Exploring the beaches and jungles of Costa Rica

My trip started in San José and I was headed to Platanillo. To get there, I flew into San José airport and took a bus for about 3 hours to Platanillo. It was in a great location because I was able to take weekend trips to to the beach and to national parks, but it was quite remote. Platanillo is definitely not a destination town or somewhere I would recommend to travel to unless you are staying at cascada Elysiana or have a particular place in mind. I found Cascada Elysiana through workaway as a place where you could work in exchange for stay. The work was light and included cooking for the guests, cleaning, and gardening. You can also stay there as as a guest in any of their glamping tents and enjoy the waterfalls and do yoga on the yoga deck. There are also lots of hikes you can do!

Uvita is a small beach town. We had heard of it from the locals and knew we had to go there for our weekend off! The bus system was really excellent and we were able to hop on a super clean bus  for about 1.5 hrs till we got to Domincial. This is where we stayed the night but we spent our days lounging on the beach in Uvita sipping from fresh coconuts and taking dips in the warm clear water. I highly recommend bringing some food as it wasn’t super close to restaurants and we got pretty hungry. The sun was also super strong so definitely don’t lay out too long like I did or you’ll get quite burnt! We stayed in a cool little hostel that was a surfers hostel. It was close to the ocean in Dominical so we could walk there for sunset. It rained really hard on us one of the days so watch the weather! 
 

For another weekend off from volunteer work, we went to see the national park Manuel Antonio Nacional Park. Again we hopped on the bus from Platanillo for about 2 hours and arrived in Aguirre where we stayed at a cheap hostel that was on the same route that the shuttle to the national  park passed by. I highly recommend doing this as it made it so easy to go to the park the next day! When we got to the park they made sure that we had no food with us so eat before you go! They don’t want you to feed the animals. We walked through the park all day and it was so stunning. We saw sloths, monkeys, green frogs and crabs on the beaches. We walked through the jungle and to viewpoints overlooking the beach. It was incredible. Afterwards we went out to eat in the town and then returned to our hostel to hangout for the night.