Costa Rica 2026

Woke super early- like 4.30. Interesting night in the ‘serial killers’ lair but we did sleep. The air con in our room (D and M) was amazingly noisy but surprisingly we were able to blank it out.
Saw drunk man again 🤦🏼‍♂️ on our way to the quay- this time standing ! Dropped the car off for 12$ for three days- bargain.
We were told to get to the Quay by Surcos tours for 5 am but didn’t actually leave until six. Quite a lot of people in several boats doing the same journey but with several different tour companies. We met our guide Giovanny who was pretty laid back and had been guiding for 10 years. The other people in our group were two Costa Ricans who lived in Georgia, Javier and Shirley.
Soon after leaving the port we saw a single dolphin which was a beautiful start to our trip. The total journey time to the park was about 90 minutes.
Luckily no sea sickness. The coastline was beautiful- miles of unspoilt jungle- amazing.
Disembarkation was an interesting affair. Essentially the boat just reversed into the beach and the passengers climbed off the back - on this occasion it was a little bit more challenging as it was low tide. You had to jump into thigh deep murky water with rocks underfoot so it was a bit risky. Javier hadn’t read the memo about going slowly so he jumped, tripped and fell over getting his rucksack soaked and we later learnt his phone as well.
Once on shore we had to go through ‘security’ to make sure we weren’t bringing items to the island such as plastic bottles, cigarettes, alcohol, and food. I got a bit of an exemption with food due to being diabetico! 👍
We then met the last person in our group who had taken the boat from Drake’s Bay. A German called Kevin.
We then had to carry our gear to the Sirena Ranger station which was about a kilometre walk.
The walk itself however was brilliant as we saw a couple of Peccaries, Currasow and numerous other birds.
The Rangers station is brilliant and very sympathetic to the environment it’s in. The accommodation is very basic consisting of an area of bunkbeds each with its own mosquito net.
It is however clean, there is a gift shop where you can buy drinks and snacks and the dining area is relatively cool. By the time we got there and sorted ourselves out and had a coffee, we did our first proper jungle walk. It felt to all of us about midday but it was actually only 9 am! After a couple of hours we were back for lunch had a short break until about two and then did another three or so hours before sunset.
The absolute highlight of this was seeing a couple of male anteaters chasing each other about for probably getting close to an hour. At times they were very close to us and it was brilliant to watch .
Dinner we soon realised followed the same format with the foundation of the meal being Gallo Pinto (rice and beans) with whatever meat was available and salad. Dinner was alcohol free due to not being able to bring in alcohol, there is also none to buy. This was probably a good idea as living in dormitory accommodation could have been problematic as it would only need one or two people to cause a bad night for everyone.
At dinner they did supply water but also juice which varied between watermelon, or a ginger and sugarcane combination which was delightful.
There was no suggestion of chatting too much or playing games after dinner as we were all pretty knackered and we also had to get up at 4:30 so we could go on the next jungle walk at 5 am!
Preparing for bed was a bit of a challenge as we had to try and remember everything that needed to be inside your mosquito net as getting in and out particularly if you’re on the top bunk was a bit tricky, i.e. Melissa and Derry.Read more