Getting a view from the airplane.
Day 1 ⛱️ Coco Beach
- Arrive in Liberia LIR airport 🛬.
- Pick up rental car.
- Drive to hotel and check-in.
- Drive to Coco beach.
- Spend sometime swimming at the pool.
- Drive to Coco beach area for dinner.
Playing on black sand at Coco beach.
Day 2 🐊 🐒 National Park
- Leave from Coco beach area, drive towards Palo Verde National Park tour, beginning in the town of Ortega.
- We enjoyed pottery and corn tortilla-making demonstrations while waiting for our boat tour.
- Drive to the boat dock with the tour company.
- Enjoy the almost 2-hour boat tour observing crocodiles, many species of birds and mammals.
- We enjoyed a grand lunch prepared in the authentic style.
- Begin the drive to Monteverde.
- Stop by a scenic view-point with an amazing view of the valley, ocean in the distance at sunset.
- Arrive and check-in to the Airbnb.
- Go in to Monteverde town for dinner and some grocery essentials.
Crocodile jumping into the river at Palo Verde National Park.
Day 3 ☁️ 🌳 Cloud Forest
- We began the morning with a quick breakfast at the Airbnb.
- Morning reservation at Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve with a guide to look for the elusive quetzal and more unique species.
- We went into the town of Monteverde. Had a delicious lunch at the Open Kitchen.
- Cafe Cabure Bean to Bar Chocolate workshop
- Dinner at Boca 2 cafe for traditional Costa Rican food.
- Night walk through the Santa Elena Preserve with Kinkajou 🌚 🚶🏽 night walk tour.
Walking along the Monteverde cloud forest trail.
Day 4 🐸 🦋 Zip-lining & Frogs
- Begin the morning at Selvatura Adventure Park. My husband and son enjoyed the canopy zip lining adventure, while the rest of us (my parents and I) enjoyed the hanging bridges nature walk.
- Lunch at Selvatura Park.
- We enjoyed the sunset at a beautiful view-point, with a short-walk from our Airbnb.
- Ranario Monteverde 🐸 also known as the Monteverde Frog Pond. We visited after sunset to experience the active nocturnal species.
- Dinner at Restaurante Morpho 🦋.
Walking on the hanging bridges above the cloud forest.
Day 5 🌊 🩳 Jaco
- Breakfast at Stella’s in Monteverde, walking distance from our Airbnb.
- We left Monteverde to make our way to our Airbnb in Punta Leona on Playa Blanca near Jaco (3-hours away).
- Once we arrived, we walked the hundred or so steps down to the gorgeous beach Playa Blanca.
- We drove into Jaco to get an early dinner at Hola India. We also picked up some extra food here to have for dinner the next day at our accommodation.
- Next, we briefly stopped by some shops to get some swimming trunks for my husband (as he forgot to pack his pair) and some beach towels for our day trip the next day, to Isla Tortuga.
- We made the dangerous and tricky drive back to our apartment for the night.
Playa Blanca was per it’s name and beautiful.
Day 6 🐢 Island 🏝️ ⛵️
- We left our Airbnb at around 5:30 am to drive to the Puntarenas harbour (about 2 hours away).
- From here, we boarded our boat tour to Isla Tortuga in the gulf of Nicoya.
- We spent about 2 hours on board the comfortable catamaran ⛵️ getting to the island.
- After the boat ride we arrived at the dreamy, gorgeous beach of Isla Tortuga.
- We played around at the beach, had lunch and relaxed on the beach chairs, before getting back on the catamaran.
- We arrived in the Puntarenas harbor.
- Driving back to the Airbnb took close to 3 hours due to the excessive traffic on the single lane road, in and out of Puntarenas town.
- Once back at our accommodation, we warmed-up our Indian 🍛 take-out from the previous day.
Wonderful beach at Isla Tortuga.
Day 7 🐱 🐶 Food & Fortuna 🚘
- We spent the morning down at Playa Blanca taking photos, flying the drone and taking walks along the beach.
- After check-out, we began making our way towards La Fortuna.
- Stopped for lunch at Loveat vegetarian Mediterranean restaurant in San Ramon. It’s also an animal sanctuary!
- Arrived at our hotel in La Fortuna, by early evening.
- Headed out into town for some dinner.
Walking the rocks and tidal pools on Playa Blanca.
Day 8 🍫 Chocolate 🐒, 🌚 Night 🐸
- We began the day by enjoying a delicious made-to-order breakfast at our hotel.
- We drove a bit outside the town of La Fortuna towards Chachagua to the Two Little Monkeys Chocolate, for our chocolate-making workshop and farm-tour.
- We had lunch at Red Frog Coffee ☕️ Roasters.
- After lunch, we had some time to relax at our hotel. We soaked in the natural hot springs/pool at the hotel.
- Next, we headed to the Arenal Oasis Eco Lodge Night 🌛 Frog Tour. We walked the grounds, seeing a variety of different frogs, snakes 🐍 and bugs 🪲.
- Finally, we ended our evening with a comforting meal at India Curry House.
Chocolate workshop at Two Little Monkeys 🐒.
Day 9 ☁️ 🌳 Bridges & Waterfall
- After having breakfast at our hotel, we made our way towards the Mistico Arenal Hanging Bridges Park about 30 minutes from La Fortuna.
- We joined a nature history guided tour. This took us in the canopy along all the hanging bridges in the park.
- After our nature walk, we headed to the cafe to enjoy some lunch.
- We were lucky enough to see an almost completely cloud-free Arenal Volcano view (which almost never happens) right outside the cafe.
- After lunch we headed to the La Fortuna waterfall about 30 minutes away.
- We purchased tickets and began taking the stairs down. My dad with knee problems only walked part of the way. The rest of us took the stairs entire way down.
- It is possible to swim in the water under the falls, but only recommended for strong swimmers.
- After resting a bit at the hotel in the hot springs, we walked around some souvenir shops and grabbed some dinner at an Italian restaurant, a bit away from the main part of town.
Cloud forest walk on hanging bridges.
Day 10 Arenal 🌋, Butterflies 🦋
- After breakfast we drove to the Arenal Volcano National Park about 20 minutes from our hotel.
- Upon reaching the parking area, we found the heavy rain and thunder from the previous night continuing unrelentlesly.
- We were unprepared to hike in this kind of weather, hence we decided to change our plans.
- We did some quick research and found a Butterfly Conservatory in the Village of El Castillo, about 20 minutes up a narrow hilly road with great views of Arenal Volcano.
- We spent about an hour and a half here learning about the various species of butterflies, frogs and other creatures in this sanctuary.
- We stopped for lunch at a little cafe called La Ventana, operated from the home of the chef. The views in each direction had us spellbound.
- The rain finally stopped by the afternoon.
- My husband and son enjoyed their zip-lining experience so much in Monte Verde that they wanted to do another zip-lining experience. They went to EcoGlide Arenal Park and had a great time zip-lining under the Arenal Volcano.
- The rest of us enjoyed a relaxing afternoon at our hotel. Once my husband and son returned from their zip-lining experience, we headed out for dinner at Indian Curry House again.
Ziplining is super fun in Costa Rica.
Day 11 ♨ Tabacon
- On this day, we checked out of our hotel in La Fortuna after breakfast. We drove a few minutes down the road to the Tabacon Thermal Resort and Spa, to check-in for the night.
- We made some lunch reservations and headed to lunch near the hot springs ♨️ part of the resort.
- Next we got changed and spent most of the afternoon to early evening at the hot springs exploring various pools from the bottom (coolest) to the top (warmest) of the thermal hot springs.
- We had dinner reservations at the main restaurant of the resort.
- After dinner we headed back to soak in the hot springs until they closed at 9 pm.
A very grand thermal resort and spa.
Day 12 🦠 stresser, ⛱️ Hermosa
- Since we were here during the COVID times, we all had to show negative COVID tests before we could get our boarding passes for the flight back home.
- We spent all morning doing the COVID tests (the only approved virtual one).
- We had an amazing buffet breakfast at the resort before checking out.
- We were relieved to have our negative COVID tests before driving towards our hotel at Playa Hermosa.
- We had lunch along the way at Cafe Macadamia along the shores of the beautiful Lake Arenal.
- We stopped for gorgeous, expansive views a few times on this drive.
- We made it to our hotel at Playa Hermosa.
- Our son spent some time at the pool and beach this evening.
- We had an underwhelming meal at the restaurant in our hotel.
- We enjoyed a moonlit walk on the beach before turning-in for the night.
Sweeping views at Playa Hermosa.
Day 13 Airport 🛫 & return 🏡
- We woke up early to have breakfast facing the ocean.
- We spent a short time walking along the beach before heading to the airport.
- Once at the airport, the check-in was smooth and uneventful. We had some lunch in the lounge and boarded our flight back home.
Playa Hermosa beach is beautiful with a bay.