One month in Costa Rica — with a camera, open eyes and no fixed plan
Twenty-seven days. One country. No standard programme.
Emanuel and Celina Kolb are filmmakers. They don’t travel to tick off sights — they travel to see, understand and tell stories. When they left Switzerland in early March, they had a camera, a backpack and the willingness to be surprised. What followed was a journey through a country that refuses to be staged — and that’s exactly what makes it unforgettable.
This account doesn’t cover every hour — but the moments that stay. And it shows what’s possible when someone who genuinely knows a country opens the right doors.
| 4–5 March | San José & Puriscal — arrival and straight into it |
🏨 Homewood Suites by Hilton Cariari, San José · 2 nights
They land at midday in San José. No tourist welcome. The next morning, they head to a primary school — not a national park.
Together with the local Rotary Club, Swiss Tropical Tourism had organised a donation of school supplies in Puriscal — books, notebooks, materials. Handed directly to children who rarely receive new materials. Celina had her camera. She’d later say it was the first image of the trip that truly moved her.
That same afternoon, still in Puriscal: a visit to a cigar factory. Tobacco leaves rolled by hand by craftsmen who have mastered the same movement for thirty years. Emanuel filmed the hands — just the hands. That was enough.
[INTERN: IMAGE 2 here — Rotary Club book donation Puriscal, children and school materials]
| This is the Costa Rica that Swiss Tropical Tourism wants to show — not the one from glossy brochures, but the one built on real encounters. |
| 6–7 March | Tortuguero — where the road ends in the water |
🏨 Mawamba Lodge · 2 nights
You can only reach Tortuguero by boat. Rainforest on both sides, water mirror-still in the early morning, a toucan in the branches. The national park is one of the most important sea turtle nesting sites in the world.
One night: guided excursion in complete silence, red-light headlamps, thirty metres from a green sea turtle weighing over a hundred kilograms crawling out of the sea to nest. Not a word. Celina put her camera down. Some images are made without a lens.
| 8 March | Pacuare River — white water through rainforest |
🏨 Ave Sol River Sanctuary · 1 night
Rafting the Pacuare isn’t just sport: it’s a journey through a rainforest that grows right down to the water’s edge. Waterfalls dropping directly into the river. Parrots flying over the rapids. Between passages, the river widens and you hear nothing but water and birds.
| Rafting the Pacuare is what Swiss Tropical Tourism means by adventure tourism: not adrenaline for its own sake, but nature at its most intense. |
[INTERN: IMAGE 7 here — Rafting Pacuare River or rainforest riverbank]
| 9 March | Punta Cocles — the other Caribbean |
🏨 Le Cameleon Hotel · 1 night
Punta Cocles sits south of Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast — a beach that looks nothing like what most people picture when they hear ‘Caribbean’. No mass tourism. Le Cameleon is a small design hotel directly on the beach. A night you don’t forget — especially when the morning begins with an empty stretch of sand.
| 10 March | Sarapiquí — the visit that explains everything |
🏨 Hotel El Bambú, Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí · 1 night
Sarapiquí lies in the Caribbean lowlands, where rivers widen and the rainforest climbs without restraint. For wildlife filmmakers, it’s a paradise: white-faced capuchins, spectacled caimans, kingfishers.
That day, a visit that isn’t a tourist attraction — and that’s precisely why it ranks among the most memorable moments of the entire trip. Finca Roswitha: the Dähler family’s pineapple plantation.
To truly understand Swiss Tropical Tourism, you need to come here. The story begins in the 1970s, when Johann Dähler — Swiss, entrepreneur, visionary — emigrated to West Africa and built a pineapple empire. In Switzerland he became known as the ‘Pineapple King’. After political unrest, the family left Africa and eventually found a new home in Costa Rica. What started as an agricultural project is today a large farm with pineapple, moringa, cacao and water buffalo.
Emanuel and Celina were guided through the plantation. Rows of pineapple under tropical sun, fruit heavy and ripe. The family history is told as you walk.
[INTERN: IMAGE 4 here — Finca Roswitha pineapple plantation or Sarapiquí landscape]
| The Dählers didn’t come to Costa Rica to sell tours — they came to stay. Anyone who visits Finca Roswitha understands why Swiss Tropical Tourism is different. |
| 11–12 March | Braulio Carrillo National Park — jungle without compromise |
🏨 Tapirus Lodge · 2 nights
Braulio Carrillo isn’t a tourist park. It’s one of the oldest and least developed national parks in Costa Rica — dense forest, steep slopes, clouds that move through the trees from inside. Two nights at the rhythm of the forest: early rise, birdsong before coffee. Costa Rica is home to over 900 bird species — more than all of Europe combined.
| 13 March | Northern Plains — wetlands and biodiversity |
🏨 La Laguna del Lagarto Lodge · 1 night
Lowland rainforest north of Braulio Carrillo, near the Nicaraguan border. Wetlands, lagoons, jungle. Scarlet macaws, toucans, woodpeckers, kingfishers. A short night — that somehow feels long when you’re standing on the dock at five in the morning with mist lying over the water.
| 14–16 March | La Fortuna & Arenal — three days, three faces |
🏨 Arenal Roca Lodge · Los Lagos Hotel · El Fogón de Chela
Three nights in the Arenal region — but not at the same place. Swiss Tropical Tourism knows: the area is so diverse that a single hotel can’t do it justice. Arenal Roca for the first raw look at the volcano. Los Lagos for the hot springs and recovery after intense days. And El Fogón de Chela — a small, family-run guesthouse right at the edge of the national park — to understand what ‘sleeping on location’ really means.
[INTERN: IMAGE 5 here — Arenal Volcano at sunrise or hot springs La Fortuna]
| 17–18 March | Rincón de la Vieja — where the earth bubbles |
🏨 Casa Rural Aroma de Campo · 2 nights
Less well known than Arenal — and all the better for it. Bubbling mud pots, fumaroles rising from the ground, waterfalls dropping into untouched pools. The Casa Rural Aroma de Campo isn’t a lodge in the conventional sense — it’s a finca that takes in guests. Horses, chickens, mornings with fresh milk and homemade bread.
| 19–20 March | Tenorio Volcano — cacao, Río Celeste and blue water |
🏨 Finca Amistad Cacao Lodge · 2 nights
The Río Celeste is one of Costa Rica’s most striking natural sights — a river whose water takes on an otherworldly turquoise colour through volcanic minerals. The Finca Amistad Cacao Lodge connects two worlds: the geothermal nature of the volcano and the gentle farming of a cacao finca.
| 21 March | Cañas — between Pacific and llanos |
🏨 Hacienda La Pacífica · 1 night
Hacienda La Pacífica in Cañas is an institution: one of the oldest haciendas in Costa Rica, with wildlife conservation projects and its own nature reserve. A breather — and a meeting with the other face of Costa Rica, the hot, dry Guanacaste lowlands.
| 22–23 March | Santa Juana — mountain village, coffee and real life |
🏨 Santa Juana Lodge Rural Mountain Adventure Tour · 2 nights
Naranjito and the Santa Juana area aren’t a tourist destination in the classic sense — and that’s their greatest strength. The lodge works directly with the local community: coffee farmers who explain the journey from fruit to cup. Families who cook what they grow. For Emanuel and Celina, it’s one of the most human moments of the trip.
| 24–27 March | Drake Bay & Osa Peninsula — the wildest Costa Rica |
🏨 Aguila de Osa · 4 nights
The Osa Peninsula is considered by biologists to be one of the most species-rich regions on Earth. National Geographic once called it ‘the most biologically intense place on the planet’. Four nights at Drake Bay, at the Aguila de Osa — one of the most acclaimed lodges in the region, with direct access to Corcovado National Park.
What waits here can’t be summarised in a list: pumas crossing the trails at night, scarlet macaws flying in pairs over the jungle, dolphins at dawn on the boat. And Corcovado itself — one of the last primary rainforests in Central America, hard to reach, quiet, real.
For filmmakers like Emanuel and Celina, these four days are the reason an entire trip exists. The light is different here. The air is different. And the silence is so dense you could almost touch it.
| Drake Bay and the Osa Peninsula aren’t for everyone — but for anyone who genuinely wants to understand what tropical nature means. Swiss Tropical Tourism knows the lodges, the guides and the trails that make the difference here. |
| 28–29 March | San Gerardo de Dota — the Quetzal and the final chapter |
🏨 Trogon Lodge · 2 nights
The last stage climbs high into the mountains — to San Gerardo de Dota, a small valley in the Cordillera de Talamanca at over 2,000 metres. The Trogon Lodge is named after a bird — and that’s no coincidence. San Gerardo de Dota is one of the most reliable places in the world to spot the Resplendent Quetzal: the sacred bird of the Maya, with its impossible green plumage and long, trailing tail.
The first morning, before breakfast, they find it. Sitting calmly in an aguacatillo tree, eating, barely moving. Celina had the 400mm lens. She takes thirty photos. One of them will be the image of the trip.
Two days in the cool cloud forest, with hiking and fresh air. On 29 March, back to San José. On 30 March, the flight home to Switzerland.
| 📍 Full itinerary — 4 to 29 March 2026 |
| 4–5 Mar San José / Puriscal Homewood Suites Cariari · book donation · cigar factory |
| 6–7 Mar Tortuguero NP Mawamba Lodge · turtles · canals |
| 8 Mar Pacuare River Ave Sol River Sanctuary · rafting |
| 9 Mar Punta Cocles / Caribbean Le Cameleon Hotel |
| 10 Mar Sarapiquí Hotel El Bambú · Finca Roswitha (Dähler family) |
| 11–12 Mar Braulio Carrillo NP Tapirus Lodge · jungle · birdwatching |
| 13 Mar Northern Plains La Laguna del Lagarto Lodge |
| 14 Mar La Fortuna / Arenal Arenal Roca Lodge |
| 15 Mar La Fortuna / Arenal Los Lagos Hotel Resort & Spa |
| 16 Mar Arenal Volcano NP El Fogón de Chela |
| 17–18 Mar Rincón de la Vieja NP Casa Rural Aroma de Campo |
| 19–20 Mar Tenorio Volcano NP Finca Amistad Cacao Lodge |
| 21 Mar Cañas Hacienda La Pacífica |
| 22–23 Mar Naranjito / Santa Juana Santa Juana Lodge |
| 24–27 Mar Drake Bay / Osa Aguila de Osa |
| 28–29 Mar San Gerardo de Dota Trogon Lodge · Quetzal |
| 30 Mar Return flight from San José |
| Total: 26 nights | 16 different lodges & hotels |
| Travel style: intensive · 1–2 nights per stop · always close to nature |
What made this trip possible
A trip like this doesn’t come from a catalogue. Sixteen different accommodations, a book donation on the first day, the founding family’s pineapple plantation, rafting the Pacuare, four nights in Drake Bay — no algorithm plans this. A person who knows Costa Rica from the inside does.
Swiss Tropical Tourism didn’t simply book hotels for Emanuel and Celina. The Dähler family organised the Rotary Club connection, made the Puriscal cigar factory visit possible, opened Finca Roswitha and selected the guides in Tortuguero, Braulio Carrillo and Drake Bay — guides whose knowledge doesn’t come from books, but from lived daily life.
That’s the difference between a trip and an experience. And that’s precisely what’s hard to google.
✔ A trip like this isn’t a mass product — it’s tailor-made. Yours doesn’t have to look like this one.
✔ Puriscal, Sarapiquí, Santa Juana, Drake Bay: these aren’t tourist destinations — they’re places you only find with the right contacts.
✔ Birdwatching in Costa Rica isn’t a hobby for retirees — it’s an encounter with 900 species that don’t exist together anywhere else.
✔ Building social projects into a trip costs nothing — and gives back more than any attraction.✔ Visit Finca Roswitha: not as a tour, but as understanding. Anyone who wants to know Swiss Tropical Tourism needs to come here.
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