Drake Bay, Costa Rica
Retrospective: I visited Drake Bay in December 2019. Despite that being quite a while ago, I keep recommending the location to folks, so I figured I should write up my thoughts for ease of future sharing.
This is one of the trips I keep going back to when I want a mini mental break, so I feel like I’ve spent months in Drake Bay. In reality, I was there for just five immersive days (four nights).
Getting there: My friends in Drake Bay gave me the mid-budget recommendation we followed. Their Costa Rica rule: do not plan your international flight and your in-country hop on the same day.
So we spend our first night near the airport in San Jose (not as boring as I expected since I saw parrots in the parking lot the next morning!), then we took a small flight* to Drake Bay. Our Airbnb host arranged to have us picked up at the teensy-tiny airport in a four-wheel-drive vehicle that bounced along roads and through shallow water to our secluded home base.
* We flew on Skyway, but they are now defunct and Sansa fills the same niche.
#1 highlight: Sitting on the balcony drawing or watching a sloth, toucans, monkeys, and macaws. I highly recommend this Airbnb or the other one next door managed by the same host. He arranged tours, let my try my broken Spanish then used his excellent English when my brain got tired, and provided the perfect atmosphere to relax and be amazed by wildlife. Plus, the AC was appreciated on hot and very humid days.
#2 highlight: A boat ride north up the coast past a seabird-nesting rock then into a mangrove-laden paradise where we could watch reptiles, birds, bats, monkeys, and so many other things as we slowly cruised past. If you take one tour, I recommend this one over Corcovado, which was cool but people-filled and without the slow naturalist pace I enjoy (plus gave me a very painful blister between my toes when I didn’t dry my feet well enough after the water landing). I don’t have a link to the mangrove tour, but it will be on the Airbnb host’s recommended roster.
#3 highlight: Great company, including both my amazing traveling companion and the expert natural-history knowledge of our local friends. While you can’t fully replicate my good luck in this department, you can enjoy their Night Tour.
#4 highlight: Walking along footpaths through the rainforest to Cocalito Beach — a hidden treasure with no one else around. There aren’t roads in most of the area, and the paths are the way to get around…while also picking up beautiful flowers off the ground, ambling over a swinging bridge, and being awed by wildlife. This part of the trip felt very much like Monteverde in 2001.
#5 highlight: Food! Walking a few blocks to the town center to buy delicious fruit then gorging on amazing papayas back at our Airbnb was the highlight, but the smoothies were also excellent and so was a restaurant meal on a rooftop overlooking the ocean.
(Chocolate was in short supply though. Maybe bring your own if you’re a chocoholic like me?)
New additions to my iNaturalist life list: 76 (My previous trip to Costa Rica was pre-iNaturalist, so some of these were old favorites. Also, I have no clue why I hadn’t reported Black Vultures previously since I see them almost monthly at home. I’m a hit-or-miss iNaturalister.)
Would I go back? In a heartbeat! I like to visit new locations, so Drake Bay hasn’t returned the top of the list yet. But just writing this post pushed it up a notch…
Photo notes: These pictures were taken with my previous point-and-shoot camera, which boasts a less intense zoom than my current bridge camera. In other words, the wildlife was pretty darn close!
Note on links: I don’t get any kickback if you choose any of the excellent Drake Bay folks I’ve recommended, but the link to the camera is an affiliate link and I’ll get a few pennies if you buy anything on Amazon soon after clicking on it. Thanks for paying for my next camera battery!