Advice on Costa Rica vacation
 

We are arriving in Liberia Costa Rica airport in early December. There are 8 of us, 3 middle aged adults (40-50), 3 children (16, 17, 18) and 2 senior citizens. We are renting a car and driving to the Arenal Volcano area, staying at Los Lagos Resort, for 3 nights then on to the eastern coast at the Flamingo Beach resort for 3 nights. Has anyone stayed at either of these resorts? What did you think of them and what should we do? Any driving advice from the airport to Los Lagos and driving from Los Lagos to Flamingo? Any suggestions for our trip would be appreciated. We do have the plan for breakfast each day and as I said we do have the privilege of a rental car.

We've been to the Arenal area bunches of times but have not stayed at Los Lagos. We've done pickups there when we've been on tours, and it looks like a nice hotel with a lot to do on the property. In the Arenal area, we like the waterfall hike, volcano hike, and the Hanging Bridges. For seeing wildlife, the Cano Negro boat tour and Penas Blancas river float. The natural hot springs are great - Tabacon if you want big and fancy or Eco Termales for smaller and charming. The Proyecto Asis animal rescue center is nice too. For adventure, ziplining at Sky Trek, tubing at The Springs Resort, waterfall rappelling with La Roca, and rafting with Rios Tropicales. You can check Desafio and Sunset Tours for others tours; both are very good. If anyone in your group has a tendency to get car sick, I'd recommend taking Dramamine before you head out to La Fortuna. The roads are quite winding with a lot of ups and downs. You can go through some areas with dense fog depending on the weather. The roads are in good shape.

Volcanogirl, thank you so much for the info. We will not be bored at the hotel. We will try to do as many of the tours as we can. We are getting quite excited. Costa Rica sounds like a great place!!

At what time are you arriving on the first day?

kap, yes, we love it. Tons of cool places to see - we keep going back! The people are really friendly too. And it's beautiful, except San Jose not so much.

We are arriving at 1 pm.

By the way I goofed!! We are headed to the Western shore, the Flamingo.

We stayed at Flamingo beach resort in 2010 and liked it. The breakfast was a buffet with made to order too (omelets etc.). The beach is great. There are other places to eat that you can walk to or Tamarindo can be driven to, didn't seem too far.

Thanks everyone for the advice!! We plan to do as much as we can and are really looking forward to our trip.