Tag: Costa Rica

Travel

Costa Rica: Tamarindo

by nattysbestlifeLeave a Comment on Costa Rica: Tamarindo

After over a week of adventures, we were ready for the warm city of Tamarindo on the West coast of Costa Rica! We spent Christmas Day driving to the beach town. It took us about 4 hours to get there…fortunately we were in a private bus transfer with WiFi. Once we checked into our Airbnb we spent the afternoon walking around and exploring the city. We walked along the beach and enjoyed some street-side acai bowls.

We then ran into someone who suggested we go to Dragonfly Bar & Grill for our Christmas dinner. So after happy hour at our house we were off to dinner. The flavor of the food was amazing with a great vibe. We had the best time that evening!

We immediately knew that the food in Tamardino was going to be the best compared to the rest of our trip! We decided that we were going to try as many places as we could. The city is extremely tourist driven, and there are a lot of cuisines owned by people who migrated to Costa Rica after leaving their respective countries. The next morning we went to a place called Breaking Bread. We had an amazing breakfast with fresh bread, the owner comes in at 4 am and bakes every morning.

We spent the rest of the day at a pool club day drinking at Langosta Beach Club. We enjoyed the whole day in the pool with drinks and a beach view!

We were having such a wonderful time while at the Beach Club, we decided to stick around longer and order food poolside. We actually had decent sushi and seafood for lunch that afternoon.

Most of our late afternoon and evening was spent resting and relaxing at our house. There were still so many different places we wanted to eat, but ultimately we ended up at La Baula for some brick-oven pizza.

After pizza, we went to a bar under our airbnb called Sharky’s to watch the Bulls game. That next day was our last in Costa Rica so we wanted to make the most of it. First, we grabbed breakfast across the street at Cafe Tico. Then we decided to relax at the house pool, just to get a little bit more water fun before our trip was over.

After our time in the pool, we went to Falafel Bar for lunch. The food was amazing, and the homemade sauce was so good we brought some back to Chicago! After lunch we went to Sol for frozen yogurt.

Then we were off to the beach after ice cream for our final sunset in Costa Rica! This was bitter sweet because it was our last night and we missed our home and our puppy!

The boys wanted to do their own thing that night, so my cousin and I went to Bamboo Sushi Club for dinner.

The next morning we got acai bowls from the same spot as the first day, and then we were off to the airport. We had Priority Pass, so we just hung out in the lounge until it time for our flight. Costa Rica was a wonderful time with wonderful company. Truly a trip to remember, but I don’t know if we would ever go to Costa Rica again since it’s so far. I’m glad we did a 12 day trip, so we could see everything we wanted in this beautiful country.

đź–¤

Travel

Costa Rica: Monteverde

by nattysbestlifeLeave a Comment on Costa Rica: Monteverde

Our transfer from La Fortuna to Monteverde was “jeep-boat-jeep”. OH BOY were we in for a treat. Little did we know this was going to be the biggest, most unforgettable adventure of our lives. We got on a bus which was going to bring us to our boat, which kept driving along the coast with no dock in site. News for us…there was no dock, the boat was just pulled up on shore and they threw our luggage on for us and we were on our way across Lake Arenal. The view of the volcano as we drifted away was absolutely breathtaking. We thought we were in a Jurassic Park movie in that moment.

As time passed the water was getting a little choppy as a storm was rolling in. The sky got darker, the wind was picking up, and we were getting anxious because we wanted to get off the boat before the rain started. We slowly approached an inlet where there was a wooden stool AKA our dock! There was no one there to help us with our bag, so we had to lug our luggage up a gravel path to charter buses waiting for us. This is where the adventure actually began. The rain began, and we quickly realized that the gravel road the bus was parked on was going to be the road for the rest of the journey. This was probably the most terrifying ride of my life. We scaled the mountain edges in a charter bus, and often the tire was inches away from the edge…hundreds of feet above the ground below. I think my heart rate was 180+ BPM the whole time. Finally we were about an hour away from our drop off point when we got Costa Rican coffee at sunset.

We got to our drop off point pretty late and our airbnb host drove us up the the highest peak of the area where our rental was located, in Rainbow Valley. It was so dark and windy up there we had no idea where we were until we woke up the next morning and saw the breathtaking views.

The first thing we had planned that morning was a coffee tour at Don Juan. Who knew that coffee beans came from what looks like a red berry that grows on a bush! We learned so much on the tour, not only about coffee, but also chocolate and sugar cane.

After the tour we decided to go to lunch in town. We picked a local spot called Sabor Tico, with more authentic Costa Rican food. The food was very good.

We got back to our airbnb just in time to enjoy our first sunset at the house and it was beautiful. Pictures don’t even justify how amazing the sunsets and sunrises were.

After the sunset we went to Ristorante D’ Thomas to have a nice Italian dinner. Monteverde, as well as the rest of Costa Rica was very tourist driven. Their whole economy basically runs on tourists, so they had a lot of different restaurants. Everything from Italian to sushi places.

The next morning we were off to Selvatura Adventure Park to hike some hanging bridges. It was beautiful, another instance where pictures didn’t do justice.

After a long morning of hiking we were off to a cute brunch stop called Orchid Coffee Shop. Turns out, there was one in La Fortuna and we didn’t even know.

Later that night we went on a night hike to see the creatures that come out at night. We saw a sloth and a poisonous viper among other creatures that are nocturnal. We definitely went out of our comfort zones that night.

After our night walk we decided to try a taco place that we had passed earlier that night. It was called Taco Taco Taqueria. We spent the evening enjoying some Mexican food, which was pretty good. They even had beer flights with a surprisingly extensive beer list.

The next morning we were just going to go explore, with no real plans in mind. We first stopped for breakfast at the lodge down the road from out rental. The lodge owner told us to check out Sky Adventures Monteverde Park, where we could see more hanging bridges and take a gondola ride up into the mountains above the clouds. It was an excellent recommendation!

Afterwards we had definitely worked up an appetite and we were off to a restaurant called World Street Food. Sounds better then it was. Their fryer was unfortunately broken and they couldn’t make a number of things on the menu. Their service was also slow. Later that night we enjoyed our LAST sunset in Monteverde over a bottle of wine and had dinner at Sabor Tico again since it was one of our favorite food spots in Monteverde. It was a perfect Christmas Eve!

Our final morning we were able to see a breathtaking rainbow with the moon as we walked down to the lodge to wait for our transportation to our next stop: Tamarindo!

đź–¤