Visiting Costa Rica in a Wheelchair - Here are my accessibility notes from the vacation to Costa Rica I took in January 2010.  Visiting Costa Rica in a wheelchair has some challenges but was definitely doable.  Hopefully this helps you in your travels!

The airport was under construction so some airport workers had to carry me and my wheelchair down portable stairs to get me off the plane. We then got onto a mini-bus that was equipped with a wheelchair left which drove us to the terminal. At the terminal there was an elevator to get up to customs and passport control. A ramp going to passport control was about 5 m long and 3 Star Sage Flatness. There was then an elevator to get down to baggage claim and the car rental agencies. 

The van to take us to the Avis rental car office was a large van that did not have a wheelchair lift. It had a very high front seat that I had to transfer into. The guy working at the rental car desk did not know what the term “hand controls” meant, and I do not know of any rental car agencies in Costa Rica that provide hand controls. I would definitely recommend paying the $8/day for GPS because nearly all roads in Costa Rica are not even named much less have street signs. Check with your credit card company and/or car insurance company to see if they cover insurance on rental cars in Costa Rica. If not, I would recommend buying insurance in case your car gets damaged from the very rough roads. I would also recommend getting an SUV. Unless you are driving only from the airport on a main highway to a resort town, you will encounter rocky, uneven roads. Even in the resort towns, some of the hotels have rocky roads approaching them.

Grecia is a small town about 30 minutes away from the airport and doesn’t have many tourists. It may be appropriate for your first and/or last night in Costa Rica. The Grecia B&B is a small bed and breakfast run by a Canadian named Denny and has 2.5 Star Sage Accessibility. It is possible for a wheelchair user to navigate but is not quite a 3 Star Sage Accessibility hotel due to the fact that it has 1) a 3 inch up-and-down lip at the front gate, 2) the door to the communal bathroom was barely wide enough for my wheelchair, 3) the communal bathroom barely has enough room to get a wheelchair into and close the door, and 4) the bathtub has sliding glass doors which make it difficult for a disabled person to swing their legs into the bathtub. That being said, it may be suitable for some people with disabilities because there are no steps at the entrance and there is plenty of room to move a wheelchair around the bedroom.

We stayed at Arenal Springs Resort which was a beautiful hotel/resort with a great price and 4 Star Sage Accessibility. This hotel is a great place to stay when visiting Costa Rica in a wheelchair.  The rooms are in small buildings with 2 hotel rooms for each building. They have roll-in showers and the room we stayed in, Room 104, had a 10 m long path from the parking space to the building that had a steepness that was mainly Sage 4 Star Accessibility with a portion Sage 3 Star Accessibility. From our beds, we could see the volcano through the floor to ceiling windows. There was not enough room to position a wheelchair next to the bed without pushing the beds a little further apart. The pool was accessible by a 15 m long Sage 3 Star Accessible hill on the backside of the restaurant. The pool had a roll-in ramp which I had never seen in a hotel before. The restaurant had level access and breakfast was included.

The first day there we did a 4-wheeler (ATV) tour that went up on the volcano and down to the Arenal River. Even though I am a T-4 paraplegic, I don’t have any problem riding 4 wheelers. The ones that we rode had large areas for my feet so I didn’t have to worry about them slipping off. I find it much easier to drive because I can hold onto the handle bars than it is for me to ride behind someone and try to hold onto them. It is also smoother ride if you are driving than if you are sitting on the back. The 4-wheelers we rode were built for 1 person so it was a tight fit with two people. The path that we took had some up and downs but there was no chance of flipping over or anything like that.

The most exciting thing to do at Arenal is take a canopy tour, and I found one that would take someone in a wheelchair! It took a ton of effort on their part and not much on my part. You can click here to read the whole accessible canopy tour review.

There are also white water rafting and hot springs possibilities in and around La Fortuna.  The most popular hot springs spot that we saw was called Baldi but I do not know about its accessibility features.

Monteverde can be reached from La Fortuna by driving 3 or 4 hours around the north side of Lake Arenal. Even though it is not far from La Fortuna, there is no southern road around the lake. The northern road is very hilly with lots of turns. Most of it is paved but some of it is rocky/gravel.

Santa Elena is the town near Monteverde Cloud Forest. We stayed at the Poco a Poco hotel (Sage 3.5 Star Accessibility) which was very modern and on the side of a hill. They gave us room 16 which had flat access to get to and was near the restaurant. You could position a wheelchair to the right of the bed and there was a roll-in shower with a sliding glass door and a small 2 inch ramped lip to get into. They brought in a folding metal chair for the shower. The grab bar for the toilet was about 4 ft away. I give this a Sage 3.5 Star Accessibility rating…it would be 4 Star except for the lip into the shower and no grab bar for the toilet. The ramp down to the pool was steep (3 Star Sage Flatness) and there was level access to the restaurant.

The Monteverde Cloud Forest was not very accessible. There are no roads going into the park and the most accessible hiking trail had 1 inch boards sticking up out the ground every 5 meters or so to prevent erosion. The trail also had a couple of 2 Star Sage accessibility hills that my dad and I had a tough time with.   We only went about 300m then turned around. The café with the hummingbird feeders had a 10 m long 2 Star Sage accessibility ramp to get up to. 

The Frog Pond had gravel inside the entrance and in the gift shop. There was a 10 m long 2 Star Sage accessibility ramp going down to the exhibits. Because of the cost and the lack of wheelchair accessibility we left.

The Butterfly Garden also had steep ramps and we did not do it.

The entire town of Santa Elena apart from the main square was hilly.  

If I had to do the Costa Rica trip over again, I would probably pass on Santa Elena and Monteverde due to the lack of accessibility. If you can find a good 4-wheeler trip or accessible canopy tour it would probably be worth it.

Quepos is the closest town to Antonio Manuel National Park and is connected by a 7 km highway that runs parallel to the shoreline. There are hotels in the flat small town of Quepos, and they are also found along the 7 km highway. The highways is has many curves and many hills consequently many of the hotels have steps to enter them. The National Park has beautiful beaches and a great deal of wildlife including monkeys, sloths, raccoons, and iguanas.

The Antonio Manuel National Park has a single road running from the entrance to the “third beach”. We received conflicting information about whether or not driving in the Manuel Antonio National Park is allowed. It appears that driving in the park is somewhere between forbidden and heavily regulated. We were initially told that you could only drive into the park if you were disabled and rode with an organized tour that paid for a permit. We were later told that a disabled person could be driven in a private vehicle to be dropped off at the beach but that cars could not park there. We later rode with an official park guide who spoke with his boss and got approval for him to ride in our car in the national park for 30 minutes. We got approval to meet him later that day in the national park, and when he did not show up we drove into the national park, parked at the end of the road, got out of the car and spent about an hour before driving out of the park. 

I am unsure what the official policy is on driving in the park (if they even have one), but based on all the information we received and our experience, here is my recommendation for disabled access to Antonio Manuel National Park:

Drive to the very end of the highway between Quepos and the Antonio Manuel National Park where there is a loop to turn around. Find one of the official tour guides (they are in tan shirts and will probably walk into the street to stop your car). Don’t use one of the guided tour companies located in Quepos because they are more expensive and don’t have as much pull with the park rangers. Tell the guide that you have a disability, and ask him what your options are. We were able to can get a 30 minute tour of the national park and go back into the park later that day, so ask if that is possible. For 2 people it will cost about $60 which is really worth it because they are unbelievable at spotting wildlife and they have telescopes that you will need to view the monkeys and sloths far overhead. Additionally, you might not be able to drive in the national park without a guide. The guide will ride in your car on the only road in the national park which goes about 2 km. You may be able to get out at the end of the road for a little while. There is a large concrete slab with picnic tables, and some of the sand near the beach was doable in a wheelchair with difficulty (3 Star Sage Firmness). 

There will be many tourists walking along the road, and they will probably not understand why you are so special to be the only ones in a car (we got a comment about our loud car scaring off the monkeys when actually the monkeys could care less if there are humans walking far below them). The road itself is not wheelchair friendly but could possibly be done in a wheelchair with great difficulty (similar to level 3 cobblestones, about half of the road has level 3 slope and half is less steep, and about 2km long). If you want to stay at the beach for a long period of time, the person with the disability will need to be dropped off at the beach then have the driver drive back to the entrance to park and walk back inside. It’s not really worth it because there are plenty of other beaches outside the park that don’t require the hassle. The wildlife in the Antonio Manuel National Park is great and definitely worth the trip!

There are also several other activities that you can do outside the park. River rafting is available although we did not do it. I have done river rafting in Big Bend and Grand Teton National Parks so it is doable for a paraplegic). Some of the rivers are rougher than others so be sure you choose one that is appropriate for your level of disability. 

Kayak tours and motorized boat tours of the mangrove swamps are available through Iguana Tours. Their office is at the edge of Quepos where the 7 km highway to Manuel Antonio begins. They can pick you up at your hotel in a non-accessible van with a very high front seat. If you have your own car you could follow the van or meet them at the launching point for the tours which is located on the far side of the African Palm plantation from the National Park. The guides can help you get into the kayaks which have tall seat backs. Single and double kayaks are available so I went in a double with the guide. The motorized boats didn’t look like they had enough room for a wheelchair but they have seats that you can transfer into. The kayak tour was about 2 hours and we saw an anteater, a boa, an iguana, and several types of birds. 

Catamaran tours can take you snorkeling and to see the National Park from the ocean and a great sunset. We booked ours through Fourtrax Adventures which has an office located across the street from Iguana Tours. The mini-bus that picks you up at your hotel has steps to get into it and takes you to the marina. There is a flight of stairs to get down to the dock and a ramp to the water’s edge which was anywhere between a 2 Star Sage Flatness and 5 Star Sage Flatness depending on the tides. The 4 person crew can carry you onto the boat where there is plenty of flat room to move around the large boat (it can probably carry about 50 people).   We cruised looking for dolphins but didn’t see any. When we got to the snorkeling spot, it was pretty easy to get on and off the boat. To get off, I merely dropped about 3 feet off the boat’s edge. To get on, I was pulled onto the back edge of the catamaran which is only about 6 inches above the water then scooted up a couple of steps back to the large flat area. The snorkeling itself was very easy. The saltwater provides a lot of buoyancy and even though they required all swimmers to bring life jackets with them, it was easier to swim without it than to wear the life jacket.  The rocks were about 5 to 20 feet below the water and had small fish all around them. After we swam for 50 minutes, we had dinner and drinks onboard before watching the sun go down. It was really a fun, accessible time and I would definitely recommend it.

A few other notes about traveling in Costa Rica:

-          The ATM instructions were in Spanish only

-          Some prices are in US dollars and some are in colones. Be sure to have plenty of US dollars and colones and pay in the price listed because you are going to lose money if the merchant has to convert to the other currency. For tours, you can usually negotiate a better price for cash than a credit card, if they will even accept a credit card.

-          If you are buying souvenirs it is difficult to get change. They generally want you to pay the exact amount.

-          Streets don’t have names or addresses so getting a GPS in your rental car is a great idea. The GPS steered us a slower route a couple of times, so I would also bring a map as well as have the person at the hotel give you directions before you leave to go to the next city.

-          I don’t have any statistics but it seems like more people speak English than in Mexican resort towns

-          One of the guides told us that March would be the best month to come to Costa Rica for good weather and low crowds

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