This trip post will be a little different than my other longer trips blogs and report. This was our first week long trip- our other travels are just long-weekends or our big 2 week trip each year. I wanted to write down memories and snippets as we went along. I brought an almost dead camera battery with me on our trip & was sick to my stomach when I realized I wouldn’t be able to take hundreds pictures with my big camera. The only upside of the daily rain was that I didn’t have much to take pictures of anyway & still had my little waterproof P&S camera, which I realized had some water on the inside and occasionally fogs the lens over. So don’t be all expecting my usual pretty photos…
We spent 1 night in San Jose at the Grano de Oro to do a city tour and see the capital, then 4 nights in the rain forest by the Arenal Volcano at the Springs Resort. We spent our last 4 nights on the coast in Tamarindo in a small boutique hotel on a hill call Los Altos de Eros.
-1 nap in a hammock on our porch surrounded by thunder and hummingbirds
-visited numerous beautiful parks in downtown San Jose and a few places outside town
-10 hours of rain on Monday afternoon which was perfect for sitting in the hot springs
-2 trips in an inflatable kayak down Arenal River laughing so hard I almost fell out of the boat
-2 cameras & 1.5 charged batteries and lots of missed photographic opportunities
-several frantic phone calls and emails home to get chargers and batteries overnighted to us
-Dozens of bottles of wine, numerous Cube Libres and Caipirinhas
-10 swimsuits for me and 1 for hubby with only a few hours of real sunshine the whole trip
-hundreds of hummingbirds feeding on our porch every day
-1 amazingly beautiful volcano that only recently stopped erupting
-3 hours of hiking in the rainforest over 6 suspension bridges
-7 miles of running split beteween incline work on the treadmill and hill repeats in the jungle
-a morning walk through the jungle over the famous hanging bridges
-2 games of pool I won by default, 1 game of darts we got bored with, 1 game of chess that ended in a draw
-tons of really neat couples we met from all over the US we met at both hotels
-Mani/pedi, facials, massages with hubby
-Many firsts for us- rappelling, zip lining, surfing, yoga together outside with gorgeous views
-520 pages read of a great novel called The Help
-5 passenger plane from Arenal to San Jose and a picture-window plane to Tamarindo
-Too many bug bites to even count every single day
ITINERARY
DAY 1- San Jose City tour & drive to Arenal
DAY 2- Exercise, Kayaking and Spa
DAY 3- Hanging Bridges & Naps and Perdido Springs in the Rain
DAY 4- Exercise, ATV tour & Rapelling
DAY 5- Flight to Tamarindo
DAY 6- Zip Line & Surf Lesson
DAY 7- Yoga, Mani & Pedi, Tamarindo downtown
DAY 8 Saturday- Pool time, Coconut Delight Spa Scrub, Surf Lessons, Couples Massage
DAY 9 Sunday- Yoga, Depart Costa Rica
GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Sweated out 14 hot and brutal miles this morning so I can enjoy my weekend!
It sounds like such an amazing trip! What do you use to edit your photos? I just got a DSLR and want to be able to play with the editing of them. Yours are always so beautiful (although I know it all starts with the photographer!
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Costa Rica has been on my list for a few years now. I love your itinerary and how it had the perfect mix of sight-seeing, relaxation time, exercise, and fun “excursion-like” activities! Looks like a great trip!
That’s the neat thing about CR- so many little towns/areas where you can mix & match. It’s definitely a very active country & most people go to explore/play.