A few weeks ago, I went on a week long vacation to northern Costa Rica – exploring by the Tenorio Volanco, Rio Perdido and Tamarindo. We did so much into 7 days that I’m sharing two posts, the first is a guide to Northern Costa Rica and what we did on our trip, and the second is a guide to Tamarindo. If you’re planning a trip to Costa Rica, hopefully you’ll find the recap below helpful! While it’s taken a few weeks with the holidays, I’m so excited to finally share my guides to our trip to Costa Rica in December! It was an incredible trip (if you’ve never been to Costa Rica, make sure to add it to your list!) and we had an amazing time exploring the rainforest, national parks, and beaches while we were there. We didn’t do the typical resort stay and instead rented a car to drive around and explore the Northern side of the country, which we we really enjoyed. Below are some of the highlights and lessons that we learned along the way to pull together the ultimate guide to Northern Costa Rica!

A Guide to Northern Costa Rica

First things first – if you’re planning to explore a few different places while visiting Costa Rica, make sure to rent a car (preferably an SUV!). Costa Rica is incredibly gorgeous, and it’s nice having the flexibility to drive around on your own. While many roads are well paved, a lot of the backroads to places to hike and national parks, so I’d definitely opt to spend a little more to make sure you can easily navigate around the country. Also, Waze works like a charm across the country too!

Liberia -> Tenorio Volcano

To kick off our guide to Northern Costa Rica, we first flew into Liberia and immediately headed the area around the Tenorio Volcano, one of the larger volcanos in Northern Costa Rica. We landed at around 1PM, so we drove to the area around Tenorio and grabbed lunch at the Hummingbird Cafe – a cafe that’s part of a hotel in the area that has pretty good Costa Rican and American food, including homemade pizza. The restaurant has a few hiking paths, a butterfly area and is home to a lot of wild creatures – like monkeys and sloths! While we weren’t planning on seeing any sloths during our visit (there aren’t a ton in the area we were visiting), I was very excited to spot one during lunch while munching on my quesadilla. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip – and the only sloth we saw during our week long stay! Next we went to our hotel that was close to Tenorio National Park, where we were planning to hike the next day. We stayed at Celeste Mountain Lodge, a beautiful bed and breakfast that was on the side of the mountain overlooking a beautiful garden. The owner was so sweet, and had spent years visiting Costa Rica for work, and decided to retire and open up his own bed and breakfast. Besides the hotel being absolutely beautiful, they made some of the best meals we had while traveling around Costa Rica. The breakfast included in the stay was amazing (and different every morning!) and at night they make a really delicious 3 course meal for $25 per person. We really wished we could have stayed at Celeste Mountain Lodge for more than one night since we had such an amazing time, but we’ll definitely plan to go back if we find ourselves in Costa Rica again!   The next day, we woke up early to hike Tenorio Volcano National Park, just a 10-15 minute drive from Celeste Mountain Lodge. Tenorio’s park is known for Rio Celeste, which is a gorgeous light blue that is caused by two rivers converging by the volcano and mixing together with their unique particles (sulphur and calcium carbonate) to make the beautiful blue water. The hike was only about 45 minutes each way, but definitely bring your hiking boots if you have them! Towards the top of the hike where you’re able to see the two river converge, there’s a good amount of mud you need to hike through to get to the end. Overall though the hike isn’t super difficult, but definitely be prepared for a little mud!  We were told to fist go to the end of the hike (where the waters mix) and then stop on the way back to see the waterfall (pictured above!). You have to walk down (and back up!) about 250 stairs, but it’s worth it to get up close to the waterfall and the pretty blue water. Definitely bring a bottle of water before you go though – I was embarrassingly winded after all those stairs! I was craving something to drink after the hike, so I picked up a fresh coconut that vendors slice open for you. It was so good and refreshing after getting a workout in!

Tenorio Volcano -> Rio Perdido

Since the past few months had been super crazy for us both at work, we wanted to have a few days to totally relax. We decided to go to Rio Perdido for a few days, which is a thermal spas and hiking park that also has a gorgeous eco-lodge/resort as part of the property. We stayed in super cute cottages that were build on stilts into the side of a mountain, and they were the perfect place to get a nice night of sleep and spend hours reading on the porch in hammocks throughout our stay.  The main lodge is home to an incredible restaurant overlooking the park, as well as a few pools and bars for when you’re looking to relax. The breakfasts were included with the stay, and every morning we had fresh fruit and tico (a Costa Rican specialty of plantains, beans and rice!) along with some other sweet treats.

The dinners were also delicious and they had two menus – one that was a traditional Costa Rican menu, and another with more traditional items (pastas, fish, meat, etc.). Both were really good, but I especially loved trying a few Costa Rican dishes like their Gallo Pinto and Casados.  During the day, there are tons of activities you can do around the park, including exploring the thermal hot springs (there are 4 different pools you can explore on your hike!), zip lining around the park, white water rafting, yoga and hiking around the many trails in the area. We did yoga every morning before breakfast, tried to do at least one hike a day, and usually squeezed in an activity. I really enjoyed the zip lining (I’d never been before and we ziplined over the view below!) and whitewater rafting with our very fun guides.

It was the perfect place to stay for a few days to get some nice relaxation, while mixing the reading, pooling and eating/drinking with a nice amount of adventure. While the hotel is pretty pricy, I’d highly recommend splurging for a night or two! We ended up buying our stay on Cyber Monday and got a great deal too!    

Rio Perdido -> Palo Verde

After a few days at Rio Perdido, we hopped in the car and headed to get some time at the beach in Tamarindo. Before we got to Tamarindo, we stopped at Palo Verde national park to get some more hiking in. Palo Verde is known for their incredible wildlife that live in the park, including the largest population of waterfowl and wading birds in Central America. If you’re driving on your own, make sure to rent a 4×4 since the roads leading to the park and through it are all pretty bumpy and gravely. It’s only $7 per person to get in to the park, and you can spend a few hours hiking their many trails (our favorite was “La Roca Trail”), and enjoying a boat ride to see some of many alligators in the river.

Our boat guide told us that there were at least 1500 alligators in the river, and it was incredible how many we saw in the wild while cruising down with our guide. Our guide really enjoyed us getting as close to the alligators as possible (sometimes to my dismay, haha), and we saw at least 20 alligators between 3-5 feet long. We also saw a ton of birds, monkeys, iguanas and bats our guide pointed out too! It costs $60 per group for the boat ride (you can catch it at the end of the road in the park) but definitely worth it to see some wildlife up close. I was skeptical, but really enjoyed exploring the whole park on the trip!

Since I’ve already squeezed so much into this post, I’m going to share my guide to Tamarindo later this week! In the meantime, I hope this guide to Northern Costa Rica was helpful if you’re planning a trip, and I’m always happy to answer any questions you might have too! Feel free to drop me an email or leave a comment below if you have any questions 🙂 xx