Costa Rica is absolutely gorgeous! There is so much to do and see here in this beautiful country. From the city life, to the mountains and rain forest, to the beaches, Costa Rica has so much to offer. I would definitely recommend spending a good amount of time here, if you want to see all Costa Rica has to offer. We were here for a week and got a lot accomplished but there’s still a lot we haven’t seen this whole country. We rented a car and drove to different parts of the country. If you’re brave enough to do this, then try it out. If not, you can get a shuttle from the airport to your resort. Some of the road were a little scary to drive on, but we still managed to get through it.

Just a little tip for the rental car… If you book it through a third party site, the rental cars may seem extremely cheap, and it is. However, they get you by having the mandatory insurance. You have to purchase their insurance, which is not cheap. So make sure you do not pay for insurance in the third party site, cause it really won’t count, and you will have to buy it again at the car rental agency office. The only way you can get out of this is if you have a letter from your insurance company or credit card company, stating that you are insured to drive in Costa Rica. It kind of felt like a scam, because we thought we were getting a great deal when we booked the car online for $35 US dollars for a week, but then got slammed with a $500 US dollar charge for insurance. Either way, we did not let that ruin our trip!

Places to go

The Beaches

When in Costa Rica, you have to check out the beaches. The beaches here are beautiful. You could try Jaco, Hermosa or Quepos. You could try other ones as well, which is a little out of the way. Jaco is the main beach with lots to do in town, which was where we stayed. There are some nice waves out here so it’s a good spot to surf or learn how to surf. Either way, you have to get into the water. Other than relaxing on the beach, the town has a lot to offer. There are tons of restaurants, shopping stores and massage parlors to try out. Every day after an excursion, Dan and I would get a massage that would help our tensed muscles!

There are tons of hotels and resorts located right on the beach. Depending on your budget, you could stay at a really nice one, or budget friendly one or an Airbnb. We stayed Jaco Laguana Resort, which was more budget friendly one. The resort was nice, but the customer service can use quite a bit of improvement, which is a little shocking cause most people in Costa Rica are friendly and accommodating.

When you’re staying on the beach, you should definitely go to the Manuel Antonio Nation Park. It’s a huge park with cool little insect creatures, sloths, bats and spider monkeys. There are tons of spider monkeys roaming around the park. The sloths and bats were a little harder to find. The beach here is really nice as well. The water is much calmer at the beaches here so, so if you want a spot to lay out and/or go for a dip without having to worry about the waves washing you away, then plan on spending some time here. We drove here from Jaco, which was a little over an hour of a drive, but the scenery was just amazing.

Where to eat in Jaco…

1. El Pelicano Restaurant

You MUST try this place if you like seafood. There weren’t too many restaurants here that I was impressed with, but this place was delicious! I enjoyed every dish they had there. We went there 2 days in a row because it was that good! You must try their award-winning ceviche! This is probably the best ceviche I have ever had. I also had their clam appetizer, escargot appetizer, grilled lobster salad, lobster tail with risotto, grilled octopus and mahi-mahi and they were all outstanding!

 

2. La Ostra

This place was pretty good. It was recommended to us by one of our tour guides. I tried their whole snapper, which was flavored very well and the skin had a really nice crisp to it. Dan had their veggie pasta and was impressed with his meal.

 

 

 

3. El Avion

We found this place on the way to Manual Antonio National Park. It’s like a 6-minute car drive before the entrance of the park. The food here was decent but the view was spectacular. You’re sitting at the top of the mountain looking down on the tropical trees and seeing the beautiful beach from afar. Definitely go during the day time!

The Volcanoes

There are many volcanoes in this country, however, Arenal came highly recommended to us from many different people, both tourist and the locals. Arenal Volcano is a dormant volcano located a few hours north west of San Jose. Arenal is considered to be a young volcano and estimated to be less than 7,500 years old. It has been dormant since 2010.

We stayed at Los Lagos which was amazing! This resort is just beautiful and their website does not do justice. This resort has so much to offer to their guest. The rooms were big and spacious with upgraded furnishings. We get free breakfast with our stay. They have a really nice pool area with water slides. You have both regular pools and hot spring pools with hydro massages. There’s an observatory point on site of the resort for you to check out the volcano. They offer tours to hike the volcano, horseback riding around the volcano and ziplining.

 

There are other resorts around the here that are nice as well, that is much costlier. The price we paid for this was definitely reasonable and we got so much more out of it.

One of the things you must do here is check out the hot springs. I know a lot of resorts have a hot spring at their resort, but you must try a real one that isn’t man made. There’s a real natural hot spring river that’s right by the entrance of Tabacon Resort and Spa. And this is completely free, other than tipping the parking guy. The entrance may look a little sketch going down. It almost look like a sewage wasteland going down, but if you look past that, you’ll see the stream of water coming down is from the hot spring river. Be careful when you’re walking on this. This isn’t man made so there are lots of different size/shape rocks when you are walking through. It would be good to bring some water shoes if you have them.

Where to eat…

Los Lagos actually had good breakfast and it’s complimentary for guest. Their lunch and dinner were really good as well, so if you don’t’ want to leave the resort, their restaurant can definitely satisfy you food cravings.

However, if you do want to get out and explore, the town does have a lot of good restaurants to choose from.

 

La Paz Waterfall

La Paz is a really nice resting spot to check out the waterfalls. It’s a little north of San Jose, so you can check it out if you’re in San Jose or en route to Arenal/visa versa. We stopped be here on the way back to San Jose from Arenal. The waterfall here is just beautiful. There is a La Paz Waterfall Garden park you can go to that is a little pricey if you’re interested. We decided not to do it since we already saw the waterfall up close at the resting spot, and it was free.

Hacienda Alsacia -Starbucks Coffee Farm-

This was a neat little spot to check out the Starbucks coffee plantation. We actually stumble across this on our way back to San Jose from Arenal. It was just a little bit past the La Paz Waterfalls. They had a nice little restaurant here as well and a nice big sitting area to look out at the plantation and also enjoy their waterfall view while sipping our their coffee. They do have tours here as well but we just wanted to relax here and enjoy the scenery.

San Jose

Of course if you’re going to Costa Rica, you have to check out the city. San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica. This place is really packed with people, so be extra, extra careful and cautious if you are driving in the city. They are museums and lots of restaurants to check out in San Jose. We only stayed here for like a day, so we didn’t get to do too much here, other than checking out the Jade Museum and trying different restaurants.

What to do

 

1. ATVs

2. Zip lining

3. White Water Rafting

4. Surfing

5. Horse-back riding

6. Fishing

7. Snorkeling

These were pretty most of the excursions that were offered almost everywhere we went. However, we didn’t do all of these. We did the top 3 which were amazing!

We did ride some ATVs through the mountains, to the waterfalls, and on the beach. The excursion was about 3 hours longs, but that went by really quick. It was an a blast getting to do this. Our tour guide stopped somewhere on the mountains and we hiked a little distance to get to the waterfall. The waterfall was about 14ft deep and felt amazing to swim in. Afterwards we drove around town to the beach and drove it around the beach and back. Their were many different ATV tours offered in town, but we decided to go with Riders Adventure. We did this in Jaco. It was amazing! They pick us up at the resort and dropped us off afterwards. We had Chris as our tour guide and he was great!.

Although zip lining was offered everywhere, we decided to try it out in Arenal. It was pretty amazing being so high up and getting to look down on the town and zip line through the rain forest. We did this through our resort at Los Lagos. There were 13 different lines that we explored, beginners then fast ones then long ones. It was pretty fun. We got up pretty early to do this excursion, so we ended up being the only ones on the tour. Because of that, our tour guide had a little bonus for us at the end which included a Tarzan jump. It’s optionally of course, but we decided to try it and still made it out alive! Definitely an adrenaline rush!

 

Our most physical excursion, we saved til the end which was the white water rafting and I’m glad I did. It was pretty physical. Based our some recommendations, we decided to do the Pacuare River Rafting which is about 2 hours from San Jose. The river is beautiful here and was voted as one of the best by National Geographic. The excursion was about 3 and a half hours on the river. We chose Rio Tropicales to tour with. They picked us up at our resort and dropped us off which was about a 2 hour drive each way. They provided breakfast and lunch for you and the tour guide we had, Albert, was very good. There were many class 2 & 3 rapids and 5 class 4 rapids. Three of the class 4 were back to back which was a little rough, but we managed to paddle through. However, most of time there were rapids, so there were very few times we able to just take a break and relax except for towards the end. However, it can change any time of the year. Since the weather changes, the the rapids are unpredictable. We went during the rainy season, in May, which means higher waters and rapids. It was definitely worth it to do because the scenery was just beautiful. You are paddling through some rain forest and can see many amazing waterfalls here. This is a pretty strenuous excursion so make sure you have a light day after this.

 

This pretty much wraps up our trip to Costa Rica. This was one of the most beautiful and adventurous trip I’ve been on. Expect to get dirty and have a stinky suitcase. We had to leave to clothes and our shoes behind since they were soaked from our the excursions. One other tip, is that Costa Rica can be a little pricey from a third world country. Expect to spend money if you trip on doing all these excursions!

 

“Adventure is a path. Real adventure -self- determined, self – motivated, often risky- forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever be black-and-white.”  -Mark Jenkins