After years of adventures together, Pink Bear is excited to help launch our very first travel blog. Since retirement began, we have explored so many incredible places and learned countless travel lessons along the way. Choosing where to begin was difficult, so we decided to start with one of our favorite recent adventures — Costa Rica.
So here we go, join us for lots of fun, pictures, and Costa Rica travel tips. Before we jump into our first activity, let’s go over the 1) Why, 2) How, 3) Who
Why Costa Rica?
Costa Rica had been on our bucket list for years because it seemed to offer everything we love — wildlife, beautiful scenery, adventure, and relaxation without feeling overly commercialized.
Costa Rica is a small country filled with big adventures. Forests, wildlife, scenery, and Water activities abound!
Every day we were there, it felt like we were stepping into a nature documentary. We saw monkeys swinging through trees and sometimes jumping on us, crocodiles sunning along the riverbanks, colorful birds everywhere, and even sloths relaxing in the rainforest.
Here are a few pictures of things we saw to whet your appetite;
La Paz waterfall was magnificent
We saw many monkeys, we even got to interact with some white-faced ones. It was amazing. They got so close that one even peed on us!
We saw so many crocodiles on the Tarcoles. We learned so many things about crocs. Did you know crocodiles open their mouths to regulate body temperature?
We visited a wonderful sanctuary with sloths, jaguars, and a Tapir. It was heartwarming how they saved these animals.
Costa Rica is a bird watcher’s dream come true! Here are just a couple of the ones we saw—many more to come in future blogs.
How did we plan the Trip?
As retirees, we focus on comfortable travel, upscale but realistic, active but not exhausting.
The way we plan for any trip is with a simple spreadsheet. It is invaluable for keeping track of things. You don’t need fancy software or programs, just a simple Excel or Numbers document.
Here is an example of our Costa Rica spreadsheet
- Where to Go, Where to Stay: Once we decide where we want to go, we decide who we want to go with (more later), where to stay, how to get there, and what we want to do. Accommodation choices are hotels or Airbnb. For our upscale retirement vacations, this blog won’t focus on things like camping or backpacking. If the trip is more than Tom, Laura, and Pink Bear, Airbnb is a good choice. Selecting the right Airbnb is like fine wine. It takes research and effort.
- Sightseeing: We use a combination of doing things on our own and private tours. At our age and for a personal upscale experience, private tours are the way to go. Big bus tours do not work for us any longer. We highly recommend Tours by Locals for a customizable, authentic experience. TripAdvisor or Viator also provides some nice products. All this stuff goes into the spreadsheet. We use color-coding for easy identification. We include times, but they are exact for some things, rough estimates for others. Everyone gets a spreadsheet so all parties can be responsible for keeping to the program.
Who do we go to with:
Some of our trips are with friends, others family, and still others just Pink Bear, Laura, and Tom.
This trip was a celebration of friends’ trip. From left to right, Laura, Diane, Tony, Pink Bear, Tom, Kathy
Where we stay:
For land vacations such as this, we typically stay in hotels, Airbnb rentals, or Marriott Vacation Club. We are Marriott Vacation Club members and love it. It is the only “timeshare” I would recommend. Otherwise, stay away from them. We also belong to Marriott Bonvoy and use this to upgrade regular rooms to preferred view and suites. Finally, with Bonvoy and Vacation Club status, we have access to the club lounge at all locations that have one, which is a huge savings on food.
For this trip, we stayed overnight at the Marriott Hacienda Belen and at an Airbnb in Jaco. Here are a few pictures. We will do a detailed blog later.
Marriott Hacienda Belen
AirBnB
Why we chose Puntarenas: Although Costa Rica is a small country, each region offers a completely different experience.
- La Fortuna: forests and volcanoes
- Puntarenas: beaches and central access
- Guanacaste: drier climate and luxury resorts
- Caribbean side: lush tropical vibe
As active seniors, we prefer not to constantly pack and unpack, so we chose Puntarenas for its central location and easy access from San Jose Airport.
Getting to Costa Rica: We live in NJ, so EWR is a major hub for United. We have frequent flyer status; therefore, we try to stick with United. Frequent flyer enrollment is a great way to reduce costs. At our age, we like to fly business and first class on flights over 5hours. We often use Money and Miles to do this. There are direct flights from EWR to San Jose.
Getting around Costa Rica: The choices are rental car, Uber/taxi, local car service/tour service. When we are alone, we sometimes simply utilize Uber and local car/tour service. For larger group trips, rent a car where feasible. You need to consider driving ability and road conditions. For example, in the UK, they drive on the left, and sometimes roads are very narrow and congested in cities. You need to decide if you can handle this. For this trip, there were two main drivers: driving is on the right, and it is shoulder season, so roads were expected to be generally passable. We often use Expedia and try to stick with major companies like National, Alamo, and SIXT.
Hope you liked this overview. We will next be blogging on our arrival in Costa Rica and with more pictures of our accommodations.
Well done! 👍🏻
Thank you
Perfect, love this, you should have been doing this before.
My son is going to Costa Rica and going to forward this to him
Great! I will be posting more soon. If he has any questions would be happy to help