I flew about 70,000 miles on Alaska Airlines in 2015 and one day while flying home from somewhere I saw that they were now flying to Costa Rica.  We had been looking for somewhere different to go for our Spring Vacation and had been talking about Tahiti but it was a bit high priced for our budget, then this ad showed up in the in air magazine. Decision made…Costa Rica here we come.  We decided to go to Jaco vs the more touristy Tamarindo area.  We flew into San Jose and our hotel had arranged transportation to Jaco, we had to take the scenic route due to an accident so it was pretty much a one lane road for about 2 hours but it was so beautiful that we stopped along the way for a couple of pictures.

We stayed at the Beach Break Resort, it is not fancy but the rooms were very clean, the staff was amazing especially when a creepy crawly sneaks in your room and needs to be removed! Pool bar was great and the beach was lovely.  We are not surfers but if you are then this is a great hotel to stay at, very low-key surfer vibe here.  It is also walking distance to town. We walked in every afternoon to the other end of town (about a 4 mile round trip walk) to Cafe Del Mar (no website) for the most amazing iced latte, as you can see by the pic we needed to walk off the calories. We tried a number of different restaurants in town but by far our favorite was Lemon Zest you must try the Buffalo Lobster Bites, we ordered a special of the day entree each time we went and it was always delish. Dessert every night was at Mariscan Gelato (we loved this gelato but especially loved the girl who worked there so we gave a nice tip on our last night in town, seeing her smile so big made our day).

We did a couple of fun adventures while we were there.  We rented a car and drove down to see the Monkeys in the Mangroves. We did the boat tour but you can also rent kayaks.  We were there off season (March) so didn’t end up going to Manuel Antonio Park (a few people at our hotel went but didn’t see much which is why we made our decision to not go) but if we went back in a different season we would definitely go there. More pics of the monkeys on the picture pages.

A bunch of people at our hotel had rented ATV’s and drove up into the mountains. Their main complaint was having to go slower than they wanted because of not knowing the terrain and they came back covered in mud from all the dust and humidity.  We wanted to avoid both of these so instead we hired a guide to drive us in an ATV…best decision. We went soooo fast (quick video here) and did not get muddy at all. We stopped to swim in the river, had lunch at a little restaurant in the town where our guide lived.  It was a great day.

My favorite adventure we had was the waterfall repelling tour, I am not able to find the exact tour we took but this is pretty close to what we did. I do recommend the morning tour as the afternoon was gets really hot and humid (be aware of heatstroke). It is a pretty good hike up to the waterfalls (keep in mind I am not a great hiker but I made it to the top).  Along the way our guide stopped and asked if we wanted to try to eat a termite, I was the first to say yes and so he put a few on my finger. They are very tiny and taste like an earthy flavored mint.  Only one other person from our group ate one and that is because he and I had a friendly competition going by that point. The other insect we saw on pretty much every section of hiking were leaf cutter ants walking in  lines across the trails and up/down trees.  One line carries leaves up to 5 times their weight while the other line is going back to get more leaves. We took a 200 foot zipline to the where we would be rappelling down three sections waterfalls that totaled about 300ft in all. I had worn my scuba boots and while not the best for hiking they worked great at repelling. At the bottom was my favorite part that they call a Monkey Drop, this is usually kept a secret so I will just say I could have done that part over and over. After that we hiked about 20 minutes to our next zipline and then on to our final zipline that was a half mile long (yes you read that correctly 2640ft or 200meters). At the end we were treated to juice and fresh pineapple.  What an amazing day!!!

Happy Travels!