Wilderness Wonders: African Safaris Explored
The real objective of a family holiday is to spend time together, but the hard bit is fitting together all the components that create the best memories for everyone! Costa Rica has it all if you are prepared to go that bit further and dive into to bucket loads of adrenalin fun.
Whether its high adventure, immersion in nature and wildlife, tackling the surf or deep relaxation you all crave Costa Rica has the ingredients to make a magical family trip.
Last month we had a chance to visit as a family. The last time I had been was many moons go with two friends and our backpacks! The key to creating our itinerary were experiences we could all enjoy, including a few that got the adrenalin pumping to please the teen and a lot of wildlife for some wow factor! Once we knew what we wanted the vibe of the holiday to be the experiences, route and hotels flowed.
We decided to jump straight into the fun upon landing. We were zip lining straight after breakfast on day one and had our first Sloth sightings before dinner. For us this was the best way to get over the jet lag. We decided to kicked off with a short trip to Arenal in the central valley where we were blessed with a perfect volcano viewing over breakfast, hikes and the most awesome white-water rafting day as well as the volcano zip lining and hanging bridges walkways. The white-water rafting was an unexpected highlight for me but none of us were sure why the team leader sliced fruit with a massive knife on the side of the inflatable raft!
A real bonus with Costa Rica is the ease of travel across the country – no, not the roads! They are not great – windy or bumpy roads! It was the small light aircraft internal flights that made it possible for us to cover both the North West Nicoya peninsular as well as the southern Osa peninsular in our 10-day trip.
There were definitely times I was pushed out of my comfort zone and our mornings surfing at Santa Teresa were some of them. Surf on the Nicoya peninsula is pretty much guaranteed. We had the best surf instructors who were keen to get us out back!! It was brilliant to belly laugh as a family in the surf and them spend afternoons deeply relaxing in a hammock at our hotel, Nantipa.
Santa Teresa is brilliant for surf, yoga, chill, sunsets, cocktails and delicious fresh food! The bakery for brekkie, Satori or Katana sushi restaurants for lunch, Manzu for cocktails and sunset then dinner at El Carmen for seafood. We were blown away by the beauty of this pacific coastline – it is truly stunning. However, I have to worn you the prices for eating out in Santa Teresa were more like the UK than Costa Rica.
The last leg of our adventure was pure wildlife immersion. We headed deep into the Osa peninsular to the most stunning eco lodge! For us it was the guides, the amount of wildlife around the lodge think monkeys, ant eaters, sloths, scorpoions plus toucans. We also had an unforgettable morning waterfall rappelling which we all loved. I have to admit the 5am wake ups by the howler monkeys are not something I could get use too but the fresh coffee delivered to our room each morning was welcome! The lack of internet in most areas around the lodge if you want less screen time – something we all appreciated even if we didn’t think so at the time.
We all agreed that Costa Rica is the real nature’s playground and we loved it! One thing to add is we equally loved the time we spent chilling as a family – talking about the days fun or the wildlife we had spotted just as much as the adrenalin. It is not often we get to relax together and the easy nature of Costa Rican food, the climate and sense of fun in the country makes it perfect for that something extra family holiday.
My spotlight hotel is El Remanso, Osa Peninsula
