michaeldglantz

My wife & I (30 & 27) are planning a trip in Feb/March 2018 to Costa Rica for 10 days 9 nights. From the forum, I found picking 3 locations to be ideal for this time period. Upon review of what we want to do, we have chosen
1. cloud forest/Volcano
2. Pacific Beach side of the country (Gulf of Papagayo)
3. Manuel Antonio.

I would like some help on fixing any holes in our planning as we have never been and I don't know how realistic this itinerary is or if we are overachieving.

We will first arrive at Liberia airport and would like to spend the first 3-4 days vegetating on the beach at an all inclusive(Secrets, The Westin, ?) preferably with a great selection of food options and all you can drink. Considering we would not be leaving the hotel we will not rent a car for this portion until we plan to leave this area. Some of the activities we would like to do on the beach are kayaking and snorkeling. After leaving the all inclusive we would then rent a car and drive to Monteverde/La Fortuna and spend 3 days in the cloud forest (Nayara or Tabacon or any other great places you recommend) to zipline and do the hanging bridges and visit the hot springs. We would then return the car at the nearest location by the local airline runway.

Then take a local plane ride from La Fortuna to Manual Antonio ($72 per person on Sansa Airline website) as we would prefer not to drive 4+ hours as we will be doing a ton of other driving throughout the trip. Upon arrival rent a car and spend 2 nights in this area exploring and sign up for kayaking if this area is better then before and/or whale watching (any activity advice will be great). Then drive to San Jose for 2 nights 3 days where I would spend one of these whole days taking a tour/trip to Rio Pacuare to white water raft and the last day checking out to return the car and arrive at the San Jose airport for departure on day 10. In total 9 nights, 3 on the beach, 2 in cloud forest, 2 in Antonio and 2 in San Jose.

I'm not stuck on any idea or plan I would just like to accomplish the following on our trip so any combination or itinerary that gets these done im open to:

1. White Water Rafting on Pacuare

2. Stay at an All Inclusive on the Beach

3. Visit Cloud Forest and Volcano/Hot Springs

4. Zipline on SkyTrek

5. Kayak in Ocean

6. Whale Watch

7. Rio Celeste/Waterfall Hikes

Thank you very much and I look forward to hearing your opinion.

MichelleY

I can't help with the beach portion at the beginning of your trip. Monteverde and La Fortuna are two separate areas to be visited of several days each. Not an easy day trip as it takes 3 or so hours between the two on very bumpy roads. Idk if it is worth flying down to MA, but do more research on this.

mabella101

Correct, I was confused with your post as you are linking monteverde and Arenal together, and they are 2 separate areas. We just got back from A similar trip. 10 days as well. Starting with 4 nights in Manuel Antonio, 2 nights in Monteverde, 2 in Arenal and 1 in Sanjose for an early morning flight. You don't have time to do both the beach in Guanacaste and Manuel Antonio, so since you are flying into Liberia stick with the ones near there. Yes driving into Monteverde is very time consuming and not for the faint hearted, but I absolutely recommend it. The views are stunning. We stayed at Casa Batsu. Carlos was very helpful setting up tours for us and can help with directions and recommendations. We can recommend the Salvaturra company for zip lining and hanging bridges. They have a few other attractions which we did not see, but there are many similar companies in the area to choose from. No one in my group enjoyed the night hike. Could have been the fact that it was pouring or that our guide was awful but definitely wouldn't try this again.
From Monteverde it took us exactly 3 hours to get to Arenal. Since its just you and your wife I would choose Nayara (I haven't been) but spoke to someone that was staying there and they raved about it. We drove by tabacon numerous times since its on the main road, since they sell day packages, it was always very crowded outside. I can't imagine how it must have been on the inside. Right next to Nayara is Puretreck.i highly recommend them for repelling. We all loved our tour and would do it again in a second.
Regarding rafting on the Rio Pacuare, not sure where you would fit this in.unless you leave out Monteverde. I know it's a good deal since their price includes pu in Arenal. We couldn't fit it in and ended up rafting the Rio savegre which was lovely and closer to our hotel.
Hope this helps.

volcanogirl

Nayara and Tabacon are both nice, but they aren't in the cloud forest. For that, you'd have to go to Monteverde, and you don't really have time this trip. Nayara and Tabacon are in the La Fortuna/Arenal area - very jungly. We've stayed at Nayara and thought it was great. We've only visited the hot springs at Tabacon, but they're elaborate and gorgeous. The Rio Celeste hike is about two hours from the Arenal area - the blue waterfall is beautiful. Don't bother if it's been raining though because the water gets muddy and loses its beautiful hue.

Manuel Antonio is a Pacific beach destination, so if it were me, I'd visit either there or Papagayo but not both. We love Tulemar Bungalows there; they have free use of kayaks and their own beach. Not all inclusive but plenty of good open air restaurants with sunset views that you can walk to. We love Manuel Antonio Expeditions for the Damas Mangrave Tour and a guided tour of the national park - tons of wildlife in the area. Monkeys galore.