Travel Log: Mistico Hanging Bridges Tour, La Fortuna Area, Costa Rica

If you follow me on Instagram you saw that I recently spent about a week in Costa Rica (9 days including travel days) with three of my dearest friends. Our itinerary included one night in San Jose to reset after redeye flights and ~12 hours total travel time from Seattle, two nights in Quepos to explore Manuel Antonio National Park (you can click on the links to read the posts), a stop at the stunning Starbucks Hacienda Alsacia Coffee Farm, two nights at the stunning Tabacón Resort & Spa near La Fortuna and Arenal Volcano that included a nature walk at the Mistico Hanging Bridges, and three nights at a resort on the Gulf of Papagayo in Guanacaste before flying home from the Liberia Guanacaste airport. Today I am sharing more on our guided tour with Blue Mistico Tours at the Mistico Hanging Bridges near La Fortuna where we saw so many animals including finally spotting a sloth (Costa Rica is known for having both two-toed and three-toed sloth populations)! Please continue reading to see more photos and details of all of the animals we spotted during our guided tour.

Our tour with Blue Mistico Tours (booked on Viator) included pickup at our hotel (Tabacón Thermal Resort & Spa) in an air conditioned van and transport to Mistico Park. We chose an early pickup time of 7:30am, as the park can get very full with tour groups and individuals throughout the day. When we arrived around 8:00am, the upper parking lot had some cars and the lower parking lot was empty, which was great! Our guide gave us binoculars and bottled water, and then we took some photos at a lookout point over the volcano while our guide sorted out our tickets prior to getting started with our tour.

Upon starting our tour, our guide almost immediately spotted a howler monkey sitting high up in a tree. This photo was taken with my iPhone 15 zoomed in 5x, but the guides all carry small, powerful scopes that they set up throughout the tour for guests to be able to view the animals up close in detail. I also appreciated that all of the guides would share animal sightings with each other, to ensure that all paying guests had a great experience!

We rounded a corner and came across a family of white-nosed coatis (pronounced koh-ah-tees) foraging among the trees. These coatis are the Costa Rican version of a raccoon, except that they are active during the day as opposed to raccoons being active at night.

I would have missed it, but the next creature was a tiny insect clinging to a thin branch on the trail. I think it was a type of silk moth caterpillar, but I might be remembering this incorrectly. It was amazing to see so much detail through the scope--down to all of the little hairs that our guide said were like the hairs on a stinging nettle. Touching these little hairs will cause discomfort and therefore ward off potential predators.

This next creature is a strawberry poison dart frog, also known as the "blue jean frog," native to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama. The "blue jean frog" name comes from the bright blue coloring on their legs that is akin to a pair of blue jeans!

Everywhere we walked we were surrounded by incredible nature that I don't see at home in Seattle. These Kapok trees are also known as the "broccoli tree" because their branches cluster in a similar shape to a head of broccoli.

Mistico Park has a total of sixteen bridges, six of which are suspension bridges that are so fun to walk across and of course take a bunch of photos. As the morning went on and more groups arrived in the park, we did have to wait a bit to cross some of the bridges due to the weight limits/group sizes, but we didn't mind since that meant we could take photos!

The next encounter was one that made me hold my breath! First our guide set up his scope and had us check out this small pit viper curled around a tree branch, motionless. When I asked what the viper was waiting for, our guide said to just wait and that he would show us. He then moved the scope to the other side of the tree to show us a larger male and smaller female lizard that I believe were anoles. These lizards were sitting on the other side of the tree--the male on a branch and the female on the trunk. We stood there whispering "don't go to the other side!" to the lizards, wondering how their fates would turn out.

Further down the trail we also saw this Coryphanes cristatus, also known as a smooth headed iguana.

We had to take more photos on the suspension bridges, including selfies with our guide!

We rounded a corner in the trail and saw a large group of French tourists all exclaiming and taking photos, and it turned out it was for a good reason. Off the trail was an eyelash viper, quite small and located on a branch on the jungle floor. We could see its bright yellow shape without the scope, but viewing through the scope was incredible as we could see the "eyelash" scales on its head between its eyes. 

 

The final creature we spotted during our tour was a crested guan on her nest (our guide called her a turkey!). She was moving around quite a bit and difficult to photograph, and then suddenly flew off her nest to attack another crested guan who apparently got too close. We then heard them fighting as we continued down the trail!

The views from the bridges are stunning with some views of Arenal volcano when the clouds cooperate!

Our final viewing happened after we left the park, because I told our guide how disappointed I was that we did not get any good views of a sloth in Manuel Antonio National Park. Our guide and driver conversed and told us that there was a three toed sloth who had been seen near a neighboring hotel to ours, five minutes' drive away, and that we could go see it if it was still there. Lucky for us, it was and we had a very clear view of this guy (or girl?) sleeping in a tree. We took a number of photos, of course, and I was so happy to finally see a sloth in Costa Rica! 

We had such a great experience with Blue Mistico Tours and I absolutely would recommend them for a tour of Mistico Park during your visit to Costa Rica. We debated between a guided tour in Manual Antonio National Park versus Mistico Hanging Bridges, but I am so glad we made our choice here that enabled us to freely hike in the national park and also have a wonderful guided tour in the Arenal/La Fortuna area.

Have you visited this area of Costa Rica? If so, I would love to hear about your experience and what you enjoyed about it. Thank you for visiting my blog today and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week!

Linking up with Doused in Pink, Curated by Jennifer, I Do deClaire, Nancy's Fashion Style, The Fashion Canvas, This Blonde's Shopping Bag, Walking in Memphis in High Heels