Tortuguero – A Fisher village and a National Park in the middle of nowhere

After our hike to Cerro Chato and Hot Springs we left from La Fortuna around 6pm towards Cariari. We had planned to leave around 2-3pm but the hike, springs and lunch/dinner dragged out a bit. We were going to Tortuguero but had to make a pit stop at Cariari. Tortuguero is a small fishing village and National Park in the NE part of CR and it is accessible only by boat or plane. We chose car and boat. The public boat to Tortuguero leaves from La Pavona, a few house village, four times a day and the boat ride takes around one hour and it took some four hours from La Fortuna to drive there. Because of the long drive, we stayed one night in Hotel Vista al Tortuguero in Cariari. 

Our hotel room at Vista al Tortuguero

Cariari is basically the closest place to La Pavona where you can overnight and from there it is still one-hour drive on dirt road to the harbor. If you come with your own car it might be difficult to find the harbor, because it cannot be found on maps (e.g. Google maps). You can find La Pavona on maps, so when you arrive there, just continue driving after the road ends on the map on the only road there is, and you will arrive to the harbor. We left our car to a secured parking place for the two nights we were planning to staying Tortuguero and the price tag was $10 a night. Basically you do not have that much of a choice where to leave the car if you don’t want to walk a long way to the harbor because there is just the road and then the $10 secured parking place.