sammcguinness5082

Hi All,

Building an itinerary for a trip to Costa Rica in April 2022 and I'm struggling a little to nail something down that works. 3 of us travelling - 2 adults and our 7yo son. We'll likely have a car for at least part of the trip, if not all.

Rough itinerary is as follows:

Day 1 - Arrive SJO late at night
Day 2 - Drive to Cahuita (5 nights)
Day 7 - Drive to Sarapiqui (2 or 3 nights)
Day 9/10 - Drive to Arenal/La Fortuna (4 or 5 nights)
Day 14 - Bijagua de Upala / or someone else enroute to Liberia
Day 16 (Easter Sunday) - Fly out of Liberia

We're set on visiting Cahuita or nearby, and we definitely want to visit the Arenal are for the various activities. Other than that, we're struggling to decide on where to go, so the other destinations are up for debate.

Considered Tortuguero, but from what I've read it seems it's a lot of hassle and cost to get there and might be boring for my son. Monteverde also an option after Arenal, but it would probably mean driving straight from there to Liberia on the last day which sounds a little risky. Also as we're from the UK, having the final part of our trip in a cold wet forest seems too much like home.

I'm not blown away by what I see on offer in Sarapiqui and Bijagua de Upala and my concern is that they're not to dissimilar to each other, or to Arenal in terms of what's offered, given they're geographically close. I might be totally wrong about that, so your experience is welcome. Feels like they're just logical stops enroute to other destinations, but I'm hoping I'm wrong about that.

Suggestions welcome.

Thanks.

november_moon

We took a similar trip a few years ago - essentially the reverse - Fly into SJO, then to Arenal, Serapiqui, the Caribbean Coast, and then back to SJO. Overall, it was a really good trip. We had also considered Tortuguero, but decided that we really didn't have enough time to do it justice, so we decided to save it for a future trip. It does take some time to get to, but then some of the journey there ( the boat trip) is part of the sightseeing.

I can't speak to Bijagua de Upala, since I haven't been there, but we really enjoyed Serapiqui and found it to be very different from Arenal. While they might be geographically close, the climate is different, so it is just a different experience. Arenal is at a higher elevation, so it is cooler. There are a lot more hardwoods and pines in the forests and it is just more mountainous area. Serapiqui is lower and much more tropical - much more jungle-like. We included Serapiqui to our trip because we didn't want to drive from Arenal to the Caribbean in one day - that just seemed like a lot, and this was a nice and convenient place to break up the trip. We ended up really enjoying Serapiqui. We went on a guided hike through some primary forest and took a boat tour on the river while we were there.

sammcguinness5082

That's great, thanks for your post.

Out of interest, how long was your trip? A full 2 weeks or shorter/longer? We could just do the 3 stops (Caribbean Coast / Sarapiqui / Arenal), but don't want to feel like we're staying too long in one place.

november_moon

Our trip was shorter - 11 days total, including travel days, so 10 nights in CR. We spent 4 nights in Arenal, 1 night in Serapiqui, 4 nights in Puerto Viejo, and 1 night near SJO airport. We thought that this pacing was good - we saw a lot in the places we were visiting and didn't feel rushed - although we could have easily spent more time in each location. There were plenty of interesting things that we didn't get to. Our style is fairly relaxed though. We like to do a lot of active stuff, but we don't like to pack too much into our itinerary. Others like to be more on the move.

With 2 full weeks, I think you can easily fit 4 destinations without feeling rushed.

I had planned a trip to CR this year - actually, if things had gone to plan we would be there right now - but we decided not to travel out of the country this year because of the uncertainty around the pandemic. That trip was going to be 2 weeks - 15 days/14 nights. Our plan was to arrive in SJO, spend the night nearby, then get a tour to Tortuguero for 3 nights, then move onto the Caribbean coast for 5 nights. That left 5 nights free, which we were probably going to split between 2 destinations which we hadn't decided yet - so that would have been 4 destinations in 2 weeks.

MichelleY

Since you are flying out of Liberia, I would cut days elsewhere and add them to somewhere on the Pacific coast. An easy drive or shuttle to Liberia.

sammcguinness5082

We had considered this, but my understanding is that because we depart on Easter weekend, the week leading up to our week be particularly busy on the Pacific coast.