Costa Rica

To celebrate the New Year as well as my birthday, I took a ten-day vacation to Costa Rica with Kelly, a previous volunteer, her twin brother, and their two friends.  

            I got in to Costa Rica about a day before the rest of the group, so I waited for them at a cute little hostel called Bekuo in San Jose, which was a nice chance to get some reading done and rest up from the business of the holidays in San Lucas.  Once everyone got in, we stayed another night in the city before heading to the Nicoya Peninsula, which is on the Pacific coast of the country.

            For our first five nights on the Nicoya Peninsula, we stayed at a tiny hotel right on the beach outside of a city called Quepos, which borders the Manuel Antonio National Park, a tiny but beautiful park right on the coast. We booked the hotel rather than a hostel because almost all the lodging in the area was booked up for the Ney Year, but out of pure coincidence, the well-priced hotel ended up being the best possible place we could have stayed in the area.  We were right on the beach with an unobstructed view of the water, and the hotel was quiet and peaceful because it had only 5 rooms. 

The view from our porch

 We were at a far end of the beach, far from tourist traffic, and often we had our patch of the beach entirely to ourselves. 

 At the same time, we were only a 15-minute walk from restaurants, a grocery store, and the national park.  One day we wandered into the small park after enjoying breakfast at a little restaurant that overlooked the ocean, and swam in the calmest, warmest ocean water I could imagine.  We also saw dozens of little Capuchin monkeys swinging through the jungle on our walk to the secluded beach.

            For my last days of the trip, we traveled to a little surfing town with a far different feel than our secluded beach paradise of the first days.  Here the waves were huge, and it was a struggle to even swim in the ocean.  The group attempted and failed at surfing, and enjoyed our hostel, which was busy with surfers traveling for the holidays, and located across the street from the beach. 

            Overall, the trip was very relaxing, and I really appreciated enjoying things that I don’t have access to in San Lucas, such as really good restaurants.  I also came back with the perfect souvenir—a nice bronzy tan!