I�ll start this off to say that I worried before vacation � and it was all unnecessary.

I worried that the roads would be bad and we would regret renting a car. Not true. It was perfect for us.

I worried that the car I rented (i.e., Toyota Corolla) wouldn�t be big enough for our family of four plus luggage. Not true. I also worried that our rental price which seemed �too good� (i.e., $159 total before insurance for 8 days) wouldn�t be honored. Not an issue.

I worried that I wouldn�t feel safe due to the warnings about crime including the flat tire scam. Not true.

I worried that the hotel arrangements � all made by me via the internet � wouldn�t be there waiting for us. Not a problem!

All in all, we had a great time. Basically, our trip was as follows:
� Manuel Antonio � 3 nights at Hotel Parador; dinner at the hotel, at El Avion and at Rico Tico (Hotel Si Como No); Tour of MA Park with Juan Brenes of Aguilla Tours; Church at Quepos on Easter Sunday; great sunny warm weather
� Arenal � 3 nights at Lost Iguana; dinner at Don Ruffino�s, La Choza de Laurel and Rancho La Cascada; horseback ride to La Fontuna Caterra; Hanging Bridges, hiking on the Lost Iguana property; unfortunately � no clear volcano view during the trip; mostly cloudy but still warm
� Peace Lodge � 2 nights; dinner at Peace Lodge and Colberts; La Paz waterfall gardens; great sunny weather with an evening shower the first night

I�ll tell you about it in three parts representing our three destinations.

First Stop – Manuel Antonio!

Let me tell you a bit about us. We are a family of four – me (Mom), dad, and our two teenaged daughters – 15 and 17. We have been taking family vacations each year over our Easter break. (Not the cheapest time to travel – but a time when we all want and need to get away without missing school!) We are from the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) area but traveled this time from Chicago. We almost didn’t make it out of Chicago… we had a 7:40 am flight on Good Friday – and snow storm was on its way. We looked up at the board and saw that most flights had been cancelled… but ours said “On Time”! From what we could tell, we were the last flight out. We later learned that we got 14 inches at home that day – but we were long gone by then.

Our arrival was pretty uneventful – we cleared customs easily and even bought our departure tax before we left the airport. We shuttled over the Thrifty and rented our car and were on our way.

The drive to Manuel Antonio was about 3 hours. We had a good map (National Geographic) and didn’t get lost. We didn’t make any stops on this trip since we were rather anxious to arrive. Our oldest daughter was a bit queasy due to the winding roads. But all in all, it was a good trip.

We arrived at nightfall at the Hotel Parador. It was a great spot for our family. Our room was fairly spacious and centrally located. We had dinner at the hotel that first night and it was good. The buffet type breakfast was also good and included omelets or pancakes made to order. The pool area was beautiful. On the last day, a troop of squirrel monkeys came to the pool – they sat on tables and chairs quite close to the guests. The hotel staff said that they used to come often, but this was the first time in several months that they’d been back.

We had dinner at El Avion one night. I couldn’t resist going there – especially since the sister plane (to the one at the El Avion restaurant) was used in the Iran/Contra affair. Eugene Hasenfus, the person who was captured by the Sandinistas after parachuting from his plane was from my small home town of Marinette Wisconsin. (Okay, most people in my hometown thought he was a ‘nut’, but that’s another story.) Anyway, the food was actually quite good and the service was just fine.

Our last meal was from Rico Tico at Hotel Si Como No. It was a very good meal as well. We tried the bruschetta (thumbs up from everyone) as well as mahi mahi, a great salad with chicken and hearts of palm and the specialty dessert – Banana’s Foster.

We had a great hike through Manuel Antonio Park with Juan Brenes. We met with Juan at 1pm after lunch. This allowed us to lounge by the pool after breakfast in the morning before getting up and ready to go. Juan assured me that we wouldn’t miss out on any animal sightings (by going in the afternoon instead of the morning) and he delivered on that promise. I’ll do a separate write up on what we saw – including the crocodile that was swimming in the surf at the third beach in the park - but if you are interested in a great, knowledgeable guide, I’d highly recommend Juan. He can be reached at <juan luis brenes alvarado> [email protected].

What surprised me?
• How mountainous the country is – and how windy the roads are. Parts of the drive from the airport to Manuel Antonio reminded me of the “Road to Hana” (Hawaii).
• There were NO street signs or even highway signs. This was more of an issue later in the trip. We had some good directions (Thank you Luis/RoadAdvisor!) so we were fine.
• There we no potholes – except on the road/driveway to Hotel Parador. That road was horrible. I was basically expecting al roads to be bad.
• The busses were all clean and new. (Okay, we didn’t ride the bus – but we definitely noticed from the outside.) They put our local buses to shame!
• There were no monkeys at Costa Verde! We went over to see if we could spot any – especially since their slogan is “Still more monkeys that people” – but there wasn’t one in sight. Another traveler who stayed there indicated that they didn’t see any their entire visit.
• There was free wireless internet at ALL of our hotels. The girls especially like to get in their 15 minutes of instant messaging and FaceBook time each day.

What would I do different from this part of our trip?
• I would have stayed here for another day. I know that many people think that a couple of days here are plenty, but for our family, we could have used another day of sunshine or beach time. (We didn’t do any pool time at either of the other two locations we visited.) If we were here longer, I might have done a sunset tour or snorkel boat ride or some other excursion.

wow what luck getting out on one of the last flights! Sounds like, so far, all the worry was for naught! Look forward to the rest.

Great report so far Lynne!

Sounds like your family enjoyed MA.

We toured the national park with Mario Brenes 2 years ago (Juan's brother) and had a great time!

I'm excited to hear El Parador is an enjoyable place. We will be staying there at Thanksgiving time. Sure hope squirrel monkeys join us at the pool! We've only experienced howler monkeys in trees overhead at a beach bar. Tree leaves must have a lot of fiber.

Thanks for a wonderful trip report.

Can't wait to hear the rest, Lynne! So glad you have reassured other posters who have some of those same fears. Seems everytime someone posts a horror story, all those planning a trip for the first time get queasy (understandably so). I can't imagine any trip to Costa Rica being ALL that bad, although I know that sometimes things do happen. Hard for me to believe one person has so many bad experiences when so many others report none at all--time after time!

I'd love to hear more about your Easter Sunday in Quepos. I can't imagine missing church on Easter Sunday, although on our visits during the summer, we don't usually seek out a church on Sunday a.m., certainly not our habit when home! We should be more intentional about that as the cultural experience would be interesting. We are United Methodists, and I have only seen about 3 in our travels around the country. I've seen many more of the more evangelical churches, Assembly of God, etc. And quite a few 7th Day Adventists.

I remember standing outside the door of a little church in Manzanillo (Caribbean side) one Sunday night and listening to the gospel music from inside.

Can't wait to read more! Thanks for taking the time. . .

Shillmac - Our Easter church experience was interesting. On other trips to Spanish speaking countries, we've typically been able to find an English mass for Easter - but not this trip. The only Catholic Church was in Quepos. It had high windows without glass with no air conditioning, but was very comfortable. We had two times to pick from on Easter. Since our teen daughters like to sleep in, we opted for the 6pm service over the 9am service. The church was full as you'd expect on Easter - and although I only speak the important spanish words (i.e., por favor, gracious, margarita, pura vida), I didn't really understand much. I did enjoy secretly checking out the other church goers... seeing what they wore, wondering about their lives, etc. The bulk of the participants appeared to be ticos, however, we did see several folks from our hotel or others that appeared to be Americans. At the end of the service, the priest asked one of the parishioners to come up and give a message in English. The speaker indicated that the priest apologized for not speaking English but really wanted to welcome us. I was honored by his effort and message. For us, going to Easter Sunday service on vacation has become a tradition. It's always interesting to compare customs and churches.

I hope to finish the remainder of my trip report in the next day or so!

Cmerrell - That's interesting that Juan has a brother in the travel guide business. I asked Juan how he became a tour guide. He started working at age 11 in a restaurant. By 15, he was a waiter but decided he wanted to work in the outdoors that he loves. He went through a three year program to become a certified guide. I was intrigued that it took as long as it does - but if you think about how knowledgable you'd have to be - about animals, habitats, plants, birds, etc. - especially with so much variety in Costa Rica - 3 years makes sense. Juan, although still a young man, now owns his own business. (I got the sense that it's somewhat like a francise rather than that all of the tour guides from Aguilla tours shirts worked for Juan.) Juan did express concern over whether the US was going into recession. He indicated that about 80% of the tourists in Manuel Antonio are from the US and he is obvously dependent on their travel to make his living. All in all, we had a very interesting day with Juan.

What a great story. I can imagine you HAVE had some interesting Easters. Like you, we would enjoy the experience of worshipping with other cultures. Hope you find it soon!

Hi Lynne,

We met Juan Brenes very briefly while we were touring MA nat'l park with Mario. Juan was taking some other folks through the park that day...

Mario also went through a college program to become a guide and was dating a very cute girl who was finishing up a college degree in zoology. He definitely seemed like an enterprising young man with a good work ethic and a genuine love of animals and his country.

We actually did both the national park tour and the Damas mangrove tour with him. When I expressed disappointment that we had not seen any Squirrel Monkeys in MA, he offered to help us find them on his afternoon off. He made a deal with us that if he could locate a troop of the little monkeys, we would tip him whatever we thought was fair for his efforts. He delivered on his end of the bargain and threw in a short hike to find us a poison dart frog to boot! We tipped him handsomely and told him to share the money with his adorable girlfriend Katya who accompanied us on the excursion.

At one point he and Juan had a website: www.aguilatours.com

Looks like they must be revamping it because I can't get to it now but do get a "coming soon" message.

I'll remember Mario for a long time, and it sounds like Juan is equally memorable!

I enjoyed your Easter Sunday account as well.

Glad that you all had great experiences to report about the Brenes brothers and your time in Manuel Antonio Beach.

I just wanted to contribute a bit of info about AGUILA. Aguila is not a private company but an association of independent tour guides. That is why they all wear the same type of shirt.

It took them years to get organized and now they are enjoying the benefits that the recognition of the name and uniform brings.

Thank you Lynne for a great trip report. I look forward to reading about the rest of your trip.

I am in the planning stages of an August trip to CR with my family of 4 (daughters 18 & 23). The itinerary I am considering is the same as yours. I did not know what order to plan my itinerary due to the distances between MA, Arenal, Peace Lodge and the airport in San Jose. My tentative plan was Peace Lodge, Arenal, MA. Obviously, I want to maximize my time in each area. Any suggestions you might have would be greatly appreciated. We plan an 8 night stay.
Should we stay in San Jose the night before our departure?

How did you book your hotels on the internet...with the hotel website or other websites?

Molc54 - We originally wanted the trip in the reverse order - starting with Peace Lodge, Arenal and then Manuel Antonio. We would have preferred that order - saving our beach days until the end. However, we had to change because of hotel availability at Peace Lodge. The advantage of Peace Lodge at the end, however, was that we could arrive at the airport in enough time thus eliminating a San Jose night. So... it really depends on when your flight home leaves. Ours didn't leave till 230. If you have a morning flight, Manuel Antonio is too far away. We planned to be at the airport 3 hours early - to give us some extra time - and we got slightly lost so we were there 2 1/2 hours early instead. If you came from MA to the airport, you might have to wait at the one way bridges for your 'turn' to pass - and I've heard horror stories of waiting up to an hour at a single bridge. That would be too much stress for me if we were trying to make a flight.

I did book all hotels over the internet - using the hotel websites rather than an expedia or travelocity. It worked just fine.

Second Stop – Arenal!

As you may recall, we are a family of four (girls 15 and 17). We decided that we’d rather “chill by the pool” a bit before the anticipated 5 hour drive to Arenal. We all enjoyed the hotel (Parador) and by sticking around, we enjoyed our breakfast, we got some extra sun and got to see the troop of monkeys I mentioned earlier. We left the hotel around 11:30am. We made a stop at Café Milagro before leaving town and picked up a couple of souvenirs including some coffee beans. Our next stop was the Tarcoles bridge to see the crocodiles. We heard several warnings about parking in a spot where we could see our car because there had been cars broken into in the area. We were fortunate to park right in front of the stores just north of the bridge and felt safe. On the other side of the bridge, there were police monitoring the area. It seemed to me that the authorities recognized the problems and are dealing with it by inserting police presence – a good thing! It was great to see the crocodiles in their native habitat. If we had more time, we might have considered a trip on the river with the “crocodile man” whose brochure was in one of the nearby stores. I read postings of another travel who enjoyed this immensely.

There are a couple other things that I want to mention about the drive between San Jose and Manuel Antonio. First – there are a lot of emergency vehicles parked along the road. The two person crew was sitting on chairs alongside each vehicle. It seemed like there was a vehicle every 20 miles. We later asked why there were so many and were told that there are a lot of accidents and it’s more efficient to have them parked in various locations rather than to only dispatch them when an accident occurs. The other thing I want to mention is the one way bridges. They are all over Costa Rica – however, the most nerve wracking types were on this stretch of road. They appeared to be old train bridges that are now used for cars. Yikes! One side is marked to yield and they basically have to wait until either all traffic from the other side has passed or until someone decides to give the other folks a break. We happened to be on the ‘good’ side of the bridge where there was traffic – and I counted the cars waiting on the other side. There were at least 30 waiting. We made it a point to flow with the car in front of us.

One other thing I almost forgot – there were symbols painted on the road that we couldn’t figure out. They looked like a heart with a halo over it – all in a square. Does anyone know what those are?

The rest of the drive was just fine with lots of great scenery. We had contemplated a side trip to Grecia or Sarchi – but since we started late, we wanted to try to arrive in Arenal by nightfall so we skipped the side trip. It was dark when we arrived. We started heading toward the Lost Iguana (which is past the town of La Fortuna), but decided we should stop for dinner first and then go to the hotel so we turned around and went back to town. We stopped at Don Ruffino’s (which we enjoyed) just in time for a down pour. It stopped about the time we were finished with our meal and then we headed to the hotel. We arrived in the dark – which seems to be a common thing for us on vacation. We could tell the grounds were lush – but couldn’t really see them until the next morning.

Our room at Lost Iguana was nice – but since we had two beds, we couldn’t really see the volcano from our bed like the rooms with one bed do. The included breakfast was buffet style and was fairly good – but nothing special. We didn’t eat dinner at Lost Iguana as we heard that it wasn’t very good.

As we suspected, when we saw the grounds the next morning, they were lush. There are several hiking trails on the property and we enjoyed them as well as the ‘magnolia maze’. The hotel has a gold cart that will pick you up and transport you to the restaurant, front office, spa, if you’d like, but we never used it. There were walking trails between the buildings as well. I was glad that our kids were well beyond the “carry me” phase (okay – that was at least ten years ago!) here and at the other locations we visited.

Unfortunately, we never got to really ‘see’ the volcano. It was cloud covered during our entire stay. Lost Iguana is on the side that the lava is currently flowing and if the lava is not visible prior to 11pm, but becomes visible during the night, the hotel will give you a “wake up call” to take a look. We were disappointed that there was no visibly even over night.

We didn’t let that spoil our fun. The first day, we took the afternoon horseback ride to the La Fortuna falls. It was a nice trail ride and the falls were beautiful. Just to note – the horses are ‘parked’ while the riders hike down the trial to the falls. The kids and my husband went swimming in the COLD water and then we hiked back up. It’s a fairly steep hike with a well maintained trail (including steps and a railing). They go through a couple of streams. The total trip was one hour riding, one hour at the falls and another hour riding back. I thought the price was reasonable - $35pp that included transportation from Lost Iguana.

The following day, we went to the Hanging Bridges. Lost Iguana sells slightly discounted tickets so our family of four paid $60 to get in. We all enjoyed this activity as well. We saw monkeys and lots of fascinating vegetation on the trails. There were some places that I could tell had great views of the volcano – but we mostly saw clouds.

The one thing that disappointed us about Lost Iguana was that the bathroom had a bad musty smell. In fact, the girls’ swimsuits smelled horrible even after they dried two days later. Other than that, the property was great. There was a small workout room, a spa (that we didn’t try), and the grounds were beautiful. It was about 10 – 15 minutes outside of town, but with our car, we didn’t mind. The other hotels that I read about didn’t seem to be nearly as nice with the possible exception of Tabacon – which looked very crowded because of the associated hot springs.

In the end, we never did a hot springs. We thought about it several times, but it sounded like something that our family would just be “okay” with – rather than excited about - so we decided to skip it. We didn’t do a zip line either – but only because we had done one in Hawaii before. If we hadn’t, we’d definitely try it here.

We did enjoy our time in Arenal – even without really seeing the volcano!

Please feel free to ask questions.

Welcome back, Lynne! I can't believe you guys saw a croc at Manuel Antonio - wow! Sorry you didn't get to see the volcano in Arenal; we are big fans of the Lost Iguana, and one of the things we loved was the view. Regarding the musty smell, we ran our ac to get rid of it, and that seemed to do the trick for us. I think it's from all the moisture in the air. Loved hearing about Fortuna Falls - we didn't get a chance to do it on our last trip. Looking forward to more... Sounds like you guys had a great trip!

Thanks for all the info Lynne. Another great report. I really appreciate the advice about returning to the airport from MA.

Was the beach access easy at Hotel Parador? We are looking at Parador or Tulemar Bungalows in MA.

Did you book 2 units for your family of 4 or only 1 room? Are the accomodation fees per person or per room?

Molc54 - I wouldn't call the beach access from Parador "easy". There is a muddy trail to the beach. We visited the public beach but really didn't swim in the surf. I guess we're more of a 'pool' family. We do love looking at the beach though...

We stayed in one room with two queen beds at both Parador and at Lost Iguana. Since our teens are sisters, that worked fine for us.

We also had just one room at Peace Lodge. (I'll get to that part of the trip report in the next couple of days.) For that room, we had a king bed and the girls each had a cot.

Dear LynneL

I am enjoying your report. We never saw the top of the volcano on our trip last November, but got to see the hot rock coming down on our last evening.

My guide book indicated the halo/heart on the road is where a road fatality has taken place. Just a reminder to be careful.

I am glad you had a great time. We really enjoyed MA also.

MY

MichelleY - Thanks for clearing up the mystery on the heart/halo. I enjoyed reading your trip report before I went to Costa Rica!

Third Stop – Peace Lodge

Finally – the last leg of my trip. Sorry for the delay on getting this written.

We left Arenal mid day on Thursday and began our drive. It really wasn’t bad at all – although once again, the roads weren’t marked. We took one bad turn but realized pretty quick and retraced our steps. The ride was about two hours.

Just before we arrived at the lodge, we stopped for a view of the La Paz Waterfall. It’s right on the main road and is just beautiful. There are a couple of vendors selling typical trinkets, but we bypassed them and headed to the lodge.

The lodge is in a beautiful setting. The reception area is high on a hill and looks down to a lush green valley. The rooms are on the hill as well and the La Paz Waterfall Gardens is down at the bottom. We loved our room. It was exactly as picture on their web site – a king sized canopy bed, a working fireplace, a beautiful balcony with a hot tub, and a fantastic oversized bathroom with a shower, waterfall and another hot tub. The room also included a DVD player. The reception area had a lending library of about 200 titles and we borrowed one each night.

We really did a great job hitting the weather just right here. When we arrived, it was warm and sunny. We explored the grounds and returned to the room just in time to avoid the afternoon rain shower. We decided to try to night time frog tour and we all enjoyed it. We got some great pictures of the nocturnal colorful frogs. After the tour, we decided to try the Peace Lodge restaurant. You can either have a fixed price meal that includes soup, appetizer, entrée and dessert or you can order ala carte. My husband and I ordered the full meal and my teen daughters ordered just an entrée. We shared the soup and appetizers but still had too much food to eat dessert. They wrapped it up for us and we brought it back to the room. In the end, we didn’t think the price was outrageous, but it wasn’t cheap either!

The next day, we enjoyed a breakfast buffet and explored the grounds. Again, we had a beautiful, sunny day until the late afternoon rain. The grounds are truly fantastic and all the more enjoyable in the morning before the busloads of tourists arrive. The main attractions are an aviary, a butterfly house, a small monkey area, a hummingbird garden (with more hummingbirds than I’ve even seen in my life), a wild cat area (more like a zoo exhibit), a snake house, a frog house and the hiking trails to the waterfalls. In the afternoon, there were wild capuchin monkeys in the trees just outside of the monkey area… I got the sense they were taunting the monkeys in cages. (It made me kind of sad.) We named one of the small cats “Growler”. He was about the size of our cats at home, yet growled (not meowed) loudly any time a person got near his cage.

Mid afternoon, we enjoyed a snack at the Trout Bar next to the pond. Again, this was a beautiful setting. For dinner, we decided to venture out to Colbert’s. I had read a couple people’s review of this French restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Most everyone said they had great food but the restaurant was empty… and that was our experience as well. It was a one man show – the person who greeted us took our order, served our food, and was the chef. In between, he washed dishes. A second party of four came in during our meal and they seemed to enjoy themselves as well. The restaurant was larger than I expected with at least 15 tables with white tables clothes and lots of wine on display. We were offered menus in French, Spanish or English. The food was very good and very reasonable.

On Saturday, we started our journey home. We had a 2:30pm flight so we enjoyed breakfast, fed the hummingbirds one more time and checked out by 10:30. We took one more wrong turn on our drive (heading toward Poas Volcano by mistake), but quickly recognized our error and made the correction. Remember – there are virtually no road signs anywhere to help you make your way. All in all, despite the bad turns, I thought we did pretty well… until we arrived in Alejuela which is where the airport is. I thought “Of course there will be signs to the airport” but there weren’t. We stopped twice for directions and tried our best to translate the Spanish into English. We finally arrived at the rental car return around 11:45. The lines at the airport were reasonable and we sat around for more than an hour at the gate before our flight boarded.

We had a great time in Costa Rica and took hundreds of pictures. I’ll try to get a subset posted to share.

Fee free to ask questions!

Lynne