderful repositioning cruise along the Caribbean coast of Central America that, at the whim of captain and weather, can touch any of a number of rarely visited ports of call.
Contact American Canadian Caribbean Line, P. O. Box 368, Warren, RI 02885, tel. 800-556-7450 or 401-247-0995, fax 401-247-2350. www.accl-smallships.com
Aboard Temptress
If you're looking for unrelieved jungle learning, you might be disappointed, but probably not, by the fact that there is more, much more, than a serious side to these trips. On most evenings, a slide show and presentation describe the options for the following day. And part of the day is, indeed, taken up by these excursions. One is a walk around little-visited Curu Biological Reserve on the Gulf of Nicoya. Others take guests through the trails of Corcovado national park, where they encounter the walking palm, more easily understood in the flesh, with the help of a guide, than in print. Disturb a pack of howler monkeys, and they might display their discretion and swing off to parts distant, without being exactly quiet about it; or, rarely, they will display their wounded valor and toss a coconut or two toward your party, though, fortunately, their aim is quite poor. If perchance you should work up a sweat, it washes off in the rocky pools that mark the end of your trek, where a languid river meets the sea.
But this is only part of the trip. There are abundant and well-prepared food served in the dining room, or at a topside buffet when appropriate; unlimited alcoholic drinks; beach cookouts on an island in the Gulf of Nicoya, and at a deserted strand near the one-time pirate lair of Drake's Bay, where horseback rides are also on offer; kayaking wherever the ship drops anchor (all the sports equipment is carried aboard, along with tables and chairs and awnings sufficient to establish a temporary village wherever the ship sends a party ashore). Scuba diving is offered, though in fact it rarely materializes, and fishing trips can be booked as one of the few excursions that cost anything extra. Video movies are available (including The Lion King or whatever's been a recent hit), and the library is an under-used haven. You can even get your laundry done.
Some trips, especially during the northern summer, have a complement of kids, and when necessary, the company will have a counsellor available to keep an eye on youngsters at the beach or get them drawing pictures if there's not enough for them to do. (Note that water safety will still be your responsibility, for your children and yourself. Costa Ricans are rather lax in this regard.)
I should mention that I once spent a week driving around Costa Rica with two of my offspring (then 10 and 15 years old) who were less than thrilled by excursions to Monteverde and the Caribbean coast from the land approach. But during a week aboard Temptress, with other kids to hang out with and company other than their dad, and unlimited Shirley Temples at the bar, and hikes and swimming and horseback rides, not a peep of protest was uttered.
Since this is a small ship, the entertainment and crafts programs and other time fillers of seagoing cruises are absent; but Nature is more than compensatory. Relations with the crew are also closer—the same folks who serve you at table will guide you on the trail or clean up your room when you're out. Mostly, they're friendly in the Tico manner of equal-to-equal, rather than displaying the excessively ingratiating servility that prevails among underpaid staff on high-seas cruises. In any case, there are strong "suggestions" about how much to tip, and though the staff will probably merit the amounts mentioned, you won't be cornered into handing an envelope directly to your waiter or cabin boy.
Stability is an issue with any small ship. The Temptress moves mainly at night, and for a good part of its itinerary in the sheltered waters of the Gulf of Nicoya or the Golfo Dulce. But motion-sickness pills are available as required.
Itineraries vary from year to year and season to season, but points touched recently by Temptress cruises include Puntarenas, one or more islands in the Gulf of Nicoya, Curu Biological Reserve, Drake Bay, Corcovado National Park, Quepos and Manuel Antonio National Park, the banana port Golfito, and a private orchid reserve nearby (the only place that I might have skipped, but then, I've seen more of Costa Rica than you).
. . . AND A TROPICAL RIVER SYSTEM
In colonial times, the San Juan River along the border of Nicaragua was a highway between the interior and the coast. In the nineteenth century, it was an invasion route, the back door to the heart of Central America, used during the conflicts between William Walker, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Commodore Vanderbilt. And until a couple of years ago, it was off limits to outsiders, a sometime theater of war in the Sandinista-Contra struggles.
Now you can board a bus in San José, drive past the La Paz falls between Barva and Poás volcanoes, and embark on a river boat at Puerto Viejo on the Sarapiquí. Downriver, past stands of bananas and still-uncut forest, the craft navigates the San Juan, along the northern limit of the Barra del Colorado Wildlife Refuge. Joining you at various times are toucans, crocodiles, sloths, monkeys and butterflies. The delta branch of the San Juan called the Colorado leads into Costa Rican territory, through palms and a network of man-made and jungle canals, to the Caribbean at the village of Barra del Colorado.
From this point, you can fly back to San José after a night along the beach, stay to fish for tarpon, or continue along the canal system to Tortuguero National Park.
River excursions to the Caribbean are offered by Costa Sol (tel. 223-4560 in San José, 800-245-8420 in the United States); Costa Rica Adventure Tours, Hotel Corobicí (P. O. Box 5094-1000), tel. 232-8610, 800-243-9777 in the United States; Ríos Tropicales, tel. 233-6455.
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