Easter in Costa Rica

On our first full day in Costa Rica we scheduled 3 activities. The first was called Safari Float. Our tour guide; Sunset Tours, arrived at the hotel on time and we were off on a 45 minute ride to the San Carlos River. We all put on life jackets and climbed into a 5-man raft for what would be a relaxing 2-hour float. Our English-speaking guide talked about the various trees, birds, monkeys and iguanas we saw along the way. This trip was perfectly safe for everyone in the family and even included a stop along the river to visit a 98 yr old farmer whose daughter served us coffee and Cassava bread. They had cows and chickens.
Back at the hotel for lunch, we prepared for a very exhilarating afternoon. Sky Trek and Sky Tram is the most daring of the country’s canopy tours. At base camp, we were fitted with harnesses and ran through an instruction and safety briefing. We were then loaded into steel gondolas suspended on a cable and pulley system and brought to the top of the track. One by one we attached our clips to the pulley system and off we went…squealing as we pushed off the platforms sailing through the trees hundreds of feet above the ground. It was cool!
That evening we went to the best hot springs spa in the country, Tabacon. For $70 you can enjoy their lavish buffet dinner, and then report to the changing area for a towel and locker. The facility is well maintained and it’s incredible to see such detail in the jungle. Tabacon Hot Springs is a labyrinth of stone and tile paths winding through native trees and manicured gardens, perfectly lit to capture the mystery and intrigue of the tropical rainforest. Steam rises from the hot water that flows off the mountain and collects in pools formed out of ancient volcanic rock. What an experience!
That night we fell into bed, exhausted from a full day of playing in the Costa Rican mountains.

The next day we said good-bye to our hosts at the Arenal Paraiso. Our guides Danny and Mario (from Destination Costa Rica) picked us up at the lobby and we began the long journey to Manuel Antonio.
From Arenal Volcano (and the mountain town of La Fortuna), it takes 4 hours to drive straight West to hotels located on the Pacific coast. This is the province of Guanacaste. Travel down the coast a short ways and you come to the town of Tamarindo. Once just a college surfer type destination, Tamarindo today is growing into a shopping, restaurant, and resort destination. Here you’ll find a selection of corporate all-inclusives mixed in with the smaller, locally-owned Mom and Pop hotels. The growth is ongoing so traffic delays are to be expected at this time. Your patience will be rewarded, however, the beach is beautiful here. Softer, lighter sand and good waves make Tamarindo a great second stop on your Costa Rica vacation. If you follow the coastline southward from here, you’ll enter the Nicoya Peninsula. You can cross the Peninsula and take the car ferry over to Punta Arenas on the mainland. Punta Arenas is the cruise ship dock. Cruise ships through the Panama Canal call on Costa Rica at Punta Arenas.
45 minutes south of Punta Arenas is Jaco Beach. What I’ve learned is that there’s a new East/West highway that connects the capitol city San Jose (in the center of the country) with beach towns from Punta Arenas on southward. This allows tourists (who want to bypass the volcanoes in favor of the beach) a one and a half hour transfer from the Capitol and International Airport. Sweet!
We stopped in Jaco at a Grocery store to buy liquor. The name of the store was Maxi Bodega and we discovered that it is owned by Walmart. The only way I could tell is that next to the register while checking out, I noticed a display of re-usable grocery sacks with the Walmart logo on them. It reminded me of that Diana Ross song, “Ain’t no mountain high enough…” (Oh, Pleeeze)
Danny and Mario were super nice guys, but still; after 6 hours in a van, we were ready to be off the road. That’s when we arrived at the town of Quepos. Quepos is a town of about 20,000 and home to a small tuna fleet. Today the largest employer is (you guessed it), tourism. We crossed through Quepos pretty quickly and on the other end of town, our driver Mario found a road leading up the hill to the hotels of Manuel Antonio. We took this winding mountain road for about 3 miles until we came to our second hotel on this trip, Villa Roca. www.villaroca.com