For Christmas and New Years my family went on a two week trip to Costa Rica. We spent first week doing classic tourist stuff like tours and then on the last week we just stayed at 2 different resorts. This is how my trip went.
Day 1 (Sunday) :
We woke up at 3am in the city ready to go to the airport. We get on our first flight at 5am to Toronto for our hour and a half layover. Expect in Winnipeg they loaded everyone on our flights bags in another plane and another flights in ours. This cause us to have a hour delay. When we got to our gate in Toronto they said they gave away our tickets because they couldn’t get our bags on the plane in time for take off. They said the next flight to where we were flying into was tomorrow afternoon, that would mean we would of lost 2 days of our vacation. So instead there was room on another flight for 4:30pm to San Josè. Even though this is the other side of the island then where we were going to start at we went anyways. We had to sit in the Toronto airport from 9am to 4:30pm. It was extremely boring.
I can’t remember when we land fed in Sam Josè but I think it was around 10pm. From the airport we took a shuttle Aqiugle. We then spent the night there. One thing I noticed right away was that food delivery’s were made by bikes. I thought that was kind of interesting. Not the best because we ordered dinner that night and our drinks spilled everywhere while he was driving and our bag ripped apart in the hotel lobby. But we made it and I was beyond happy.
Day 2 (Monday) :
We woke and went to the Walmart right beside our hotel. There were these long ramps that went back and forth to get to the entrance of Walmart, I thought that was kinda cool. After we got our water and a few snacks. We then went on our way to Jaco. This is where we stayed till Christmas (the 25th.). We kind of just walked around, my dad and brother decided it was too hot and jumped into the ocean. We then went to dinner at this place downtown that was known for its burgers. They had crazy challenges that you could do to win money. You can look online at https://www.ridiculousburgerscr.com/en/ if you want to go look at pictures of the portions, cause man they are huge. There’s this one challenge where you have to eat 3 burgers stacked on top of each other. Each burger has two patties. I just got a normal burger there. And man it was huge. I’m pretty sure eating 3 of them plus 3 more patties could cause a heart attack. I also ordered this Cookie Monster shake there, it was sadly sorta gross. If I’m being honest the best part was probably the gummies on top.
Day 3 (Tuesday) :
On Tuesday we went on a Atv tour. We got taken up a mountain by our guide Pablo. It was so pretty, I’m used to riding in dust. There were really pretty sights,and water coming down from the sides of the mountain in some places. We went through this little area where their were a few houses (around the top of the mountain) there were also a few restaurants. When we were coming back down we stopped and went down these stairs that lead to a waterfall. Their they had one of the oldest trees near Jaco but it had fallen 2 years ago. The tree trunk is still there right along the waterfall.
Day 4 (Wednesday) :
On the 21st we went on a crocodile tour. We got taken out on a boat with another family and this really nice elderly couple. They took us out on a river, I can’t remember what it’s called but the name basically means“do not swim in.” Our tour guide Franklin said he’d be asking me questions about the facts he was saying at the end of our tour. This actually made it so I learned a lot because I was paying close attention to what he was saying, not wanting to make a fool of myself in-front of everyone. There were huge some pretty big crocs there. We also learned about the plants and some of the birds that lived along the river.
After we got back to our hotel we drove about 2 hours to spend the night in this resort called Parador Resort. It’s by Playa Biesanz. We wanted to spend the night their so we could see some monkeys. We were just going to stay their because it’s by Manuel Antonio National Park, but once we got their we learned that their are white faced monkeys that come out in the mornings.
Day 5 (Thursday)
They were not kidding about the monkeys. They were everywhere. They came from the jungle and would go onto peoples balconies and bang on their glass doors, tables, and go through their stuff. My dad ended up getting jumped by some monkeys in the stairwell of our hotel building. Their was a “monkey trail” on the resort so we went and walked through it that morning and you could see the monkeys jumping from tree to tree to get to the resort area.
After we checked out we went to Manuel Antonio. Their we just went to the beach for a few hours. I loved the waves, even if they were knocking me all over the place and shoving me 20 feet up the shore. After the beach we drove back to Jaco.
Day 6 (Friday) :
Friday we went sport fishing. We had a really good day with 8 fish in the boat. We went with another older couple. The only type of fish we caught was mahi mahi. When we got one in the boat it looked like someone was murdered. There was blood everywhere. My brother ended up getting sick and throwing up over the boat, while I got slapped on the back of my head for laughing. I can’t really remember what else we did that day because I was really tired and out of it from being on a boat for 12 hours.
The rest of the trip we went and drove to Liberia and from there we went to two resorts for the next week we were there. They were a little ways away from Liberia so we had to go to the airport to get a taxi to take us a ways away. Our taxi driver told us a lot about the places we were driving by, trees and plants, and what was in some of the felids we were driving by.
Overall I had an amazing trip and I’m extremely grateful. My part has to be when we took a boat and monkeys came down from the jungle and would go on your shoulders. Costa Rica has to have been my favourite place that my family and I have ever been to.
Check this monkey’s blog out : https://madisaemsblog2021.edublogs.org/