Costa Rica Honeymoon Wrapup Blog

Hello friends!

Janessa and I have just returned from our week-long honeymoon in Costa Rica and are almost back in the swing of things. In the interest of sanity, I thought I'd write a nice long blog trip report for anyone to reference and save me telling the same stories 20x :)

We flew out at 12:45am Thanksgiving Morning from LAX. One stop in San Salvador then a plane change to fly to San Jose, Costa Rica, onto a local commuter flight to Quepos, right outside where we were staying, at San Manuel Antonio National Park. Oddly, we had to wait two hours or so for the commuter - a 20 min flight in a rickety old lil plane. Still, much faster than the 4.5 hour drive would have been.

Delirious and dying for showers and sleep, we finally arrived at our first hotel, Arenas Del Mar. This place was faaaantastic, PARADISE, amazing view of the beach from our suite's balcony (and the jacuzzi on said balcony), the place was insanely ecofriendly (solar panels, gave us biodegradable water bottles to keep so we wouldn't use regular bottles, and oh yea, despite being surrounded by forest, it was obvious their environmental impact was minimal). The service as this place was first rate. The people were incredibly warm, friendly and accomodating. I wrote a review of the hotel which you can look at on TripAdvisor here. Suffice it to say, despite Janessa's extensive food allergies and my own allergy to gluten, we didn't get even a little sick once. The chef spoke with us personally at nearly every meal and made sure everything we ate was safe (and delicious!)

We set our trip up through a tourist group called "Costa Rica Expeditions." They built us an itinerary of things to do over our short 7-day trip. We eliminated most of them as we wanted to spend a lot of the trip resting. Travel is exhausting enough without 12 hour tour days. Janessa and I hadn't had a real vacation in years, so we wanted to mainly relax.

The first day we went snorkeling in the ocean and saw tons of beautiful tropical fishes. This was in the morning and a lot of fun. We were done by 1pm - in time to enjoy a relaxing lunch at the hotel snack bar next to the beach and kill a few hours before we both went to the spa. I got a 60 minute hot stone massage, which I'd never had done before. It was good for my back and quite relaxing. Janessa got a scrub/wrap treatment that left her skin very soft and made her happy. Great first day.

Day two, early morning, we went on a tour of San Manuel Antonio park. There we saw many exotic animals and insects including white-faced monkeys, beautiful butterflies (they are everywhere), and lots of sloth - fitting for our mission on this trip! The park features some of the most amazing beaches in the world as well as all of the wild-life, so we had a lovely time. In the afternoon...you guessed it, lunch at the snack bar and really nothing much else but re-lax-ation. Beautiful.

Day three was a travel day. We checked out of our hotel in the morning to take a long car trip back to the San Jose area. Since I'd wanted to try zip-lining, we set up an aerial tram/zip-line thing at a place which was conveniently located almost equidistant between San Manuel and Hotel #2. Janessa was a little nervous, but once we got going, she had a great time. We were wayyy up in the canopy of the rain forest and had breathtaking views that I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten had we just stuck with the slow tram(which is kinda like the aerial trams at Disneyworld, if you're familiar with those). The day we went there were three cruise ships full of people filling up the place, so it was jammed - but all with retirees. Suffice it to say, we were the only people zip-lining and people thought we were crazy! (One lady yelled out to me "does your mother know you're doing this?") Skydiving is a LOT crazier, so this was a piece of cake.

Our guides for the day were with Costa Rica Expeditions and were great to us. One named Max, barely spoke english, but was amiable. He waited in the car during the zip-line. The other went zip-lining with us! I wish I could remember his name, he was a very cool guy. After the zip-line we had a nice lunch and long conversation with him. He'd traveled to many places in the US and all over the world and had great stories to tell. His job is basically traveling with tourists, helping them out, but also doing what they do - be it eating with them or going on the tour they go on. Not a bad deal!

After a long ride up to our next hotel, Finca Rosa Blanca (check the link!), we got settled in the dark. Our initial reception was not great. It was confusing, dark, and the reception chick was awful and completely useless to us. Admittedly, our first impression of the place was pretty grim. Once we checked out our room, we warmed a bit. We stayed in the master suite of the hotel, the best room, the Rosa Blanca Suite, a sprawling two story suite featuring an amazing tub (click the link for some pictures) and a winding staircase. The view from the mountains was breathtaking, we could see for miles. Not too bad.

Our next encounter with the staff was a very good one. The food service at this hotel was just as accommodating to us and our allergies as Arena Del Mar. The food was also - simply put, amazing. The chef quickly became our favorite person on this trip. His name is Rodrigo, and he is a rotund short man with glasses and a constant smile on his face. Jolly is the best word to describe him. He was lovely to us while at the same time a goofball. At the same time, every single thing he made was amazing, even after conforming to our restrictions. Janessa and I loved this guy and made sure the property owner knew it... great job

Our first full day Finca Rosa Blanca was great. Finca Rosa Blanca is adjacent to a coffee plantation owned by the property. We took a tour of the plantation - great timing as it was harvest season, so the coffee cherries were ripe - and were taken through the whole process from picking to processing. As a coffee lover, this was heaven for me, but Janessa loved the story too. That's at least in part because the farm was organic and sustainable, and we got to hear all the measures they'd put into place to prevent pests without using chemicals. Essentially, they plant trees more attractive to pests near the coffee, and do other similar things to great a synergistic environment where the coffee thrives. Awesome stuff, really.

At the end we did a coffee cupping. For those of you not familiar, it's similar to a wine tasting, but a bit more specialized. The idea is to compare cups of coffee objectively through intense palate analysis. Our great guide Leo explained to us the qualities of coffee on particular parts of the tongue, while we loudly slurped samples from a spoon and attempted to verbalize the smells and flavors we were experiencing. Janessa doesn't like coffee, so she didn't drink much of it, but I know we both enjoyed the palate stuff. The wife and I have become very interested in the sense of taste, through wine, cheese, chocolate, coffee, and other things, and are exploring it. But more on that in another blog!

The rest of the day was mellow. It was time for another spa day (what what!). This time, Janessa got the hot stone massage and I got the tiramisu which was a scented hot bath followed by
an "almond body exfoliation" after which you are "cocooned in amazing, warm and hydrating wrap" and given a facial. After that you clean off and get a full body massage. Sounds great, right?

Truthfully, it kinda sucked. The bath was great, but everything else was just weird weird weird. The dude "cocooned" me so tight I lost feeling in my pinky fingers on both hands which was very odd. Plus the "gentle" exfoliation hurt like crazy. It felt like the dude was trying to grind some cheese off my back! To top it off, for nearly the entire two hours the property's dogs barked like crazy, not just for a little bit, but loud as heck CONSTANTLY. Good luck relaxing through that.

Guess I'm not really a spa guy!

Anyway, Janessa loved her treatment so what can ya do.

The next day was our only full day tourist thingy. We went up early morning to go see an active volcano which was about a 2 hr drive away. We picked up a buncha people in a van in San Jose and trooped up there to Irazu. Unfortunately, it was so foggy up there we couldn't see anything. It was also freezing and windy and wet. Not the best time. But, all good, the rest of the day was nice. We saw a beautiful turn of the century catholic temple (right before mass started actually), an amazing botanical reserve with swweeet japanese tea gardens, lunched at a separate coffee plantation, and several other sites. Tiring, but a good time. The people in our group were really cool, all well-traveled and cosmopolitan. It worked out kinda interesting because they were from all-over. We were the only people from the US. Besides us, there was a couple from Lima, Peru, a gentleman from Slovakia, and a young man from Belgium. It made for fascinating lunch conversation.

The last day was to be mainly relaxing. Janessa only wanted to do one more thing - horseback riding. The hotel had that all set up internally so we went for that in the morning. This was the worst part of the whole trip. Despite our telling the guide that we had almost no experience riding horses, he put us on horses with almost no instruction then proceeded to take us over a ridiculously rough course - part of which was, according to him, "where they ride ATVs." I caught air like 20 times. It was insane. I messed up my back badly. Even worse I got a huge welt on my ass that is STILL THERE TWO WEEKS LATER (but mostly healed). Janessa had really bad bruises on her legs and couldn't even finish the ride. Shitty. But what can you do?

We wrapped up our day relaxing and enjoying ourselves. The next day we spent the morning at the hotel before heading to the airport. We took the time to thank Rodrigo and the awesome waitstaff, Louis and Andre and get some terrific pictures. We then toughed it out through the loooong trip home.

All in all, we had a fabulous time. A few shitty things happened, but not even close to enough to ruin the great things we saw, ate, time we spent together and general relaxation of it all. Now to look into that house in Costa Rica to retire to....