My favorite little corner of Costa Rica

Hi Mark-This blog is a great opportunity for me to reflect on some of my own traveling adventures and to get some inspiration about some new places to discover.  As I reflect on my own past few years of travel, one of my favorite countries that I’ve been to is Costa Rica.  Although Costa RIca is tiny, it offers amazing diversity of terrain- ocean and carribean, mountains and rainforest, beaches and cloud forests… There is so much to see and it’s hard to make a bad choice when looking for things to do in Costa Rica.  Two of my favorite spots on my trip were Tortuguero National Park and the Arenal Volcano. Turtuguero National Park and the Tortuga Lodge are reached by boat.  Tortuguero Nat. Park offers “water safaris”, my term for the guides boat tours of the park. where guides take you around on boats. Their eyes seem to work like binoculars as they are quickly able to spot the reptiles, birds, monkeys, caimens that are sitting, swinging, and swimming arounds the park.     THe lodges in and around the park are designed to be in harmony with the surroundings. The lodges are camp like in scale, but quite comfortable and romantic as well.

My other favorite spot was the Hotel Arenal Manoa.  Arenal is an active volcano. If you are there on a clear night as I was, you can see the hot lava streaming down the peak of its crater. It’s a pretty mesmerizing sight.  The area around the volcano is lovely. This hotel has a rural feel with rooms that are really small buildings in a rustic, farm setting. You can step our your room with your own little front lawn and look out at the volcano and surrounding nature. (you can also see the same view while sitting in the pool)It feels like you are invited to stay with a friend whose family has a home in costa rica with a guest house in their backyard.  The other nice the about this hotel is that is a good home base for other nearby adventures like hiking, horseback riding, atv riding, and zip-lines.  But really my favorite this about this spot is that its such a great place to pause in between adventures that it’s tempting to stay a while. An although there is much much more to Costa Rica that I have yet to explore, this is a spot that I can see myself returning to one day…