Costa Rica

Back from Chicago, a change of clothes and back to the airport on Thursday for a trip to Costa Rica. Never been before and we have been looking forward to this since we booked it a couple of months back.

To break the trip up and because of flight connections we are sandwiching Costa Rica between two stops in Florida’s sweltering heat. Coral Gables for a day going out and three nights further up the coast in Palm Beach on the way back.

Costa Rica is a small country in Central America but it packs a big punch with it’s rugged backbone of volcanoes, 800 miles of coastline, many national parks and rich variety of wildlife.

We are staying in the north-west corner of the country on the Papagayo Peninsula. This part of the Pacific coast is abundantly green and stocked full of wildlife including the revered howler monkeys (photo). We are there for a week, and this is primarily a do-nothing-and-hang-out-in-the-hotel-holiday, but I would like us to do a few short trips to explore the greater Guanacaste Province.

There are a couple of National Parks near-ish. The Palo Verde has the Tempisque River where crocodiles, monkeys and iguanas make their home. My daughter would love that, heck so would I.

The Rincón de la Vieja Volcano National Park is more bubbling mud pots and steaming sulfur pools but it sounds like mosquito hats are the order of the day, so we may give that a swerve.

Sadly I think the drive into Nicaragua is probably beyond us, mostly because we would have to take the bus as you can’t take a rental car across the border. The city of Granada and it’s colonial architecture about 3 hours away from where we are staying. Not fair on my daughter and a country for another day.