My sleeping quarters were without air conditioning, telephone, TV or even electricity, after about 9 p.m. I was in a Costa Rican rain forest -- and it rains there. Even more, damp clothes stay damp, and wet shoes stay wet.
But there is rustic, and there is rustic. This was rustic with some qualifiers: The shower water was hot, the quality of the food was surprisingly good, and there were no bugs in my bungalow.
This was the Rain Forest Aerial Tram Lodge, a 10-unit facility set within a 1,200-acre private nature reserve, the Rain Forest Adventures Atlantic Park in central Costa Rica.
The great majority of visitors come for the day from San Jose, a 50-minute drive away, or from the cruise ships calling at Limon and Moin on the Caribbean coast (one hour, 45 minutes away).
I visited the park as part of a press trip that highlighted Costa Rica's strong suits, adventure tourism and nature tourism, as experienced by cruisers on excursions.
The private park, which is adjacent to the Braulio Carrillo National Park, and the lodge are owned by San Jose-based ecotourism operator Rain Forest Adventures. A separate Miami-based division, Elite Eco Shore Excursions, specializes in operating the tours the company sells to cruise lines.
Adventure and nature tourism go hand in hand in a country that is both rich in biodiversity and committed to sustainability; Costa Rica aims to be a carbon-neutral country by 2021.
As a result, excursion guides didn't just describe entertaining details of banana plants or exclaim over colorful flowers. We were shown writing tablets made from banana stocks and recycled paper, saving 17 trees per ton of paper. We heard how important rain forest plants are as a source of the world's medicines.
Aerial trams and ziplines
Traveling Costa Rica is an education, but wrapped in quite a bit of fun, too.
The aerial tram at Rain Forest Adventures Atlantic Park makes the point. The tram, with canvas-roofed gondolas for six passengers and a guide, takes more than an hour to cover a 1.6-mile treetop route. At that leisurely pace, there are opportunities to spot blue butterflies, toucans and other birds, scurrying animals at ground level and a range of unusual plants.
Several companies, including Rain Forest Adventures, operate ziplines across Costa Rica's extensive forests.
Therefore, quite naturally, our hosts scheduled sightseeing from a zipline, known (euphemistically, in my view) as a canopy tour, for our press group. This was a first for me, and it had never been on my bucket list. But we learned a few reassuring things during our preflight briefing.
The operator provides redundancy by hooking passengers to two cables, rather than one, and wrapping them in two sets of harnesses, one functioning as a seat and one supporting the back.
Nevertheless, during my first runs, I thought all of Costa Rica's beautiful blue butterflies were in my stomach, but I caught onto the trick of flying face forward and even how to bring myself to the landing platform manually if my flight lost its momentum. We experienced the standard canopy tour offered to cruisers and other travelers: 10 cables totaling 3,937 feet.
I was uneasy when informed we could add a bonus ride on the site's new Adrena-Line, which at 2,296 feet is the longest zipline in the country. I was even less thrilled to learn we were slated for ziplining the next day at the Rain Forest Adventures Pacific Park, a 222-acre facility that gives its high-flying customers views of the ocean as well as treetops.
But the AdrenaLine was the best. Because it lasted a full minute, there was time to look around and, finally, the tour became a canopy tour, after all. I was ready for the next day's ziplining.
Hiking, biking add-ons
At Rain Forest Adventures' Pacific operation, clients can choose some combination of tram time, hiking and bird-watching, or they may opt for the Tranopy tour: half a tram ride with ziplining on 10 cables and hiking between platforms.
The Tranopy tour, open to ages 12 and older, is $70 for adults, $42.50 for students and children. Rain Forest Adventures offers agents 15% commission. Visit www.rainforestadventure.com.
The site is one hour's drive from the Pacific port of Caldera and one hour and 15 minutes from Puntarenas. For noncruisers, the site is a lot closer to full-service resorts in and around Jaco on the Pacific coast.
Our oceanside resort was Los Suenos Marriott Ocean & Golf Resort, with 201 rooms in a low-rise structure modeled on a hacienda and located in a 1,100-acre rain forest. Besides its proximity to adventures like ziplining, the property offers a host of on-site choices, most notably a marina, an 18-hole golf course and the full-service Sibo Rainforest Spa and Retreat. Standard rates begin at $409 per night, double, for an oceanview room.