The Costa Rica Edit
5 days jungle-side in beach paradise, and a few days at the foot of a massive volcano.
We are city people. My husband grew up in Manhattan, the kids have always lived in NYC and I spent all of my teenage years wishing I lived in New York before making the move when I was 18. When we travel, we often drop ourselves into a big city and spend our trip walking the streets, eating good food, visiting museums and historical sites and really getting to know each place. As a family, that’s generally how we travel best.
We also love a put up your feet, hang by the pool/beach vacation every once in a while so when I started reading about a particular lux hotel I could book on points in Costa Rica’s Peninsula Papagayo, I was SUPER interested. February in New York is freezing, the kids would have a week off school, and I knew it would be the perfect time to get out of the city and be somewhere warm that none of us had ever visited.
About Costa Rica
Costa Rica is a small country with many climates, microclimates and regions. I planned this trip when we returned from Italy last summer and everyone was still mad at me for how much we moved around (7+ cities in 3 weeks was too much for my traveling fam!).
When I suggested Costa Rica, the idea of going to the city, the Caribbean coast, Pacific coast, cloud forest, jungle, rainforest, volcanos…it was too much. I decided to strategically pick two relatively easy to get to locations in different climates and leave it at that. There was no way we could explore the entire country in a week so we settled into our choices and planned our trip around them knowing we could always go back another time.
I had more trouble than usual planning this trip for a few reasons:
We really like to experience the true culture of the places we go as much as possible and I felt a lot of pressure (from myself!) to make that happen even though we chose to spend the bulk of the time at a resort.
Long winding car rides make us all pretty sick and there is a lot of that in Costa Rica so I knew traveling between places would be challenging.
Costa Rica is very popular amongst people who are super outdoorsy and love extreme vacation sports and let’s just say, while my husband is probably both of those things, the rest of us are not quite that:
Henry on zip lining: “maybe next trip”.
Max on doing the Hanging Bridges: “Umm no. Not a chance”.
Me on white water rafting: “hard no, for everyone”.
…I thought we were fun but maybe not so much 😂
So, here is the guide that I wish I could have had before we went on this trip. If I had this? It would have been a breeze.
The good, the bad and the gorgeous. When it’s worth relaxing and when it’s worth taking the drive. Where to stay, what to eat, where to book your adventures (spoiler alert: we still went adventuring!) and how to plan ahead. Ready? Read on!