Costa Rica Trip #2-3: Eco-tour, ATVing to a Waterfall, Traveling Home and Reflections

Wednesday

We’d designated Wednesday as our “open day”, with less structure and more open time to relax at the resort pools and do a few smaller activities. The day began with another fantastic breakfast at La Hacienda.

After breakfast, we headed to the pool where we had a cabana reserved for the day (included all week with our room rate, score!) We ordered a round of Miami Vice’s (50/50 of strawberry daquiri and pina colada), two with alcohol and two without.

Soon enough, a pool attendant showed up with four drinks. He did not speak any English, so did my best with Spanish instead. He said “Four Miami Vice!” and I confirmed, “dos con alcohol, y dos sin alcohol?” he looked a bit confused, and left two drinks and walked away. I assumed this meant they all had alcohol and they had to remake two of them. No problem.

Soon enough, he returned with a smile and said “Si, dos con alcohol y dos sin alcohol” pointed to the two drinks he had just dropped off. OK cool! Meg and I took ours and soon the girls returned, and we gave them their drinks. Sage mentioned that hers tasted sour aaaand you can see where this was going. Meghann and I tasted all the drinks and Sage’s was definitely not “sin alcohol”! Fortunately, she’d only had a few small sips, but we kept an extra eye on her anyways. Mine was “sin alcohol” so I traded drinks with Sage’s, which was actually quite strong.

Around noon, we left the pool and split for separate activities. Meghann went to the spa for a 90 minute massage, whereas the girls and I decided to go check out the hotel’s on-site eco tour.

The Hotel had a wildlife preservation area around its “La Iguana” golf course, which is where they offered the eco-tour (free!) by golf cart. The girls and I headed down to the clubhouse to pick up our tickets, and then to meet the tour guide. Each of the girls was handed a pair of binoculars for the tour, which might have been their favorite part. Pretty sure half the time they were looking through the wrong end.

The tour took a little over an hour and across all 18 holes of the golf course. We were in a long golf-cart bus thing that sat ten people, and were followed by another ten or so on individual ATVs. We made several stops throughout to get off and look at various wildlife. No sloths unfortunately, but we did see several Macaws, tons of iguanas, turkey vultures, a few nests with “Montezuma Oropendola”, and a few other assorted birds.

After the eco tour, we found Meghann lounging on a chase on one of the public patios, and all headed back to the room for some quick rest before 6PM dinner reservations at 18&Greene.

The restaurant menu was standard steakhouse fare – primarily steaks and seafood.

The good: bread was served before the meal in a neat box with three types of spread to try – one tomato based, one with garlic and pistachio, and one with normal butter. All options were delicious. Service was also excellent. Our 20% discount on all hotel food also applied.

Not so good: The steaks themselves were mediocre at best. I ordered a wagyu steak. Meghann ordered the ribeye, same as the girls (split). All were very fatty/gristly and the flavor was mediocre, despite high-end steakhouse prices. The sides were fine (asparagus and mashed potatoes) but nothing stood out.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and turned in early for a good night’s sleep ahead of our last full day in Costa Rica.

Thursday

We woke up Thursday morning feeling very well rested. We had the morning open, followed by a 1PM three-hour ATV Adventure and Waterfall in Jaco. The day started with yet another breakfast at Hacienda again (didn’t get old the whole trip!) followed by some pool time.

When we arrived at the pool, the cabana we’d reserved was covered in balloons! And… a happy birthday sign. They definitely gave it to someone else. So we went and spoke to the reservation desk and were able to get another cabana reserved… however, this one was filled with ants! Finally, on take three, we were set. Meghann and the girls ventured off to the pool whereas I stayed in the shade.

The morning flew by fast, and before we knew it, it was time to meet our transportation for the ATV tour. We hopped aboard a small bus with one other family, which took us to Jaco. Our tour was inside the “Vista Los Suenos Adventure Park”, which housed several activities. Outside of the ATV tour there was also horseback riding, ziplines, horseback rides, a bicycle tour, and more.

Upon arrival, we got wristbands and then were ushered over to an area that had both ATVs and “UTVs” (think an ATV/golf cart hybrid with four seats). Given the girls weren’t old enough for the ATV ride, we ended up in a four-seater. Our tour was led by Alejandro on an ATV, and we were also joined by a European couple in a separate vehicle.

The tour began with a lap around a “test drive” course to get a feel for the vehicle before taking on the actual trails. I quickly noticed the vehicle had a governor on the engine keeping the speed relatively low – 10-15 mph maybe?

Once on the trails, we followed several trails and streams through rainforest, packed with beautiful scenery. There were a few spots where Alejandro slowed to look for animals in the trees, but no luck. We did see several cows, some horses, and tons of iguanas.

Our first stop was at a mini waterfall. We had the option to swim in the adjacent pool, but decided to hold off on the first swim and instead look around and take some photos.

After another 45 minutes of driving, we pulled up to a walking trail and had to exit the vehicle to proceed further. As we walked further up the path, it opened to a huge, beautiful waterfall! There were quite a few people there at first from another tour, but soon it cleared out and we had the entire space for our small group!

This area had two waterfalls – a higher waterfall that fed into a pool, and a second waterfall down rocks that you could slide down into a second pool. There was also a large platform you could jump off of into the lower pool! Of course, Sage and Vivienne couldn’t wait and rushed to jump!

We soon all climbed to the upper waterfall, and I decided to bite the bullet and shed the shoes, shirt and hat so I could climb into the pool. The water was FREEZING, to the point where I could feel my heart slow down from the shock. That said, it also felt amazing in the hot, humid climate. I could have stayed in all day. I swam over to the waterfall to sit within the falling water, which hit hard! I also brought each of the girls over so they could feel it as well.

We spent about an hour at the waterfall pools. I even managed to get a few platform jumps in after spending some time in the waterfall! I chatted with Alejandro while the kids played, and he told me his two kids, about the same age as Sage and Vivi. They usually stayed with his parents during the week, an hour and a half south of San Jose, because he spent a lot of time working at the park.

We left the waterfall area for one last stop on the tour – a scenic view from the top of a mountain! We drove upwards for quite a while and eventually came to a flat, open area with beautiful views in all directions!

The scenic area was the last stop for the ATV tour, and we headed back to the entrance, somehow wet, dusty and happy all at the same time! What a cool experience. We caught the bus back to the hotel.

I had tried to make dinner reservations earlier in the day at “Lanterna Italian Steakhouse” without luck, but when we arrived back Meghann stopped by the front desk to give it one more go and was successful! This was the one restaurant we wanted to try that we had not yet visited, so we were very lucky to get in on our last night.

We went back to the room to get cleaned up from our adventure. The restaurant was at in the adjacent marina, about a ten minute walk from the resort. We saw the most beautiful sunset on the way to dinner, which almost felt symbolic with our trip almost finished.

We were one of the first tables to be seated. Our waiter was nice and walked us through the specials. We ordered two appetizers – a ceviche tower and brussel sprouts. They also brought out a few kinds of bread. For appetizers, Meghann and Vivienne each ordered a filet minon, Sage had spaghetti and meatballs, while I had the special, which was a shrimp and lobster tail risotto. Everything we ate was amazing and the service here was top notch. This was easily the best dining experience we had on the entire trip. Everything we ate was delicious!

Finally, we swung by the bakery one last time and headed back to our room to pack ahead of a long travel day Friday.

Friday

The first part of travelling home was relatively uneventful. We were picked up at 7AM from the hotel to get to the airport, about an hour and a half drive. The four of us were on a small bus that held like 12 people, but was jammed back with seats so oddly less spacious than the van we rode up on. San Jose airport was easy to get through and we had a couple hours to hang out by our gate. A musician was playing Christmas music in Spanish by our gate, which was nice and helped the time pass. His crowd continued to grow while to the point it felt almost like a small concert at the end.

Our connecting flight to Phoenix was through Miami, and that’s where things got interesting. We arrived in Miami a little before 3:30pm EST, with a 7:50pm scheduled departure time. Four and a half hour layover was more than we’d like, but allowed us to take our time getting dinner and to our gate. Getting through customs took almost an hour, and we had dinner at some Corona lounge. I found out that if you were a Priority Pass member you’d get a $30 discount per person, so our meals were almost free which was nice! I had never actually used the pass before, it had come included with our credit card.

Once at our gate, the flight was delayed to 8PM. Then delayed to 8:30 PM. Finally, our flight took off… at 9:56PM!! Made for a really long layover in Miami and a really late night arrival in Phoenix at around 1:30AM. We were all exhausted. We learned that the rain in Phoenix was preventing ANY flights from taking off or leaving. It was bizarre because despite arriving in Phoenix so late, the airport was packed as if it were the middle of the day. I’d never seen anything like it.

Parting Thoughts

Another holiday trip in the bag! So glad I took the time to write about this one to preserve the memories. Costa Rica was very different than our last few tropical vacations and I learned a lot from the experience.

Making the most of a trip to Costa Rica requires a LOT of planning. Meghann and I are both very planning-oriented people, but despite this I still feel like we under planned the trip. This isn’t the kind of trip where you want to spend a lot of time at the resort, even with a beach.

Costa Rica is best spent with traveling across the country – which includes staying at multiple places. There were a few things we hoped to do that were just not practical due to our location, including hiking a volcano and seeing more wildlife (unfortunately missed seeing any sloths or toucans!) We were also somewhat limited as Meghann is recovering from an injury and couldn’t do things like ziplining, strenuous hikes, or even swimming, so we had to consider that as well.

The people here were very friendly and I only encountered a small handful that could not speak English. It was overall less expensive than a trip to Hawaii or the Bahamas. I could see coming back here again down the road, taking what we’ve learned to plan the next trip a bit differently with more mobility!

That’s all for now, thanks for reading! Til’ the next one.