overclocked

I'm traveling to Costa Rica for a first trip with my wife and two teenage sons. We arrive on a late flight to LIR. We have 8 nights in country. I'm planning to rent a car. Does the itinerary below look reasonable?


Arrive LIR, stay night in LIR
Drive to Volcan Tenorio National Park in AM, hike and spend night in area
Drive to Monteverde in AM, stay 2 nights (1.5 days in Monteverde area)
Drive to Samara in AM stay 4 nights, drive Liberia in afternoon to catch late flight back home

Couple of questions:
Are my travel times reasonable?
-Couple hours LIR to Tenorio
-half day Tenorio to Monteverde
-Half day MV to Samara
-half day Samara to LIR

Am I trying to pack to much into 7 days for a first trip, is a day and a half enough time to see the highlights of Monteverde?

Suggestions of what to change? Better options?

I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks

uhoh_busted

You can do that. You might want a bit more time in Monteverde (according to my son, we didn't get there but our time schedule was dominated by dental work, so we only had 3 nights in Samara for vacation.) You can do a lot from both bases, though.

volcanogirl

We stayed three nights in Monteverde, but we could have done everything we wanted to in two. We did a guided hike in the reserve to see quetzals and other wildlife, went ziplining, and did a fun night hike at Hidden Valley. I'd say three nights if you want to relax a little and two if you want to pack it in. You might want to bring a sweatshirt; it was cold at night when we were there. Our hotel even had the fireplace going, and we saw a lot of people who has only brought shorts and short sleeved tops. We also had a lot of evening rain and were glad we had packed cheap rain ponchos.

overclocked

Suggestions on where to stay? We usually stay at hostel or budget lodging, not into the high end places.

Also thoughts on staying in Monteverde vs. Santa Elena.

Thanks

volcanogirl

We stayed at a place called Fonda Vela and liked it. We stayed in some of their newer junior suites and had a small frig and a bathtub which seemed kind of fancy for the area. We picked it because it's one of the hotels closer to the Reserve.