Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
opportunities, as economic alternatives to habitat-destructive agriculture and logging.
While promoting locally owned lodges throughout the region, the Costa Rican Bird Route
is also helping to establish new, community-based ecolodges from the Río San Juan to
Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo. The hope is that green tourism will be more financially
beneficial to these poor communities, and will also be salvation for the great green
macaw.
SARAPIQUÍ VALLEY
This flat, steaming stretch of
finca
-dotted lowlands was once part of the United Fruit Com-
pany's vast banana holdings. Harvests were carried from plantations to Puerto Viejo de
Sarapiquí, where they were shipped downriver on boats destined for North America. In
1880 a railway connected rural Costa Rica with the port of Puerto Limón, and Puerto Viejo
de Sarapiquí became a backwater. Although it's never managed to recover its former glory,
the river again shot to prominence as one of the premier destinations in Costa Rica for
kayakers and rafters in the 1990s. In addition to tasty raging rapids, there are a slew of
stellar lodges in the region, featuring rainforest trails, suspension bridges, pre-Columbian
ruins and chocolate tours.
San Miguel
If you're driving up from San José or Alajuela, Hwy 126 curves up the slopes of the Cor-
dillera Central, leaving behind the urban bustle and passing Volcán Poás before descending
again into pastureland. This is
campesino
country, where the plodding hoofbeat of cattle is
about the speed of life, as the hard-to-spot rural speedbumps will remind you if you take
those curves too quickly. You're off the beaten track now, and if you're self-driving, you
may as well linger, because there are few Costa Rican corners quite this beautiful and un-
heralded.
Albergue El Soccoro
( 8820-2160;
www.albergueelsocorrosarapiqui.com
; per person incl
meals US$75; )
is 9km south of San Miguel, 1000m above sea level, on a plateau sur-
rounded by a magnificent knife's edge of green mountains, tucked between the looming
Cerro Congo and Volcán Poás. The owner was born and raised a rancher here, but in Janu-
