Weddingbee Blog

Mrs. Bee, while I have no advice, I wanted to thank you for posting this! I also need to get my (first) passport. At least I have plenty of time for that! I can’t wait to hear what you think of it!

I was born in Costa Rica!! And grew up there all my life, in fact - that’s where I’m planning my wedding!!

A couple of things to add to the post:

Tabacon Hot Springs is great - and you can visit it for the day wihtout staying there because I’ve found that it’s too expensive (not by American standards) for what you get. Stay at Los Lagos - amazing rooms, cheap! And the whole pool is fresh water hot springs.

If you’ve got such a short time to be there - try this type of itenerary:
Day one - arrive in San Jose, take a tranport company (there are tons, do a google search for bus companies - I’d go private, not public - you’ll be more comfortable and it’s still not that much money - don’t try driving on your own! Hardly antyhing is signed!!) to Monteverde.

Spend the night doing some nightime wildlife watching- too cool.

Day Two - Start your day with a trip to the Monteverde Cheese Factory (owned and operated by the Quaker community that first populated Monteverde - very commune/utopian concept) Then go up to the cloud forest reserve and do a canopy tour - awesome way to see the canopy and sooo much fun. Afternoon - butterfly garden - so many gorgeous bugs!!

Day Three - Take a horesback ride to Arenal (there’s a great tour company based out of Monteverde - Desafio, owned by a friend of mine, great rates!) and check into Los Lagos. Spend the afternoon soaking your sore horse-back riding muscles in the hot springs at Tabacon. Then head back to your hotel for an amazing dinner there and soak some more and enjoy the swim up pool bar!

Day Four - Head back to San Jose

Sadly, this itinerary doesn’t include the beach - you really need more time!! If you want to try to get beach in, try going south to Manuel Antonio - it’s got rainforests and beach within minutes of each other.

The Pacific side is gorgeous - sunsets over the water with a little green flash at the end - amazing.

If you want to get in a volcano - try Poas which isn’t as active as Arenal, and you can walk right up to the crater and look into the green acid pool at the bottom. It’s still spewing gasses, just not lava. So prepare for the smell sulpher!

Sorry this post is so long - I just get really excited about my home country! If you have any questions, feel free to email me. (I’m assuming you know my email as Mrs. Bee, if not post here and I”ll give you my email!)

Yay Costa Rica! I need to get started getting day tours ready for my guests who are coming from MA! Way to get me jumpstarted on this!

Tabacon is amazing!! I only got to spend an afternoon there, would have loved to stay longer.

It took less than 2 hours to change my name yesterday at the SS office, the DMV, and the bank. I’m just getting started, but yesterday was amazingly easy. I still have plenty more to change. But I’m taking it a little at a time.

To add to thistleorchid’s advice (and she was a big help to me when I lived in Costa Rica, and showed me a good time), I would decide now whether you want a beach or mountain vacation. I lived in Monteverde, so obviously I highly recommend guided tours of the cloud forest: head to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve (not the Santa Elena Preserve) in the early morning to go on go on a zipline tour with SkyTrek or the Original Canopy Tour. I recommend staying in the Trapp Family Lodge that night, as it is a close walk to the preserve (Santa Elena, the main little town on the mountain, is a good 40 min to 1 hr walk). If you do go to Volcan Arenal, the horse/boat/jeep trek through Desafio is fun and the hot springs are amazing (the Baldi springs are lovely, too), but don’t necessary expect to see the volcano if it’s cloudy (but March is a good time).

Alternatively, if you want a beach vacation, I second the Manuel Antonio recommendation. Stay at http://www.costaverde.com and stay in Costa Verde II (it has a private adult pool and a view of the ocean). Their motto is ‘More Monkeys that People’ and it’s true– I saw more monkeys there than in the National Park. The park and several beautiful beaches are very close by (I recommend going to the more pristine beaches inside the park, although you can get pineapple and ceviche brought to you on the public beach).

Either way, for travel I recommend http://www.interbusonline.com — it’s about $25-40 per person per leg (airport to MV or Manuel Antonio, etc.)

Mr Apple and I vacationed in CR last year and we had a wonderful time. We stayed away from the tourist cities like San Jose (don’t stay near the Coca Cola sign) and kept along the coast in Puerto Jimenez and lived like the locals for 7 days. I wouldn’t recommend this if you’re not open to roughin’ it. We had to take a helicopter ride to PJ and the runway was a dirt road - a little nervous but safe!

I’ve also heard great reviews on Monteverde and Arenal. And while you’re there, you must do adventures (hiking, sea kayaking, horse back riding, bungee jumping, tree climbing, and canopy tours) I’ve done all except the canopy tour just because I fell ill on the last day trip which was the canopy tour.

Sea kayaking is so serene and beautiful, watching the sunset in the water is so calming and peaceful. Definitely need to do some bird watching ( get a good pair of binoculars) - we saw plenty of toucans and macaus (sp?). We also saw blue morphs, leaf cutter ants, white faced monkeys, and little crabs in the sand. Pretty cool!

I would recommend while in CR, try out an Eco Lodge. There are some that are pretty cool. They have large tents with beds along the beach front, no air con but the cool breeze from the ocean is better than any air conditoner vent. They can get a little expensive though but its definitely a unique stay.

We used Lonely Planet Guide as our #1 resource (but again its for budget travelers).

CR is definitely a more adventurous and high impact (depends on what you want to do) vacation. Be prepared with all of the essentials like bug repellant. We had to spray our whole body (including face) so we wouldn’t get bitten. It works but not too good, by the time we got back I counted 50 mosquito bites.

oh one more thing, drink plenty of pina coladas - nothing beats freshly made coconut pina coladas! So good!

Let me know if you need any help!

awesome post, i’m actually considering CR for our HM spot.. i can’t wait for your full review!