Costa Ron Rico Rica

In December of 2008, I set out for an adventure with my family to Costa Rica.  My sister, brother in law and my husband wanted to experience all that Costa Rica offered.  Mountains, volcanoes, beaches, jungles and tons of wild excursions. We also made Ron Rico Rum our mascot for this trip.

Arenal Volcano

Our first adventure activity was white water rafting.  Little did we know that in the previous days the area had been getting deluged with rain and the river was exceptionally swollen.   This made for several white-knuckling dumps into the rocky river that left all of us black and blue in multiple areas.
  This was a huge bonding experience for the four of us.  What near-death experiences aren't?

Back in the raft and happy.

I'm not a beer drinker but after this experience I needed several!
This is still one of the most bonding type experiences we've ever had together.

We spent our first few nights at the beautiful Tabacon Resort and Spa.  
For some stupid reason, I was so excited to be here that I didn't even take a picture of this place and its fantastic hot springs, Or I may have been drunk the whole time.  I can't remember.
ANYWAY......
We left Arenal and headed to the southern tip of the country just a few miles from Panama and flew into the most beautiful landing strip I have ever seen. We loaded up into a tiny plane that couldn't hold the weight of all 4 of us so my sister had to fly by herself in another plane while we helped our pilot fly because apparently, he was blind.  Seriously!!  He had to lift up his bottle glasses and put his face inches in front of the instruments to see them.   I'm pretty sure he landed the plane from muscle memory.
We were staying at Tiskita Eco Lodge.  The lodge was built on a large cow pasture and up into the rain forest and now is a private biological reserve and an organic orchard.

Our next destination was to the Osa Peninsula to stay at Lapa Rios Eco Lodge.  This resort is fantastic.  Beautiful private bungalows built into the lush hillside looking down to the white sand beach.  Huge balconies with hammocks and lounge chairs begging you to spend hours in them.  It made it difficult to choose between the pool or our private deck.
We picked the pool during the day and balcony at sunset.

Our days here were spent getting prune skin in the pool and walking down to the beach to get a better view of the dolphins swimming in the surf.
Notice my nerd brother and sister reading Breaking Dawn!!!!​
​(Twilight Dorks!)

Our final destination was Guanacaste and we stayed at Bahia Del Sol Beachfront Hotel.
Here we had another 5 days of absolute nothingness.  Days spent by the pool.  Long, LONG walks down the beach in search of parties, ATMs and new scenery. 
And most memorable of all, riding behind a jet ski on a giant inflated banana and listening to Mike "cramp up" then bailing out into the ocean leaving us bouncing in after him laughing so hard we all almost drowned.

Mike and Tony were on the hunt for Cuban cigars the whole trip.  They had guys coming up to them asking them to inspect inside the trunks of their cars so they could show them their "displays" of Cubans they were kept inside.  The boys said it felt seedy to buy cigars from car trunks and ended up buying them in a grocery store.
Because that's much better......  apparently.