We spent 5 nights & 6 days in Manuel Antonio & after our day of surfing, we spent the rest of the trip relaxing. We pretty much did the same thing every day - breakfast, beach/pool, dinner. Repeat!
The kids spent a lot of time in the water body boarding, they tumbled, they made sandcastles & I read. It never gets old!
The high tide came in every afternoon & literally would wash us away! I mean every morning we would set up our chairs on the beach, I would be totally relaxed & before I knew it, the tide swept me away! My friend was taking a video of the kids boarding when a wave came & got me. I literally grabbed my bag, held it above my head & started screaming. Not in a bad way, but in a funny way. So I tried to capture the moment on camera one time to remember it:
Every night we went into town with our friends. I think this was probably the favorite of the group:
While we were eating dinner, we saw a couple come in change into fancy outfits & before we knew it, they were dancing for our entertainment! They even changed outfits a couple of times. The girls loved it:
Another fun surprise about this resort - they had games everywhere. In our room, in the lobby - so we grabbed their version of Uno & played every single morning at breakfast:
Our last full day there, our friends left so we grabbed a few pictures with them before they headed out:
Then we did what we do best & headed back down to the beach!
We had a beautiful morning but the rain blew in after lunch so we headed up to our room early & we spent our final afternoon reading & relaxing on our balcony while the girls swam in our hot tub:
We stayed at the hotel for our last evening there. The girls wanted another movie night because Zombies 3 had just came out so Bryan & I enjoyed our final date just the 2 of us before we had to head home:
Another couple of fun photos from our trip - we rode the golf carts a lot so I finally took a picture of the kids to document that they did exist:
The staff was awesome! Since it was a small resort, we really got to know everyone, especially the lifeguards down by the private beach. They did a painting craft for the girls one day & another day they set up a bracelet station while it was raining:
They had a complimentary laundry service. I am very particular about my laundry & how it is done so I did not take advantage of it but Bryan did before we left so he came home with a clean suitcase:
The food was amazing, especially breakfast:
I took tons of pictures of all of our meals because I wrote a food review & posted it to one of my travel websites before we left, but I won't post them all here. I will brag about the fried shrimp because I have only had that once at a restaurant since I have been gf & that was in Mexico. This time they used potato flakes:
Another favorite from this part of the trip - the animals! We paid good money to see animals in Monteverde & hardly did, then we gothere & we saw them in the wild every single day! We learned to mostly identify them or spot them when he heard their sounds, such as the parrot, toucan & the macaws:
That toucan was loud & woke me up one morning. I heard him, ran to the porch & was able to spot him from our balcony. We also saw a ton of lizards & iguanas, specifically the Jesus Christ Lizard, which is named that because he can walk on water. What?!
We were so excited to finally see sloths! We saw multiple sloths every single day. They like to stay way up high in the trees so most of the time the employees would point them out to us. We have an awesome video showing how slow they really do move:
But our favorite were the white face monkeys. We saw them the most, everywhere. On our villa, by the pool, at breakfast - they were so fun to watch!
These sneaky little things are incredibly smart! They told us to be careful & make sure we shut & lock the door every single time we left or the monkeys would get our stuff. Yeah right, we thought they were kidding. Our first day there, while the kids were swimming in the lobby pool, we were so excited to see monkeys for the first time! They were actually climbing by the pool & up to our villa. Before we knew it, they were on our friend's balcony above us & we could tell they were eating something - come to find out the monkeys opened their screen door, then their regular door, went into their kitchen, grabbed a glass jar, took off the lid, stole one of the sugar packets & went back outside to eat them. They would literally tear them open, throw the sugar in their mouth, then dump the packet & grab another one. It was hilarious & we have a lot of videos of it happening:
That was really one of our favorite parts about this resort was getting to see the animals!
I know I have been blogging about Costa Rica for the past week, but here are my final few points for those who are interested. We went during the rainy season & it rained a lot. Like every day! But it was usually later in the afternoon or evening & didn't last too long. Our final morning there was the worse it had been the entire trip. We couldn't even see the rock formations out in the ocean from our bed:
For the most party, their diet is naturally gluten free so we were able to eat most places. They eat a lot of rice, beans & plantains, which I love. But we had a hard time finding dessert anywhere. We didn't have ice cream our entire trip because all of it had gluten in it. I have a sweet tooth so I am going to have to start traveling with a hershey kiss or something!
The country is so underdeveloped in so many areas & it is beautiful! Very mountainous & green. You feel like you are in a rain forest most of the time. The beaches are brown, almost black, but they have a volcano there, so that makes sense. But the sand feels great & it was not rocky at all. And the water temperature was so warm - it never felt cold getting in the ocean, even though the temperatures never got above mid 80's while we were there.
We flew into Liberia & out of San Jose. By the end of the trip, we were there almost 2 weeks, saw 5 different cities & moved hotels 4 times. We spent about 15 hours in the car & that was probably the worst part. We have never experienced motion sickness with the girls on big boats, little boats, airplanes, amusement parks, cars, until now. Both of them did not enjoy it.
Would I go back again? I don't know. It kind of felt like a bucket list item that I knocked off my list. We saw a lot while we were there, tried a lot of adventures we had never done before & I probably would prefer a pretty beach somewhere than the adventure. Having said that, I really liked our last resort & could see us flying back just to go there & skip everything else. The only downfall is you have to fly into San Jose then make a 2 1/2 hour drive to get there, so it's not convenient. Maybe in a few years when the girls are older we'll venture back. Pura Vida!
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