Show me the monkeys!
She wanted a week on the beach in Costa Rica. He wanted to tour the country’s fabled cloud forests in search of our simian cousins.
By David Leach

“I found myself in a dark wood,” Dante famously wrote, “and lost my way.” Wandering through the Monteverde cloud forest, I can’t help feeling the same. In the dull jungly light, my eyes strain to adjust to the meagre colour scheme: green, greener, greenest. All I can make out is a tangled mosh pit of alien plant life.

To reach the world-renowned nature reserve, my wife Jenny and I had weathered several hours on the jackhammer back roads of Costa Rica, and now I want more bang for our butt pain. “Dónde están los monos?” I demand, in my Berlitz Spanish, to no one in particular. (Loosely translated: “Show me the monkeys!”) Costa Rica, I know, is home to four simian species — the howler, the capuchin, the squirrel and the spider monkeys — and yet the forest remains mute, except for the drip-dripdrip of the moist air perspiring off umbrella-broad leaves and the bill of my hat. Then a twittering to our left, a rustling to our right, the disorienting sense of being watched — and not knowing what, exactly, we were looking for. A dark wood can have that effect on travellers who arrive expecting ready-made revelations.

On his mythic journey, Dante had the poet Virgil as his point man to lead him through the underworld and onward to paradise. As a frequent traveller and wilderness wanderer, though, I always thought that guided excursions were better left to the Club Med and Love Boat set. If you really want to get off the beaten path, you shouldn’t have to rely on hired help.

However, even before we departed on our trip, Costa Rica — known as the “Switzerland of Central America” for its economic and ecological prosperity in a socially troubled region — had begun to erode my hardline attitude about travelling the do-it-yourself way. Jenny and I had agreed that we needed a break from the greys of another Canadian winter, but I balked at the suggestion of a prepackaged sun-and-fun vacation. I wanted something more adventurous and more educational.

Jenny knew my weak spot: monkeys. I have long suffered an inexplicable fascination with our tree-swinging cousins. That’s why she casually pointed out that Costa Rica boasts both white-sand beaches and white-faced monkeys. We could book a beach stay for one week and then extend our trip for seven more days of ecotouring all on our own. I was sold.

I imagined spending that first week lying by the pool, reading bad paperback thrillers in a sun-numbed, vaguely hungover torpor. Instead, during our stay at the Barceló Langosta Beach Hotel, the anxieties of city life were scrubbed clean with regular doses of boogie boarding in the warm Pacific, kayaking through bird-thick estuaries and learning to surf (badly). On excursions into the town of Tamarindo, dark-furred howler monkeys luxuriated in the trees, as common as squirrels in Canada, and emitted throaty catcalls as we passed, like a cheeky gang of construction workers on a coffee break. During a nocturnal tour of the Playa Grande Marine Turtle National Park, we tiptoed past the nesting grounds of the endangered leatherback turtle and watched a female lumber back into the surf after burying her eggs. We did little more than eat and sleep at our resort. By week’s end, we felt confident — perhaps too confident — that we could explore the country’s natural wonders on our own.

It’s no accident that Costa Rica has become one of the world’s hot spots for ecotourism. Since 1963, the Central American nation has set aside more than 70 parks and conservation areas, including several private, non-profit preserves, such as the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, protecting nearly a quarter of its land mass and foreshore. Citizens are justly proud of this natural heritage. The average Costa Rican can opine about tropical birds with the same knowledge and passion that Canadians reserve for hockey scores and political scandals. That means, for impatient visitors like myself (and the nearly two million other tourists who arrived last year), well-qualified guides are always on call to reveal the silver lining in every cloud forest — if you’re willing to ask (and tip well) for their help.