Background and Planning
HERE WE GO! I’m writing this post on the second evening of this trip, so off to a late start with a lot to cover. I’ve blogged my prior three trips to South Korea, and always enjoyed both the experience of writing, and being able to go back and revisit moments that would otherwise be lost in time. I’ve taken several trips that would have been great to blog about, but missed the opportunity – Tahiti (2013), Bahamas (2019), Florida Keys (2020), Cancun (2021), Cancun encore (2022) and O’ahu (2023). SO – the best time to write about these trips would have been back in 2013, however the second best time to write is now, so here we are.
Costa Rica had been a casual vacation idea for quite some time. I always thought Costa Rica would be cool because the fake island in Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar, was supposedly somewhere off the coast of Costa Rica. It’s one of my favorite movies, and the island in that movie was badass, so Costa Rica must be badass too, right? Sound logic. We mentioned it to our daughter Sage earlier this year which lead to her spending like three hours planning a trip to Costa Rica on her iPad. This all culminated one fall evening with Meghann and I trying to decide where our next trip should be, and Costa Rica seemed like an easy target to agree on. Warm? Check. Ocean? Check. Fairly easy to travel to? Check.
Planning for Costa Rica is a bit more “complex” than we’d initially anticipated. The country isn’t huge, roughly the size of West Virgina, but big enough that your location matters with what you want to do. The main airport is in the capital, San Jose, which is in the center of the country. There are a couple other smaller airports, but we decided this was the easiest starting point based on flight availability.
The best flight option available into San Jose had us land at 11PM on Sunday, 12/17, so we decided to stay in the capital city for the first night and half day. Plans were to check out San Jose before getting a car to our primary location, the Los Sueños Marriott Ocean and Golf Resort on the Pacific coast, just north of Jaco. We’d stay there for four nights, and fly home to Phoenix on Friday, 12/22.
Traveling to Costa Rica and the First Night
Flying from Phoenix to Costa Rica involved a layover in Dallas. The girls have flown dozens of times and are generally good flyers, making these kinds of trips less stressful. That is, until… we saw our seat assignments for the Dallas to Costa Rica leg of the trip, about a four hour flight.
The first leg was easy as expected, but the second leg got interesting with the above seat assignment. This would have left Sage and Vivienne each sitting in a middle seat, between two strangers, with Meghann and I at least two rows away. We flagged the concern when checking in at American Airlines in Phoenix, and they said the best they could do was add a note for the Dallas boarding crew to review. Upon arrival in Dallas, the best they could do was feign sympathy while not doing anything to improve the situation.
Wanting to do everything we could, we boarded, let the flight attendants know of the situation (again, they seemed to have a “not my problem” attitude) and began scouting opportunities to switch seats (hard when we’re all middles) and talk with their seat neighbors to let them know what was going on and to shout if anything came up. As I approached my seat (#4 above), I pointed to the seat and the gentleman in the aisle seat got up and moved to the middle, saying he wanted to be by his wife. What luck! This gave me leverage to switch aisle seats with the guy two ahead of me to sit by Vivi, which was the bigger concern of the two girls. Sage ended up sitting solo, but next to a really nice girl named Abby in her early 20s who graciously talked with her… for the entire four hours. Disaster averted, and Abby deserves a medal.
Upon landing, getting through customs was easy and our booked car service (via “I Love Travel Costa Rica”) was incredibly easy. Our hotel for one night in San Jose was called “Hotel Presidente”. This was located in central San Jose and a 30 minute ride from the airport. The area felt a bit sketchy, with a big metal gate opening for our arrival.
We’d booked their “Concept Habitación” (concept room) which was supposed to be a big, uniquely designed space. Upon arrival, they said that room would only fit 2 (website said 4?) and they had to move us to a different room. Being almost midnight, and really just wanting to sleep ahead of a big day, whatever. What they move us to though was, just.. wow. This one didn’t have a fancy name like “Concept Habitación” but was definitely a concept, albeit a super weird one.
The room we ended up in had two double beds in it. And a nightstand! Other than that? Not much. No closet. No TV. No dresser. No… trash can? Wires hanging from the ceiling where a smoke detector might be installed? Nothing on the walls. There was also a fridge on the floor that didn’t actually work. It also had a “balcony” which was actually indoors and overlooked the stairwell. It also had a massive shower. It was the oddest room I’d ever stayed in.
First day – Exploring San Jose and Travel to Los Sueños
We got up and around, checked out of our room at 9:30am and went exploring. We started with a 10 minute walk to “Parque Central” to take a few photos.
We had a light breakfast at “Panaderia Columbiana” consisting of a donut and sweet roll. After this, we swung by a toy store and walked through “Mercado Central de San Jose”, which was like being in a hybrid farmer’s market/flea market if the walking space was rediced by 90%. We also swung by a McDonalds (Viv’s favorite) to see if the cheeseburgers were any different. Spoiler alert! They weren’t. We finally swung up through Parque Morazán, and then ate lunch at a placed called “El Social”, which was a nightclub turned daytime eatery. Our first attempt at somewhat “local” food was decent and we enjoyed a sampler platter of assorted foods and quesadillas. I was able to put my limited high school Spanish skills to use a number of times throughout the day.
After this, it was time to head back to the hotel and catch a ride to Los Sueños, which was about a two hour ride. The driver got excited when seeing my Tool hat, and mentioned he was a huge fan and dreamed of seeing them live some day. All-in-all, San Jose was not that exciting. There are a few historic buildings that may be worth visiting if you’re into that sort of thing, or OK to wander around a bit if you have time to kill like we did, but not worth intentionally working into any travel plans to Costa Rica.
The ride to Los Sueños was fairly uneventful, although we did stop at a bridge overlooking a river filled with crocodiles. One was massive! Also notable, the bridge rail had big gaps and looked easy to slip through, especially for a kid. Maybe that’s how that one crocodile got so big? 🙂
We arrived at the Marriott Los Sueños Ocean and Golf Resort around 3PM, and had about an hour before our room was ready. We used this time to nail down the rest of our trip itinerary, which is as follows:
Tuesday: 7:30am Breakfast, 8:45am – 1:30pm Catamaran ride, 4:00pm massage (Meghann only), 6:15pm dinner at 18&Greene Steakhouse
Wednesday: Breakfast, Beach/pool day! All-day cabana reservation.Dinner TBD
Thursday: Breakfast, 1PM ATV ride along beach to some waterfalls, dinner again TBD
Friday: Car to airport leaves at 7am. Layover in Miami on the flight home.
Finally, we got settled in to our room (beautiful ocean view!) and had a delicious albeit uneventful seafood/steak dinner at the Hacienda restaurant downstairs. On the way back we saw a very odd looking animal which I’m pretty sure was a Kinkajou by our elevator. Very odd five-fingered mammal that clearly was hitting up passers by for a snack.
That’s all for now! More to come tomorrow.