It has been two years since our first trip to Costa Rica and are excited to see what the country has for us this time. We previously split a week between Arenal and Santa Teresa, but this time around we’ll be spending our time in a couple different locations in the northwest of the country.

The main inspiration behind the vacation was to spend a weekend at the Four Seasons celebrating Jose’s 30th birthday, but Becca and I decided to extend our stay a few more days to explore the nearby beach town Tamarindo and its surrounding area.

The journey to Costa Rica began on a Thursday as we headed to Los Angeles trying to beat traffic by leaving at 2pm. What would have normally been a great plan ended up stuck in traffic for the upcoming 4th of July weekend.

Our flight was scheduled for either a late or early 1am departure – I haven’t decided which – and flew through Houston on the way to Liberia, Costa Rica. The best part of red eye plane travel is that if you can sleep on planes, you wake up semi-well rested. Unfortunately those who cannot suffer through hours of a strange zombie-like trance.

Transportation was a much better situation this time around and was provided by a couple rental cars. If you’ve got a lot of people and luggage, you’ll need more trunk space than a Suzuki Jimny can provide which is somewhere in the neighborhood of none.

Renting a car provided a lot more freedom than we previously had as our only options consisted of organizing shuttles, hiring taxis, or hoping for free rides from people staying at the same place as us.

Arriving at the Four Seasons was an exceptional experience as can only be said by travel-weary souls looking for anything more comfortable than an airplane seat. A gorgeous drive down the peninsula and some very Jurassic Park-like gates later we were greeted by cold washcloths, delicious juice, and a hearty Costa Rican welcome.

I don’t think any of us had an idea of what to expect for lodgings, but a short golf cart ride later we’d all wish we brought our asthma inhalers for the ridiculous views.

Most of our time was spent lounging at the beach, eating food, or just playing games, though we did take a day excursion to zipline and ride horses at Hacienda Guachipelin. I went into the day thinking it couldn’t beat the SkyTrek ziplines at Arenal, but came out of the day being completely wrong. They really are incomparable – one has you zipping over the rainforest treetops and the other has you zipping through a small canyon and over a small river.

Pura Vida!

With half of our group heading back home and the other staying on for another five days, it was necessary to make a quick jaunt to the airport to drop off our departing comrades.

One unexpected taxi strike later left our quick trip stuck in sight of the airport with a road blocked by the cars of dozens of protesting drivers. Though in comparison to other strikes I’ve experienced, this one was minor as it lasted an estimated 45 minutes and caused few (if any) delays, and none for our group.

The drive from Liberia’s Daniel Oduber Quirós International Airport to Tamarindo was a quick one through Costa Rica’s much drier Guanacaste Province. Costa Rica as a whole is in the top 5 world leaders in rainfall and the area can receive more in a heavy day’s rain than Santa Barbara county will in an entire year. That said, we experienced no rain throughout our entire 8 day trip which was unexpected and mildly bothersome seeing as I had just purchased a nice rain jacket and was eager to put it to the test.

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Tamarindo is a small beach town with something like 500 permanent residents, though it would be difficult to guess based on the number of shops and restaurants located along the main drive through. With its large contingent of tourists and our desire for a more low key stay, we were happy to find the bed and breakfast to be five minutes or so out of town in Playa Langosta.

Sueno del Mar came highly recommended to us as a quiet and charming place to stay with an amazing breakfast. Even with howler monkeys being their loud, howling selves at night it was quite easy continue our lazy days spent reading on the beach, eating food, and relaxing.

With work being a bit hectic in the weeks leading up to the trip, it was great to have a little over a week spent hardly thinking about it.

We spent most of our time beaching ten minutes away on the banks of a nice estuary in Langosta, but did take a day trip over to Playa Conchal to enjoy the stereotypical white sand beaches and blue waters. This was definitely the prettiest beach we saw during this visit and wasn’t much hassle to find either.