This must be one of the most authentic rain forest retreats that you’ll find. About a 1.5 hour drive from San Jose you have to get to Las Horquetas to pick up some wellies and wrap your bags in bin bags to protect them from what’s to come. The journey then begins. The lodge is 15km away, but to get to it is like a world away. The only way to get there (unless you rent a horse from a local) is to get taken up in the trailer pulled by a tractor. This takes about four hours along a very bumpy track that you even wonder whether the tractor will make it – at one point we had to get out while the tractor got pulled up a steep slope. This journey is not for the faint hearted and on the way back down we and our bags got completely soaked – but that was part of the fun. As it's so cut off you really need two days here at least. We stayed three but could easily have stayed longer.
The ride up gives you your first glimpse of pristine virgin rainforest with velvet and feathery leaves of various patterns and textures. The final few kilometres you can get out and walk up to the lodge and the guide points out frogs and snakes and identifies trees and flowers. The forest gets thicker and deeper and then you come to a grassed clearing where the wooden lodge of Rara Avis sits.
You really are in the middle of the rainforest here, completely cut off in a pristine green wilderness. The ethos of this place is to conserve the rainforest in a truly natural environment. There is no electricity, no mod cons, the rooms are basic but clean with hammocks on private balconies, there’s no need to lock the rooms and a convivial atmosphere is encouraged with communal eating in the main lodge building. The food is plentiful and there’s an honesty bar. When you’re not walking around the forest you watch in amazement at the hand sized butterflies and moths in the butterfly house, look at the orchids in the orchid house, swim in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall or play football, Guests Vs the Rara Avis team or just hang out chatting to guests whilst trying to photograph hummingbirds or bats at the feeders or just relax to the sounds of the forest in your hammock!
The naturalists are knowledgeable and friendly and the lodge is even used for biological research, with much more of an array of flora and fauna than we saw in any of the other rainforests we stayed at, including stained glass palms – only found at Rara Avis, walking palms, 250 year old mahogany tree, bromeliads, leafcutter and bullet ants, eyelash vipers, frogs smaller that a one pence piece, coati’s and loads of birds. There are walkways through the forest but again these aren’t like the cleared wide pathways in other rainforests reserves such as Monte Verde. They are natural and very muddy (hence the need for wellies) and on one walk our guide was having to hack his way through the forest with a machete – this was a truly magical and authentic rainforest experience and nothing compared at the other places we stayed at in Costa Rica.
It’s not for the faint hearted though – this is a truly wild experience where you feel at one with nature.
Rara Avis Rainforwst Lodge and Reserve
Las Horquetas de Sarapiquí
www.rara-avis.com/
info@rara-avis.com
Tel (+506) 2764- 1111
Google map: tinyurl.com/yc8srba
Is this your business?