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Posts Tagged ‘Costa Rica’

We just got back from our summer vacation in Santa Teresa Beach on the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica.  Once again we rented a beautiful beach house.  The trip to the house was a little more involved.  Two flights from Los Angeles to San Jose.  A two hour car ride to the Ferry terminal.  A two hour ferry ride  and then a 2 hour car drive!

Here’s the gang on the ferry ride to Santa Teresa.

The first of many beautiful sunsets.

Here’s a picture of the iguana in our back yard, affectionately know as Mr. Fluffy Pants. (don’t ask me why!)

Here is a picture of a parrot in our back yard.

On our second day, we all took surfing lessons.   Getting up on the board was not too difficult for the kids.

 

For me though… not so easy.  Its harder than it looks!

After a hard day of surfing or swimming in 80 degree water.. we would usually go out to eat at one of the many wonderful restaurants in Santa Teresa.

On one of the days, we took a short hike to one of the many waterfalls in the Mal Pais area.

This one took about an hour of pretty strenuous climbing and navigating rocks but was definitely worth the hike.

This is a picture of the swing at our house.  Many an hour was passed staring at the ocean!

Here is Annika enjoying the water and the sunset behind our house.

On one of the days, we went for a hike into the local rainforest.

We saw many capuchin monkeys, parrots, woodpeckers and many other creatures.

The beach on our last day in Santa Teresa.

A very relaxing vacation.  We are already planning our next trip to  (stay tuned).

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On one of the days, we went to a zip line “park” run by Canopy Safari.  It was about an hour’s drive into the jungle from Manuel Antonio.  It started out with about a 20 minute walk up the hill.   From there, it was about 20 zip lines down and a couple of rappel lines.  Here are some pictures.

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After each zip line, they hurried us through to the next one.   It was loads of fun as you can see from the expressions….. but I must say, it was all a bit too “sanitized” for my liking.  Guess you have to do it once but, I would go back for another river ride instead!

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On one of the days in Costa Rica, we went white water river rafting on the Savegre River.  Our tour was conducted by the Amigos Del Rio group.  We chose the full day adventure down the Class 3 rapids of the Savegre River.  The adventure started with a bus ride to a way point about an hour outside of Manuael Antonio.  From there, we climbed into a 4 wheel drive hum-vee type vehicle for another hour drive deep into the rainforest.

Here are some pictures from the adventure.

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We started off slowly and then hit some major rapids.  It definitely looks scarier than it felt at the time.

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They referred to this section of the river as La Boca del Diablo or the Devil’s Mouth.

There was also another section of the river we got to “surf a hole” – a technique where you are paddling upstream against the flow of the river and keeping up – too cool to describe.

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We were fortunate to have a great tour operator and boatman (Ramirez) leading our raft.  Only a few of us fell out of the boat and were quickly rescued!  This was an amazing and thoroughly enjoyable day on the river.

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We just got back from a week of vacation in Costa Rica.    This time we rented a beach house in Manuel Antonio Beach.  Manuel Antonio is a small beach town about a 3+ hour drive from the capital city of San Jose in Costa Rica.  We rented a car at the local Budget and drove the 130km to our slice of paradise.

Here are some pictures of the kids on the beach behind the house.

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Each day we built a (bigger and bigger) sand castle in the hopes of battling the high tides.  Each morning we would come out to see the waves had wiped clean our hard-work!

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One of the features of the beach house was the daily monkey crossing.  We got to see a troop of monkeys crossing thru the back yard.  The monkeys would stop by pretty much every afternoon for plantains and flowers.

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In between the beach and the monkey sightings, we enjoyed the wonderful backyard and pool.
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During the week, we also did a day of white water rafting and one day of a canopy tour.  I’ll post those pics separately.

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