Sleeping in a $70 a Night Shipping Container
Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, where the wildlife is free and the bottled water costs $6
I’m Currently Sleeping in a Shipping Container
Seriously.
A bonafide shipping container that cargo boats transport across the seas.
Painted, insulated, fitted with air conditioning, and tucked into a hillside with gorgeous ocean views. There’s a tiny terrace, a comfortable bed, and the slightly surreal pleasure of remembering, every so often, that you’re sleeping in a converted freight unit.
It’s called El Faro (The lighthouse) Containers Beach Hotel (points for imagination 😉).
It’s a handy two minute walk from Manuel Antonio National Park, and slightly over our backpacking budget at $70 a night. But I love how unique it is.
So we’ve just spent the last 48 hours here at Manuel Antonio National Park and it’s been amazing. When we entered on Sunday, not 100 metres past the gate, we were greeted by a troupe of squirrel monkeys, climbing up and over and around everything in sight.
So confident and unfazed by all the camera-clicking attention are they, that it lulls you into a false sense of security that they’re basically tame.
They are not. I watched a few tourists getting a little too close, and as we walked away, we heard some shrieks behind us. I’m not 100% sure what happened, but my money’s on someone learning the hard way that these monkeys are still wild animals with pretty darn sharp opinions about personal space.
I kept a respectful distance and took my photos from a few metres back. (More out of fear of one launching itself at me than admirable restraint.)
The park doesn’t allow any food or drink inside, and they’ll search your bag at the gate. Apparently the monkeys got too used to being fed by humans, started getting sick, and then turned aggressive when the food supply stopped. So now nothing comes in.
Which means the monkeys have gone back to being monkeys, and the humans have to put their snacks back in the car. (We got totally called out at the bag check for hiding a pack of biscuits in a towel! 🤭)
After walking the rest of the park in the afternoon, we found a little slice of paradise with empty stretches of beach and quiet coves, and got in the water for the first time since my surgery.
Even though this is the Pacific, the sea here is as warm as the Andaman in Thailand, which is genuinely one of my favourite things about Costa Rica so far. ❤️
Then yesterday morning we did a guided tour at 7.30am, and in two hours we saw a sloth (sloths have become my official spirit animal - slow, fluffy, unbothered, and occasionally horizontal for days at a time), a hummingbird the size of a thumbnail, a tree frog the size of a fingernail, several lizards, bats, and some grasshoppers coloured bright yellow and black, which Rhett immediately identified as a Richmond Tigers supporters.
He follows Australian rules football. The grasshopper (like the rest of the world) doesn’t know what that is. 😉
We also saw a lot of capuchin monkeys. They’re apparently the cleverest of all the New World monkeys, capable of using tools and solving problems in ways most other primates can’t.
Our guide told us stories of how they figured out how to open sliding windows, and how they stole some sun cream from a tourist, applied it on their arms and faces (imitating humans), and used leaves to wipe off the excess! Crazy!
But the wildlife here is incredible. It’s literally the backdrop of everything Costa Rica stands for, and everyone we’ve spoken to is super passionate about it.
The waiter at lunch spent ten minutes telling us about pumas and ocelots and the snakes we’d want to avoid in the cloud forest. Our tour guide talked about birds the way my husband talks about football.
The country protects roughly 30% of its land as protected wilderness, which is more than almost anywhere on earth, and you can feel that everywhere you go. The wildlife isn’t tucked away in zoos and reserves. It’s in the canopy above your hotel, in the trees outside the restaurant, in the river the road runs alongside.
Costa Rica is, however, eye-wateringly expensive.
A bottle of water is $3-6. A bag of crisps is $5. A modest dinner for two with a drink each is easily $60 and the supermarket prices make your head shake in disbelief.
It is, without question, one of the most expensive countries I’ve visited.
But, it’s genuinely worth visiting, despite the prices, despite the fact that a couple of weeks here costs what a month in Colombia would, despite the jellyfish larvae I apparently waded through on the beach (mild sting, no drama, will not be claiming on insurance).
Just come prepared, budget more than you think, and don’t expect the ‘Central America = cheap’ assumption to hold, because it doesn’t.
As you read this we’ll be heading north to Monteverde and the cloud forest, then on to La Fortuna for the volcano. The misty mountains version of Costa Rica, after the beach version.
By the time we leave for San Diego at the weekend, I’ll have seen approximately one-tenth of what this country has to offer. (I’ll just have to come back!)
But in summary, the monkeys steal the show, the accommodation is sometimes literally a freight container, and a bottle of club soda requires a detailed review of your finances.
Pura vida, but bring your wallet.
📍 Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica
P.S. A little friend joined us for breakfast as I’m writing & scheduling this from the rooftop restaurant of the hotel.
What a life! ❤️
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Costa Rica used to be very inexpensive but in the last few years the shift of people wanting luxury tourism instead of backpacking adventure trips has escalated prices all around. You are also at some of the most popular tourist areas so the prices are going to be higher. If you get the opportunity to steer off into more off the beaten path areas and buy foods at the local markets and sodas instead of what is imported in for tourists you can find things a little more reasonable. But it is true that how expensive the country has become is a huge problem when you compare the prices to the locals minimum wage. I highly recommend trying to get a whitewater rafting trip in. There are a couple of Tican owned businesses in the Manual Antonio area. But the very best is to do the Picaure river. It's always on my list I give our guests.
Love this! I visited Costa Rica as a cruise port. (I know, it hardly can be considered a visit), but I was very impressed. We did a monster truck tour of the rainforest and like you, were blown away by he types of monkeys. Some people don't like cruises, but the one thing they do do is allow you to experiment with a destination. Costa Rica is a place that definitely deserves a longer visit.