Costa Rica

Organising a year of travelling takes a lot of planning to work out where to go (taking into account everyone’s non-negotiable sights/locations), when to go, and what order to do everything. But sometimes, decisions are made a bit more randomly. We don’t need visas for Europe but can only spend 90 days out of every 180 days there and we have specific times we wanted to be there (due to aforementioned non-negotiables). This meant we had 12 days to “fill in” between NY and heading to France. We had tossed up a couple of locations but nothing was quite right. Then in July, Zara and I heard the morning host on the radio in the car on the way to school say that Costa Rica is one of the best places he’s ever visited…so when we got to school we immediately rang Logan and said “We’re going to Costa Rica”. And what an absolute treat Costa Rica turned out to be! We went there to warm up, chill out, and take each day as it came, and it exceeded our expectations at every turn. 

The Costa Ricans are so happy and kind and we felt so safe everywhere we went. Whilst some people spoke English, we were super grateful for Logan’s ability to speak enough Spanish to get us around (and help us all to learn some basics), and the Costa Ricans’ patience to understand us when he couldn’t find the right words. We were super impressed with the kids’ eagerness to use the words they learnt, always greeting and thanking people in Spanish, and using other words as they gained confidence.

We had 3 days in the capital city of San José – a vibrant, busy city. We thoroughly enjoyed walking around the city streets, visiting the markets filled with locals, and relaxing in the plazas and parks.

A highlight was an impromptu visit to the newly opened, purpose-built Central Fire Station. Despite just meeting us, the firefighters welcomed us onto the station like family. They talked amongst themselves to find the person who could speak the most English, and Michael then gave up more than an hour of his time to give us a full tour of the station.

Another highlight was a chocolate making workshop at La Casa del Cacao – a small business that makes artisan chocolate from bean to bar. It was fascinating to learn the time-consuming processes involved and we loved making our own “artisan chocolate”!

But the true highlight of our time in Costa Rica was the 8 perfect days we spent in the small village of Cahuita (pronounced Ca-wheat-tah) on the Caribbean Coast. Our Airbnb had been booked since July – a place that had seemed too good to be true, but in reality was everything and more! We found paradise!

Our garden was FILLED with creatures! Everywhere we looked were lizards, birds, spiders, flowers, frogs, agouti, butterflies, and even some resident sloths! We were woken early in the morning to the dawn chorus complimented by the bellows of the howler monkeys, and at night the sounds of frogs, owls and other nighttime creatures filled the air whilst bats flew through the night.

Cahuita National Park is a lush rainforest filled with an abundance of wildlife and bordered by pristine beaches! We saw so many different kinds of birds, lizards, insects, and crabs, plus howler monkeys, white-faced capuchins, racoons, agouti, sloths, turtles…

We caught the kids’ first tuk-tuk to Punta Uva beach from Puerto Viejo – a much busier beach but so very pretty.

Zara set us all an assignment one day to choose a Costa Rican animal to research and present to the family. We all took our assignment very seriously, and were delighted by the information we learnt from each other’s presentations. Zara researched the sloth, Lucas the eyelash pit viper, Logan the agouti, and Keryn the blue morpho butterfly. It was super cool to have a bit more knowledge when we saw ALL of these animals during our trip.

The Cahuita National Park closes at 4pm, but we did a night tour along the fence line with a very experienced guide.

Back in San José, we visited a butterfly garden filled with many varieties of butterflies and many blue morpho. It was wonderful to spend a few hours with them flittering around us!

Whilst we only saw a small fraction of what Costa Rica has to offer, we were beyond thrilled with the way, and where, we decided to spend our time. We all absolutely loved our Costa Rican adventure and are so glad to have given the kids a small experience of life in Central America.