We booked through www.CostaRicantrails.com and chose an "adventure" package. It looks like the package has changed slightly since we went in April 2008, but most of it looks to be the same.
We flew into San Jose and stayed there one night before we were picked up for our whitewater rafting adventure. The hotel in San Jose (Fleur de Lys Hotel) was pretty nice, but I wouldn't recommend spending more than one night in San Jose. In my opinion there isn't a whole lot to see and other parts of the country are a lot more desirable.
The next day we were picked up and taken whitewater rafting on the Pacuare River. The great part about this package is you get transferred from place to place, so you don't have to worry about figuring out transportation. I guess depending on how many people book the same package as you determines how many people are with you on each of the transfers. Fortunately for us, not many people were doing the same tour on the same dates, so we basically had a private chauffeur for each part of the trip. Our guide Alfredo was fantastic. He was early each day and was extremely friendly.
On the way to our whitewater rafting adventure we had breakfast at a restaurant with beautiful views.
We were then dropped off for our whitewater rafting trip. Apparently the Pacuare River has been declared a "Wild and Scenic River" and offers some of the finest white water in Latin America. It winds inside one of Costa's "most impressive primordial rain forests". The trip was a lot of fun with beautiful views, wildlife, and pretty intense rapids. During the trip we stopped for lunch along the river. One part of the lunch was guava paste on crackers with cream cheese on top -- something we still buy and eat today. It's delicious!
When we did this package, we stayed at a random hotel on the way to Arenal after the whitewater rafting trip; however, it looks like now they take you straight to the area around Arenal, which is even better.
The Arenal Volcano is one of the most active in the world and it was beautiful to see. Our hotel and hotel room had great views of the volcano. We really enjoyed the Arenal area. We went on a hike around the volcano and then went to the volcanic thermal mineral pools at Tabacon Hot Springs. As the name suggests, these are springs heated by the volcano. They run through a hotel property and are different temperatures at different areas. After our dip in the hot springs we had a great dinner at the hotel. It was a fantastic evening.
After our time at Arenal, we were transported to Arenal Lake where we took a boat to the other side of the lake where a 4x4 vehicle took us on a long gravel road to Monteverde, the cloud forest area. I think this may have been our favorite spot. It was an incredibly beautiful area. Our hotel had great views and was just a short walk from a very cool co-op where local ladies sold homemade arts and crafts, great local restaurants including Stellas Bakery, one of Monteverde's longest running establishments, and the Monteverde Cheese Factory. One night for dinner we had wine and fruit from a local market and cheese from the factory on our balcony; it was great!
One of my favorite things we did was ziplining. They have zip lines that attach one platform to another and allow you to slide (quickly) with the use of special equipment. Since we were in the cloud forest, we were already really high up, and then took a tram even higher to get to the platforms. Once we arrived at the platforms, we climbed more stairs to get to the actual zipline. So as you can tell, we were really high up; probably a football field above the treetops! It was extra cloudy the day we went, so we couldn't see more than ten feet in front of us. It was definitely scary for the first couple because we were up really high and you go pretty fast on the actual zipline, but it was so much fun! Brian and I even got to go together on a couple of them.
After our time in Monteverde, we were transported to the Jaco Beach area. It looks like this part of the package has changed slightly since we went. Unfortunately, the hotel we stayed at (Hotel Villa Lapas) wasn't on the ocean. It was actually about a 20 minute drive from the beach. Our first afternoon there we had the hotel call a cab for us so we could check out the beach. After waiting awhile, a friend of the hotel staff member showed up in his personal car. It was very random, but he got us down to the beach! The actual beach area was cool and I think we would have enjoyed the experience more if our hotel was closer to the beach. One thing Brian did like about the hotel was it backed up to the Carara Biological Reserve so we were able to go on a couple of canopy nature walks.
One day we went to Agujitas Beach and went on an ocean kayak tour. I had never been sea kayaking before so I really enjoyed that. We paddled to a nice beach with pretty white sand. We tried to do some snorkeling but it was pretty rough out so we weren't very successful. It was a fun day on the ocean though!
After two nights in the Jaco area we packed up and headed back to the San Jose airport. On the way our guide stopped by the Tárcoles River, a popular spot to check out the many crocodiles who live there.
It was definitely more adventurous than our honeymoon, but that was what we were looking for with this one. All-in-all we had a great trip!
Next on the blog agenda -- second anniversary trip to Mexico!
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