“There’s a certain level of astonishment in me when blazing through new biospheres. I’m amazed humans can survive in such a range of environments for such a considerable amount of time. Such ranging environments would slay almost any other creature of Earth” – Old Sean
Along Coastal Shores
Mountains have effectively spoiled me.
Most of my time in Costa Rica thus far has been spent in the highlands. I’ve gone from peak to peak to volcano to elevated valley, sticking mostly around central and north Costa Rica since I arrived a month ago.
This certainly came with some challenges, mostly of a vertical nature. But the peaks are cool and rainy in the late summer, with constant breezes and virtually no need for air conditioning.
It was in this state of oblivious climate comfort, I made a bored and somewhat naïve decision. I chose to spend some of my time on Costa Rica’s legendary coasts.
So, bright and early on a weekend, I muddled my gear into a backpack once more and shuffled to downtown San José, and onto a bus at Bus Station Tracopa LTDA. Several hours later, I found myself in the sunny town of Quepos on Costa Rica’s West Coast, watching rays of sunlight and billowing clouds spear in from a wide, brown and blue sea.
And humid heat struck me like a charging rhino.
Costa Rica’s coast is apparently quite toasty in the summer. When rain strikes down, the humidity and intensity breaks, and it’s perfectly comfortable. When clouds crowd overhead, the sunlight’s hammer is halted, and it’s perfectly bearable. When stiff breezes come off cresting waves, the outdoors are quite refreshing.
But in direct sun, I withered. And my first day in Quepos was nothing but direct sun.
Impressions of Quepos
Quepos is a pretty typical Central American town design, a fairly flat grid with a few jumbled areas and low buildings packed into one another. There are sheet metal roofs and often brightly painted walls. Drainage is important in the city, so roads have deep cement trenches next to them with burbles of water trickling to wider streams that trickle fast below the walking surface.
The water is a steely-grey-and-blue pollution color that’s still somewhat pleasing to watch, with minnows and tadpoles wiggling about within it. Water plants creep forth from these streams and onto roads and sidewalks with understandable caution.
The best part of Quepos, however, is the western portion of it. There is a large, cement storm-breaker (El Malecón) that doubles at a platform overlooking the nearby bay. Often at low tide, this bay is a heaping grey sandbar with pelicans and other water-birds roosting on it, while thin white boats with peeling paint slink along the narrow inlet leading to wider seas.
The sunsets here are spectacular and while swimming is ill-advised, there are always small crowds of people enjoying the incoming wind and snacks. Church bells ring on Sundays, but rather than the normal singular tones marking out the hour, a whole jangle of metal bits clatters at the same time for an unspecified duration. Bright green tsunami evacuation signs point out of Quepos and into the surrounding mountains.
Tiny Concrete Town
The interior of the city is fairly nice as well. I was a bit of a glutton in Quepos, hot weather preventing me from doing anything too active. I mostly sampled various restaurants and sought out fans and air conditioners.
I most frequently ate at Restaurante Mira Olas, a third-story balcony-view eatery with splendid food overlooking the bay, though slightly pricey. Restaurante La Cocina further in town was a quieter area with decent food and much cheaper meals.
Simple Coffee and Snacks provided a good place to wake up in the mornings, but my favorite location in town was called Coffee Stop, directly across from the bus station. They had air conditioner, which made it my de facto base of operations for my entire time in Quepos.
Lodging in Quepos
My first night in Quepos was… not great.
The Airbnb I rented didn’t have AC, but it did have a pair of fans. These proved inadequate. Sunlight hitting the sheet-metal-roof turned the room into a veritable oven. Blasting the fans while laying on wet towels kept things comfortable during the daytime, but it was still far too hot and sticky to sleep well. Opening windows and doors proved likewise inefficient, as the building was angled so wind didn’t rush in.
So I laid in bed for nine hours awake and puddled. Hence, so went my first night on the coastal lowlands.
In the morning, I finally rolled out of bed once the sun had risen high enough to start reheating my room. I slogged my way back into town, immediately grateful to be back on the move. Outside, motion and wind were my allies and my body started regulating itself naturally again.
National Parks
My main reason for visiting Quepos was to visit Manual Antonio National Park. It’s only a two hour walk from Quepos, but it’s extremely inadvisable to walk. The roads there are pretty steep and enormously slippery for shoes, the edges often slick with moss.
Cars take corners pretty fast, and as typical in Costa Rica, they’re burning some unholy fuel that smells sharp and strong when engines challenge their ways up hills. It’s far easier to ride a bus for a few dollars. There’s a bus every half hour to and from Quepos to get there and back.
Tickets for Manuel Antonio Park, like a few of the other more famous parks in Costa Rica, can only be obtained online, in advance. When I arrived, it was in a deluge of rain and lightning.
Manuel Antonio’s interior forest isn’t far different than many of the other portions of Costa Rica. There are dense jungles, rings of steep mountains and a small legion of animals, most especially monkeys.
What made Manuel Antonio different is the far western portion, a bloated penninsula called Cathedral Point. This is the actual gem of the park. Here, there are exceptionally quite and isolated beaches the send curving waves back out to sea. The views from the point are exceptional, gazing west over a series of small, jagged islands, ringed in white breaking waves with vibrant greens gnarled atop.
Clouds blocked much of the view for me, but I could see the hazy bulks of more islands churning against cloud and sea out in the murky distance. The beaches are grey, slick sands with small stones tracing patterns.
Offshoot Trails
There’s technically a second entrance to Manuel Antonio Park that gets people to another set of beaches at the southernmost point of Espadilla Beach.
The only trick here is there’s a fast-moving stream between the beach and the trail and crocodiles are somewhat prolific. I was able to make it to this trail and hike along it for a while, but eventually I got to a portion of the mangrove woods and shoreline where there wasn’t a way past a half dozen lounging crocodiles without getting too close for comfort. I was forced back. I eventually got myself a few coconuts for a snack/drink and nabbed a bus back to Quepos.
I thought Quepos was a nice, fairly average Costa Rican town. My next stop I enjoyed far more.
Until then,
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written August 2nd 2021
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The GoPro Hero Black is my go to Action camera. I’m not comfortable bringing my cell phone to many wet and rugged locations, so the GoPro does most of my photographic heavy-lifting. The only things I bring in my GoPro kit are the camera, a spare battery and the forehead mount. I upgrade my GoPro once every two years. It was particularly excellent to have during my aquatic tour of Belize.
