Jason and I took an all-inclusive vacation to Costa Rica. It was just the two of us, which was so peaceful and wonderful, but a little scary. I cannot remember the last time we were alone for so long, probably not since our honeymoon! Wow. We visited the province of Guanacaste which is the dryer, rural, farming region of the country. It is the beach region, near the volcanoes, but a good distance from the rainforest. It was completely wonderful. I cannot tell you how amazing a country this is, and we only visited a small portion of it. The people are very pleasant for the most part, and very proud of their heritage and their country. Costa Rica truly has so much to offer, I hope it does not become too overrun with tourists, although that is an integral part of their economy.
We stayed at the RIU resort, which is one of a chain of resorts. The hotel and the country itself was very green, they are not wasteful as we've become.
I booked our vacation through bookit.com, which I afterwards read very mixed reviews about. Luckily our travel was flawless. We flew out of Little Rock at about 7:30 on the 24th of March and had to make a connecting flight in Houston. We only had 30 minutes to make this one, so we did have to literally, book it! But we did make it, as did our luggage to old open air airport in Liberia, Costa Rica. It think it was about 11am when we landed there. We walked down the stairs of our plane in a line to the 'airport'. It was the most interesting airport I've ever been in, small, open air, concrete, looked like my dad's shop where he stores his hay. There was a huge fan whirling overhead to keep travelers cool, although it was not too hot there in the shade. Airport staff was mostly women and they wore cute hunter green mini skirts and orange collared shirts. They were in the process of building a new airport so the next time we visit this little airport will not be used anymore. All of the drivers were outside holding up signs with our last names. They all spoke English of course but with everyone yelling in their central american accents you could not understand a word. We looked around the small crowd for about 5 minutes until we found our driver. We took the long trip to our hotel. We dropped off another couple at a resort a little further out and then went on to the RIU. The RIU is down a dirt road, it's this amazing resort at the end of a long dirt road. Our driver stopped along the way to show us a cashew fruit. It is silly but before this trip I had never thought 'where do we get those yummy cashew nuts?' The fruit including the stem (the nut) will make you sick like poison ivy he says if you eat if before it's ripe and the nut is dried. We saw many fruit trees. The further we drove the more dry it became.
Costa Rica has mountains, cold fresh water springs, volcanoes, bubbling hot mud and springs, it boasts something like 75% of world's various types of wildlife, beach, rainforest, waterfalls. It truly has it all. As we arrived we noticed men working on the very high ceiling of the lobby. We checked in at the desk, and went to check out our resort. We took our things up to our room first. The entire hotel is open air aside from the room, it's part of what makes it green. Costa Ricans believe strongly in protecting our enviroment. The resort had in the day 2 buffets, a sports bar, and 2 restaurants and at night they became 4 separate dining restaurants. We had to make reservations for each night. The food was pretty good, we ate a lot of traditional costa rican foods including lots of fresh fruits, guava, mango, papaya, canteloupe, beans and rice which they serve at every meal, plus their take on all of the american foods we are familiar with.
Lets see, then we checked out the beach. We walked down the beach to look for the howler monkeys (off the beach not far into the wooded area lived crocodiles and howler monkeys. We didn't walk too far in because I am terrified of crocs. So we did not see the howler monkeys although we talked to a lot of people at the resort who did. All the beaches were public but not crowded or overrun with people selling things. There was a group offering beach massages, excursions, someone selling jewelry etc but they asked once, left their brochure, and moved on. We layed out on the beach for a good while and then went up to checkout the pool and the swim-up bar. It was awesome. We swam and visited with other tourists. I read my book. I was reading Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. Very good read and it took me the whole trip to finish it. That is by far one of my favorite things to do, to lay on the beach or by the poor in the shade and read a good book.
We had dinner at the Italian restaurant I think the first night, it was yummy. The next night we had dinner at the steakhouse, then at the Asian restaurant, and at Restaurant Liberia.
We found out that part of the ceiling had just fallen one day, no one was hurt, but a few travelers had given some bad reviews on trip advisor. It didn't really bother us, but it did make us watch out for falling plaster!
There was a workout room and a spa, although we only used it once. We took a 1 day adrenaline excursion through hotel beds tours. It was amazing. We had a very nice van that picked us up in the morning. We did the ziplining first, my heart was racing, mostly due to the height, but it was awesome! We were touring with a gay couple, Dustin was from Canada and Ben from Britian. They were also 28, very nice, funny, and well traveled. They said that the zip line was better than any they'd ever been on, including Hawaii. We survived although I thought many times I wouldn't. We did a little rock climbing, the tarzan swing, and the free fall which I screamed on! Afterwards we rode horses to the waterfall where all the guys jumped off into this cold mountain spring. I did not! It was beautiful. Then we had lunch at a Costa Rican 5 star restaurant, which too was open air buffet although much smaller than the RIU, the food was wonderful, and we were very hungry. I had a coke which arrived in a glass bottle from a coca cola bottling plant in Costa Rica. The guys drank beer. The prices were on target with the prices of food and drinks in Arkansas, a little cheaper I suppose. Then we drove to the hot springs where we were painted with volcanic mud. We let it dry and then used these showers before getting into the hot pools from the volcanoes. On the way back to the resort we were all exhausted. We took a tour through the local town, I cannot recall the name but our driver showed us the Guanacaste tree, which grows a fruit that looks like an ear and is useful as a laundry freshener. He showed us this really cool mural of the history of the town. Pictures and newspaper clippings pasted on the wall of this one building. Very interesting. He told us Costa Rica has no army, no immigration policy, healthcare is free.
Jason sang karaoke one night, he did pretty well! We drank a lot of margarita, talked to the kids each night via skype. I worried about Holden, as we tried to switch him to the bottle while I was gone. He did not take to it, and went back to nursing when we arrived home. We watched a sea turtle trying to lay her eggs on the beach about 11pm, although we couldn't see well because the turtle didn't like lights, cameras or noise. I don't really blame her! We shopped on the little RIU strip which had several cute shops, a dr's office, and a photo lab. I got cute new flip flops, we got Hudson some marbles. We gathered sand and a few shells from the beach to bring home. It was a dark sand from volcanoes. It was considered a medium colored sand. Costa Rica boasts white to black sand, and our beach was in the middle. We arrived in Little Rock about 3pm and went immediately to get the kids. They missed us too, and it was so good to be home. It felt like they'd grown so much in 5 days. We missed them like crazy but we would go back in a heartbeat!
Looks like such a FUN trip. It makes me want to go to Costa Rica:)
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