- [HOST] Golfo Dulce say, is the most untouched, undiscovered corner of Costa Rica, where adventure is always within reach and zip-lining often comes up early in the conversation.

- [Zipliner] Whoo!

- [HOST] How about some world class sport fishing?

- I think it's gonna be a big one.

- [HOST] With wildlife and commitment to sustainability at the forefront.

- Is that what?

- Yeah.

Well, he's resting right now.

- [HOST] And the waves?

They're phenomenal.

So we're gonna be seeing how far Pura Vida can actually take me.

(upbeat music) I'm Jonathan Thompson, an international travel writer on a mission to discover the most dynamic, adrenaline-fueled destinations on the planet.

Come with me as I explore the world's best "Adventure Cities".

Adventure Cities is made possible by the following Alaska by rail.

Passengers can travel the coasts and wilderness of Alaska with baggage, service, meals, and wheelchair access.

Information available at AlaskaRailroad.com Discover the World.

Collette offers small group explorations tours destinations and local experiences designed especially for small groups Explorations by Collette Guided travel since 1918 ♪ upbeat music In4adventure.com Inspiring, educating and encouraging outdoor adventure Host- And by these additional sponsors ♪ upbeat music Welcome to "Adventure Cities", where this week we're exploring Golfo Dulce in Southern Costa Rica.

Listo, listo!

Arguably Costa Rica's best kept secret, Golfo Dulce, which means sweet gulf, is located on the country's southern Pacific coast.

Here, facing each other across the bay are the twin "Adventure Cities" of Puerto Jimenez and Golfito.

This region was largely off the tourist map until recently, but that's changing, with daily flights from the capital coming into both cities and an international airport on the way.

(upbeat music) The history of Golfito is inextricably linked to Puerto Jimenez on the other side of the Gulf.

The twin cities were founded by the Chiquita Banana Company, which started building here in the 1940s.

Getting around Golfito is easy.

The town is just one long road, so all the taxis are always going to the same place.

You just hail one and hop in, even if there's already another passenger inside.

With its new air links and tourism developments, Golfito is about to loom much larger on the international radar, but it remains one of the most authentic destinations you'll find.

This is real Costa Rica with its warm welcome and laid back lifestyle served, of course, with lashings of Pura Vida, which got me thinking.

When we hear about Costa Rica, there is one phrase that gets thrown about like confetti, "Pura Vida," but what is Pura Vida?

Why is Pura Vida?

How is Pura Vida?

And above all, where is the purest Pura Vida?

So what do you love about living in Golfito?

- [Valeria] Well, as you see, we are completely surrounded by forest.

This is a wild place.

So we have a lot of things to do here.

- This place is so beautiful.

- It's magic.

- Where would you say is the purest Pura Vida?

- Well, you have to explore the whole Golfo Dulce.

So we have Puerto Jimenez in the other side of the bay, they're located Corcovado National Park and also next to the Corcovado is the Blancas National Park.

So for sure you'll have to explore it.

- Wow, okay.

Sounds like I've got a lot of work to do.

- Mm-hmm.

There's a lot of things to do here.

- Better get started.

- Yeah.

- [HOST] The next stop on my tour of these twin "Adventure Cities" and their sweet gulf is Pavones, one of the most famous surfing spots in Central America.

Surfing is a massive part of culture in Costa Rica.

And so I knew during my visit that I had to give it a go myself, and I had a great instructor in Esteban.

So you're gonna turn me from a city slicker into a Costa Rican surfer?

- Yes Sir.

- And surf is a big deal here.

- Pavones is known like the second longest wave in the world.

Right now we have a bunch of surfers right here learning.

We are divided in different sectors.

This is the sectors for beginners, and we gonna start with the surf lessons.

- Alright, let's do this.

- Imagine it's gonna work as a board and we are gonna be paddling, making the three steps.

One, two, and three.

- Paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle.

- Aha.

- 1, 2, 3.

Boom.

- Aha.

Perfect.

You got it.

Have fun.

- [HOST] I'm a complete beginner, so we're gonna be seeing how far Pura Vida can actually take me.

- When you're giving a lesson on the beach, explaining how they have to stand up and how use the three steps.

But once when they go from the beach to the action, they forgot the whole lesson.

Sometimes you need to have the courage on life to making the things happen.

He comes to me and I explain again.

He just get it and he stand up and surf in the second wave.

It's unreal.

He, he's a very good surfer.

(Jonathan laughs) - Yes!

As a beginner myself, I could get up on the board really easily and by the end of my lesson I was turning and cutting into the wave, which was extraordinary because I didn't even think I was gonna be able to stand up.

Pura Vida!

In Costa Rica!

(splash) Well, you can't win 'em all.

Even in Paradise.

(gentle Latin music) - This morning I'm leaving Playa Cativo Lodge, which is one of the most spectacular properties in the whole of Costa Rica.

And I'm gonna be heading out into Golfo Dulce, which is full of marine life, and I'm gonna try my hand at a spot of sport fishing.

Apparently, there are some really big fish out there to be caught, so let's hope I can catch one.

People come from all over the world to catch monster Marlin, tuna and sailfish off this part of the Costa Rican coast.

And I'm lucky enough to be heading out on the hunt with one of the region's most legendary captains, Bobby McGuinness.

- The special thing about Golfo Dulce is, it's a big gulf surround by mountains.

There hardly wind inside.

You can go fishing every day if you want it, and it's a lot of bait and it's a lot of fish out there waiting for you guys.

This place is one of the best places to fish around the world.

- What are we gonna try and catch today?

- What do you think about having a great dinner?

Let's try to catch a tuna.

- A tuna?

Okay.

They're big though, right?

- Yeah, they're like 40, 30, 40, 50 pounds, sometimes 250 pounds.

- So that's quite a struggle to get into the boat.

- Oh yeah.

Sometimes it takes like couple of hours.

How you doing?

(laughs) - Yeah, maybe I should have gone to the gym.

- Yeah, I hope you did your exercise before you come.

Oh, four foot down there.

Look at that!

Nice!

The spinners or the spotters with birds.

When you find that it's a 99% chances you get your tuna.

Hey guys, tuna, tuna!

Let's go for it.

- So the first time the rod bends and there's something big on the line, there's a real thrill, there's a rush about the boat and grab the rod.

They put this belt around my waist, it's action stations, and I start reeling in the biggest fish I've ever caught.

Yeah!

- Low drag and your thumb on the spool!

- Honestly, for most of the time I had no idea what Bobby was saying.

- Keep running, man.

Keep it tight.

Keep it tight!

- This was a fighter!

There's something epic about pulling in a big fish.

It's something I've never experienced before.

This is a long fight.

I think it's gonna be a big one.

The fish is on the hook, but you've still gotta bring it into the boat.

And there's this real struggle with this strong fish that doesn't wanna get caught and it goes on and on and- - Okay, let's get him mate.

Let's get him!

I love it.

I love it.

- [HOST] And finally, the fish comes towards the boat and they rush in and there it is.

This 40-pound yellowfin tuna.

That is one heck of a workout.

Whoo!

Well, I came out to Golfo Dulce to get a big fish and I got one and it looks like we're gonna be having a nice dinner tonight.

(laughs) Back on land, I make my way to Dolphin Quest, a family run Eco Lodge focused on sustainability and living in harmony with nature where I'd heard they could also help me tackle my tuna.

Here, the owner, Jahza, guides me through the process of turning my catch into delicious carpaccio.

- See, we're really, really close to the ocean.

It's part of the experience here at Dolphin Quest is seeing where your food's coming from and how we're gathering it and preparing it.

Yeah, we think it's really important to not only grow your own ingredients, but also just be connected with your food source.

So you try to wanna have that personal connection with a person that is actually growing or catching the food.

So is this the most common way to eat Yellowfin?

- [Jahza] A lot of people end up cooking it up or you can even make smoked tuna, which is really delicious.

But this is the most, you just get some lemon, get some soy sauce, some wasabi, and just cut it up and it's just kind of the simplest preparation.

- [HOST] Meanwhile, the rest of my catch was being cooked in the kitchen into delicious steaks.

- Jonathan, this is Romy, Romy, Jonathan.

- Hey.

- Hello.

- Very nice to meet you Romy.

- Nice to meet you too.

- Thank you.

This looks insane.

What have we got here?

- Yeah, so Romy prepared the literal farm to table experience.

So everything on your table here is from the farm.

- At Dolphin Quest, they make a lot of these homemade juices that are prepared from plants and fruits around the property and they all have a number of health benefits.

Unfortunately, one of the benefits isn't taste.

I'm nervous to taste this one.

- That's alright.

- Cheers.

Ugh!

- It gets better.

- A similar root as ginger, but a turmeric's really high in vitamin C and anti-inflammatory components.

Cheers.

- Cheers.

- Oh, that was good.

Well thank you very much for sharing all of this bounty with me.

- [Jahza] So yeah, like I said, a lot of these ingredients will be in the food we're about to eat, so it kind of gives you a a taste and perspective of everything that's going into the food.

- [HOST] Magnificent.

Just north of Golfito, you'll find Piedras Blancas National Park.

home to one of the biggest mangrove swamps in Costa Rica.

And I've come here this afternoon for a bit of kayaking.

I know the mangrove swamp is a very nurturing environment for lots of different species.

- Yes, the mangrove forest is really important habitat because we can find wild sea life and our wild animals like slots, all monkeys and Wifi is Capuchin.

- [HOST] Paddling through the mangrove was a surreal experience because you can't see the water beneath you.

So there's always that thing in the back of your mind thinking, "What is around here?"

- [Carlos] We can find here hammer sharks.

They come to the Golfo Dulce to have the babies here.

So you're telling me this is a shark nursery?

- Yeah, actually, yeah.

Yes.

- [HOST] Feels incredible to be out here in this lush ecosystem where there's so many animals just out of sight.

It's really a magnificent spot.

Corcovado National Park is world renowned and it was one of the top things that I wanted to see when I came down to this part of Costa Rica.

The experience begins in Puerto Jimenez where I meet my guide for the day, Carolina.

And we bought a small boat for the hour and a half ride out to Corcovado National Park.

Even the boat ride to Corcovado is an adventure.

We have schools of dolphins swimming around us and we even spot a Hawksbill turtle coming up for air.

Then we see countless tropical birds nesting as we near the shore.

(upbeat music) We left the boat in the surf and so it almost felt like a dramatic beach landing from a movie.

Wow.

Here we are.

- Look.

- Look at this place.

- For me, the most important thing about the ecosystem that we have here, it is the last remnants of a raining forest in the Pacific coast of Central America.

So the type of diversity in terms of species of plants, (indistinct), bacterias, everything is so dense here that that's the main importance of Corcovado.

This one is gonna be my machete today.

- Ah.

- You'll see.

- [HOST] Your visual machete.

Walking through the jungle we stumble across an abandoned plane, thankfully not from a crash, but a relic from when there was a small airport here back in the sixties before the park opened.

- Today we saw the spider monkeys and for me it's one of the coolest species to see them because they're super athletic.

They're actually the most difficult monkeys to see all over Costa Rica because the fact that their ecosystem are really fragile.

They can adapt to other environments.

They really need a dense forest.

- Why are they called spider monkeys?

Because I mean, they look like monkeys but they don't look like spiders, do they?

- Kind of, if you see like the structures of their bodies that they have really long arms and a really long tail, they have only eight fingers.

They have no thumbs.

- Ah.

- So they compare their fingers with the spiders.

- So now we're getting into the wetland region.

- [Carolina] Yep.

Nearby the largest river that is Rio Sirena.

- [HOST] There's one indigenous animal I'm really keen to see, that I've never laid eyes on before, even in a zoo.

- Now Jonathan, I think that nearby there's gonna be a tapir.

You actually can really feel a little bit the smell of horse manure when you used to it.

- So you think you can smell one that lives around here?

- Yeah.

- Really?

- Yeah.

And if you see in this way, there's one.

- Oh!

Is that one, what is that?

- Yeah, but he's resting right now.

Basically the tapirs are particularly rare animals because they evolve late in the new tropics.

So they're in between a horse, which is the group that they're related with.

Also like a small hippo and a kind of elephant thing because they have a really long nose.

- He's got a really long tongue as well.

- Yeah?

- Yeah.

- Because their main diet is leaves.

So they're herbivores.

And that's also why they have this long nose.

- Oh yeah, yeah!

- When you say that long nose, it's because they're trying to hold the leaves.

- [HOST] On our way back to the boats, we get a timely reminder of just how wild this park is, in the form of three large American crocodiles just basking on the beach.

Thankfully it looks like they already ate lunch.

Across the bay from Golfito, Puerto Jimenez might be a slightly smaller town, but it's just as big on hospitality, especially at the Botanika Ossa Peninsula Resort, a fantastic spot to call home base and experience true Pura Vida.

(upbeat Latin music) Chocolate farms are actually a big growing trend here and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to see how chocolate's made.

- This right here is like the first step for us to have this.

After this we will have this.

In here, everybody can learn about the different plantations, the prima culture, about the whole process of the cocoa and there you go.

- [HOST] This is chocolate in its purest form.

It was fascinating to see how it goes from the cocoa fruit all the way through the process, from extracting the seeds, drying the seeds, grinding the seeds to mixing them with milk and sugar to make this rich, soft, sweet chocolate.

- ...with all the sugars and stuff.

- Oh, that tastes amazing.

Well now I know how to make chocolate.

- There you go.

- A short drive from Puerto Jimenez We found El Remanso, another amazing resort down here and that was where we went for some zip-lining.

- Great.

Ready to go?

- Yeah.

So tell me a little bit about the course we're gonna be doing.

- Sure.

- So we have a lot of zip-line tours in Costa Rica.

So our zip-line is all about a bit of adrenaline.

- Yeah.

- And observing nature in our canopy.

So that's the idea.

- [HOST] Now when you think of Costa Rica, zip-lining often comes up very early in the conversation.

And so I knew it was something that I had to do down here and it didn't disappoint.

- [Rinaldo] The longest line is about 250 meters.

It goes over a suspension bridge and it goes kind of parallel all the way along the canyon.

And you definitely have very big opportunities to see spider monkeys or even other things along the way.

- As part of the zip-lining experience, we also got the bonus of repelling to get from one platform to the other.

- See ya.

- Whoo!

Listo!

Since we are in a different elevation, the trees are so big, they allow us to do a zip-line to the top, repel halfway down the tree and then zip out like that.

- [HOST] To be up in the tree tops and then able to interact with the canopy by swooping through it on a zip-line was a real treat.

- There we go.

- Ah, that was amazing!

I'm about to get down to what apparently is an absolutely beautiful beach.

But to get there, there's a large obstacle in the way, which is a waterfall.

- Like that.

Lean back enough.

There we go.

- Whoo!

The feeling of being in a canyon and knowing that the only way of getting out of there is repelling is really that like, wow, there's, if I wouldn't be doing this, there's no other way to get here.

- This feels proper "Indiana Jones."

You're gonna have this kind of adventure with wild animals all around you hanging off the side of a waterfall with a machete.

I mean, this is every little boy's dream and I am loving living it.

That was awesome!

Just coming down that sheer face in the middle of a jungle feels like being in a lost world or something.

From there we emerged onto this beautiful unspoiled beach with these waves crashing all around us.

Rinaldo cut up a coconut so we could recharge a little bit down there in this pristine setting.

- [Rinaldo] It has the coconut water in it.

- Oh, it tastes great.

So light and fluffy.

- Mm-hmm.

- You can feel kind of small, there's this beautiful jungle as far as your eyes can reach.

And then there's the beach and there's no one there.

I feel so privileged.

Just the fact that I'm there.

- You know it's funny, I've been in Costa Rica for a few days now and I've asked a number of people, what is "Pura Vida"?

And every single person without fail has given me a different answer.

- Pura Vida, life, music, dance.

That's my Pura Vida for all of my babies.

I love you.

- It's share coffee with friends and family.

- It's peaceful, it's c'est la vie, it's pure life.

- Empathy with other realities.

- Living the dream, driving the roads without traffic, surfing every day.

- Pura Vida is the forest, is nature, is the energy.

- Self-sustained on the land and really enjoy nature and live with nature.

- On my final day in Golfo Dulce, Jahza from Dolphin Quest, invites me back for the community's weekly Sunday football match, a treasured celebration of friendship and Pura Vida.

You know what's funny is, I've spent all week asking people, what is Pura Vida?

And I've just realized Pura Vida is Golfo Dulce!

Ha ha!

(soft music plays) Adventure Cities is made possible by the following Alaska by rail.

Passengers can travel the coasts and wilderness of Alaska with baggage, service, meals, and wheelchair access.

Information available at AlaskaRailroad.com Discover the World.

Collette offers small group explorations tours destinations and local experiences designed especially for small groups Explorations by Collette Guided travel since 1918 ♪ upbeat music In4adventure.com Inspiring, educating and encouraging outdoor adventure Host- And by these additional sponsors ♪ upbeat music