EP12: Big News & Costa Rica
We reveal some life changing news and discuss our very spur of the moment trip to Costa Rica including the town of Tamarindo and the Monteverde Cloud Forest Region.
Tony finally resigned! Woo Hoo! He’s calling it a “Quit-tirement” Embrace change! Take a leap of faith! Re-evaluate your life and chase your dreams! We’ll see where this takes us…so stay tuned…
Costa Rica:
We flew into the Liberia airport in the Guanacaste region.
-Entry requirements: what does the country require? Check into it before you go! In this case, Customs/Immigration wanted to know the address of where we were staying, for how long we would be there and they wanted our return flight information.
-Transportation tip: Hire a car, prepaid from your hotel, to come get you and make sure they know YOUR name, not the other way around. It was approximately an hour from the airport to the beach town of Tamarindo.
-Advantages of Costa Rica: nonstop flights from some cities, (MPLS), central time zone, same electricity voltage as U.S. Costa Rica also has many different kinds of topography including beaches, mountains, volcanoes,
-Currency: Most everywhere took American dollars, credit cards or Apple Pay. You could get some of their currency, Colones, ahead of time or once you land, but it wasn’t necessary.
-Tamarindo Bay Hotel: Central location, lovely pool area, rooms had microwaves, fridges, small cook tops. Amazing management that was super helpful with recommending restaurants, arranging transportation, etc.
-Can you drink the water? Join a Facebook group to see what people recommend. We did not drink the local water out of the taps, but our hotel had a purification system to fill our water bottles and the restaurants all had purified water and ice.
-Restaurants: Waffle Monkey, Green Papaya
-Thursday Night Market in Tamamrindo- live music and dancing, food and craft vendors. So fun and authentic, hot food is fine, but be careful of drinks with ice because they may not be purified!
-Renting a car: be aware that you might need extra insurance, there will be lots of traffic, roads are in poor condition, may be full of people/cyclists/motorcycles because there’s often no sidewalks, roads are not well marked with signs and they are not well lit. It’s a challenge! You can look into rideshares or hire a drivers like we did, which our hotel set up for us. We did check around at prices and found that it was about the same, so we went with the hotel recommendation instead.
-We found a geocache along our drive to Monteverde, so fun! Try it out on Geocaching.com
-What is Cloud Forest? It is rainforest that is often covered in clouds due to a higher elevation or mountainous region. This area is noticeably cooler, so we were hot in Tamarindo and dressed in layers with rain jackets in Monteverde.
-Hotel in Monteverde- Poco a Poco Walkable location, beautiful grounds, tons of birds right outside your window, and lovely trails right on site. Has a nice pool and hot tub area, a good restaurant with free breakfast. Our room had it’s own private hot tub room!!
-Birding in Monte Verde Cloud Forest- hire a BIRD guide if birds are your priority, regular guides are more generic and don’t specialize in bird habitats and bird calls. Our guide, Diego, recommended avoiding the Monteverde cloud forest reserve itself, because the crowds scare birds away, so we went to the Curicancha reserve. We met him at 6 AM for a 5 hour tour, so be prepared with something to eat, dress in layers with a rain jacket, have a water bottle, binoculars, camera, etc. We succeeded in seeing the famous Quetzal, as well as Toucans, the Emerald Toucanet, and many others.. We also saw a boa constrictor that had just eaten, and a Coati, which is similar to a raccoon.
-Best Travel Sweatshirt! Unbound Marino! It’s wool, keeps you cool when it’s hot, keeps you warm when it’s cool, keeps you dry when it’s humid, etc. See our links page for a discount!