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What to bring: Hiking shoes, or boots or gym shoes, rain gear, binoculars, camera.
Age limit: 8 years
Rates:
CATIE bike tour: USD 55 p person 2 hour tour
Turrialba is a very good hiking and mountain biking terrain, with lots of rural unpaved roads and different grades of difficulty in hilly or flat lands.
Two interesting options are:
1.Biking through the CATIE Collections
The topography of the trails can be adapted to any level of bike rider. Your guide will explain the diversity of forest and fruit plantations, which can include coffee, cocoa, sugarcane, bananas and macadamia. Thanks to the diversity in flowers and fruits, the plantation is also an ideal site for the observation of birds, mammals and some reptiles.
2.Hiking in the Rural area of Santa Cruz (Turrialba Volcano).
This option gives you a chance to establish your own route in the vast area surrounding the hotel. Again, the topography of the trails can be adapted to any level. You can visit the Guayabo National Monument, The Aquiares coffee plantation or the rural areas on the volcano.
The Guayabo National Monument is Costa Rica’s most important archeological site. Largely unexplored, the area contains ancient trails, bridges, water tanks and homesites, as well as petroglyphs estimated to be about 3.000 years old. Most remarkable is the engineering work that was achieved in the complex system of aqueducts around and through the city.
The rain waters still flows through it, and paved roads are still visible receding into the dense surrounding rainforest. A visit is a MUST if staying at Guayabo Lodge! The trails in the park give you the opportunity to walk through a charming piece of rainforest, that envelope the mystical Guayabo ruins. The site includes stone aqueducts, cobbled roads, mounds, walls and petroglyphs. No comparison with the great Mayas, Aztecs or Incas, yet this is a site with a mystical, positive life-giving force.
The beautiful rainforest in which it is set is worth the visit on its own, with plants, flowers, birds, butterflies etc. which will make you thoroughly enjoy the visit!
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