IN COSTA RICA, golfers encounter green sights (and sounds!)

Is it quiet on the tee? The Holirer monkeys didn’t have it.

Hidden in the canopy above me, the world’s largest mammals hold a complete breach of golf etiquette: giants with bad habits and a misleading name. Never mind Moniiker. Holirer’s enlightened monkeys are not so bad as bark and grow in volume out of proportion to their size. Most stand shorter than your putter, but their guttural calls can be heard for miles. Think mini Chewsbaccas with MegaPhones.

In other settings, the racket behind me was a nuisance. But this was exactly what I was hoping for when I booked a tee time in Costa Rica – the opportunity to play this game in close contact with nature and all the sounds and sounds that accompany it.

Besides, I didn’t know what to expect, because pretty much everything I knew about Costa Rica had absolutely nothing to do with golf. I have no doubt that I am alone. For those who have never set foot in Costa Rica, the country often registers as a Wikipedia page, complete with rainforests and reefs, waterfalls and waves, and an inexpensive lifestyle. Everything is true. A little of it has to do with roads and vegetables.

Those same factors have also made the country a magnet for exits. In places that enter the mountains and the coast, on the side of the road wheels – Humble cafes, served by a serving family it’s raining Plates and fresh fruit juice – astro yoga studios, surf schools, and espresso bars of the kind that could be found in Santa Monica. That medley of local and imported economy was once powered by agriculture and now runs mostly in Eco-Tourism.

Consivism doesn’t just help put food on Costa Rican tables. It is a source of national pride, supported by public policy. About the size of South Carolina, the country covers about 0.03 percent of the planet’s mass and currently contains 5 percent of its biodiversity. Sport hunting is prohibited. About a quarter of Costa Rica is set aside as national parks or wildlife.

Golf is there, too, but in small, meaningful slivers given the numbers. There are 2,000 registered subscribers out of 5 million people, and about a dozen courses, some of which are beyond the power of the backyard. The oldest clubs, such as the Costa Rica Country Club, are clustered around the capital city of San José. But for most tourists, the game takes place on the northwest coast, around the Papagayo Peninsula, where the fairways share space with the forest and the sea.

The Peninsula, overlooking the Gulf of the same name, is a Mosaic with hidden heads and holes, and resorts integrated into the slopes. The course of the sea is four seasons that snakes along the coast, its holes are tied to show the views at all times. You drive from the green to the tee, exiting the clearing with stunning panoramas.

The Scenery comes with a Cast of Local Character. By the time I made the turn, the early morning Corus had died. However, near Luhouse, I saw another type of monkey – a white-faced Capuchin – running a snack raying on someone’s unattended cart. Walking on the back side, I watched two bucks, antlers out, fighting the doe’s attention towards what I could swear was low shame. The broken antither on the other side of the railing is a cart path – blink-and-you’ll-miss-it.

When I’m not on the course, I do the best between cycles: I screamed, but long enough to resume other activities. Adaz, where I stayed, offers Snorkeling, Paddle Boarding and an Eco-Zip line that is literally cut from nature: The trapeze rule for wannabe tarzans. (There is more to come. Next month, Peninsula Papagayo will cut the ribbon at Papagayo Park, Litleesledyle Hub with guests and residents of Anaz, NEKAJUI, Ritz-Carlton Reserve). Another way to view the treetops is through a canopy that walks on webbly planks and ladders on ropes. In one of those high places, I finally got a closer look at one of the finer things I had heard about this lesson: A domineering monkey, retreating from a branch. My guide told me that they spend most of the day starting burning fruits, leaving them to rest in a gentle perma-buzz, but not so much that they stay mum.

“Therefore, they cry loudly and lazily, like my children,” he said.

Deep down, though, I was feeling jealous, not judgmental.

That night, I had a few cocktails myself. But in the morning I was ready to find out again. A short drive around the coast brought me to Sureva ConChal, the Robert Trent Jones Jr. A design that started life as a lion’s paw and keeps a good winter. The course goes through trees, skirts lakes, and borders a mangrove forest that doubles as a wildlife trail. Iguanas were pushed across the roads. Toucans shine overhead.

My playing partner was the director of golf, Carlos Rojas, who got into the game as a kid near the capital and never looked back. Energy anointing – a bet that he includes in his all-carnivore diet (“No sugar, no carbs,” he said. Pura Vidapure life, a phrase that serves as a rallying cry and a kind of national slogan. While eating almost nothing but red meat, Rojas oversees the green course as it looks: reclaimed water, 100 percent, and organic marks, and football signs made from recycled coffee grounds.

Golf in Costa Rica is not new, but there is a good fit within the country’s ethos: small scale, sustainable, in harmony with nature.

Back in Adaz that night, the forest was alive with sounds. From the terrace, I listened to the front runners call the canopy – a racket, yes, but with the same unpleasantness. They were scrambling to eat, as I was just going back to the beach ways to get a quick round before my departure. When I found the fairway with my opening drive, I thought the sound coming from the trees was heart.

I’ll take it over baba-booey, any day.