Have you seen the snow in Costa Rica?’ asks my host, cafetalero Gustavo Vargas Cordoba, urging me up the hillside to his tiered coffee cultivation patch. Under the shade of a towering poró tree, the glossy green of the coffee shrub is indeed stippled in white – the scented blossom of early spring. He invites me to inhale the jasmine top notes, taste his coffee and shoot the breeze. I am glad I do. For Café Viñas, with its chickens running rampant and hummingbirds hoovering up the hibiscus, is the loveliest of roadside rests, vividly conjuring the ‘pura vida’ mantra that is blazoned across Gustavo’s heirloom wooden oxcart. This phrase perfectly encapsulates the spirit and culture of Costa Rica. It is, above all, about taking your time, so I slow my pace to meet the drip-drip of the filtering coffee in the traditional chorreador and savour the drink in my enamel cup.
My trail through Costa Rica is an informal mission to source the best caffeinated shot, which leads me through the most beautiful, under-visited corners of the country. Within a 20-minute drive from San José’s airport, I find myself in a pastoral idyll at the inspiring coffee-farm-cum-hotel Finca Rosa Blanca, in the Heredia Highlands. Here, the American artist, accidental hotelier and conservationist Glenn Jampol has dreamed up an exuberant confection of Gaudíesque grandeur: turreted cottages overlooking the forest canopy and a 30-acre estate that produces some of the best organic arabica in the country.
My pitstop at Gustavo’s Café Viñas, days later, has taken me deeper into the coffee heartlands of the Central Valley. At 1,200 metres, where mist-wreathed and rain-rinsed valleys rise to greet the smoking volcanoes of Irazú and Turrialba, conditions are perfect for the crop. The patchwork of pastures and smallholdings, where campesinos graze their horses and regal Brahman cattle roam with egrets in courtly attendance, is the soul and spirit of Costa Rica. And yet, sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, the unsung beauty that is the Central Valley is invariably overlooked in favour of the beach.
My journey is a collision of climates and landscapes as I travel from the near-alpine serenity of Café Viñas, weaving steadily downhill into the hot wet jaws of the Río Pacuare rainforest reserve. This jungle fastness was all but impenetrable before the construction of the Jungle Train in the late 1800s, which transported the golden bean, the Grano de Oro, to the coast and onwards to Europe. The railway carved through the Cordillera Central mountain range among, as Victorian author Anthony Trollope put it, ‘The grandest scenery I have met with in the Western world.’
Since the decommissioning of the railroad in the Nineties, the most scenic route through the jungle today is by raft on the wild Río Pacuare. After tumbling through the white water and narrow gorges for the best part of half a day, the river breaks into the bright sunlight of an open meadow, shimmering with blue morpho butterflies, where the luxurious Pacuare Lodge lies waiting.
Only a handful of guests opt to travel to one of the country’s remotest lodges by 4x4, accompanying the luggage – most take the waterway, rafting in from outside Turrialba. We spend days languishing in the hotel’s spring-fed swimming pools; we breakfast in the trees on a platform only accessible by zipline; and we immerse ourselves in jungle life before, days later, the same scenic waterway spits us out at Siquirres on the Caribbean coast, where plantations of banana replace coffee as the main crop.
Raking the palm-fringed beaches of this seaboard, the surf draws small crowds. Salsa Brava is the legendary break that has helped turn the small town of Puerto Viejo from a sleepy back- water into a hive. It hums softly to a gentle Rasta beat, thanks to its mainly West Indian community. The relaxed vibe and sense of inclusiveness and pacifism runs deep in a country that abolished its army in 1948. Rustic, beaded-curtain beach shacks and low-impact treehouse inns provide an experience of simplicity and hospitality on a human scale – a world away from the manicured golf courses, marinas and sanitised big-name resorts of the Papagayo Peninsula in Costa Rica’s northwest. But a handful of sophisticated hideaways have sprung up on the still underdeveloped stretch that is beyond Puerto Viejo.
On Playa Cocles, artist-owned Hotel Aguas Claras is a cluster of salvaged clapboard beach cabanas, where themed suppers, complimentary bicycles and yoga classes give the feel of a club- house. Wedged between the Talamanca Mountains and the surf, the hotel’s architecture brings a sense of the outside in, with outdoor shower rooms and hammock-festooned verandas. In a country that offers greater biodiversity than almost anywhere else on earth, the most immediate wildlife-watching arena can turn out to be your hotel’s front yard. A scarlet macaw eyeballs us from a mango tree, neon-coloured parrots weave through the jacaranda, and a sloth greets us upside down at the porch like a bell-pull.
But the last surprise takes place in the walled garden of nearby La Pecora Nera, one of the 10 best restaurants in the country. When the Italian chef produces a peerless caffeine-soaked tiramisu, followed by an espresso that rivals those served at Sant’Eustachio in Rome, I know that my mission is complete.
Catherine Fairweather travelled with Cazenove + Loyd (020 7384 2332; cazloyd.com), which offers a nine-night mid-season itinerary from £3,700, with accommodation at Finca Rosa Blanca and Hotel Aguas Claras, both B&B, and Pacuare Lodge, full board with tours, and including transfers but excluding international flights.
