Costa Rica

[DeliveredByKiki]

Musing on a post New Year’s Eve trip - heard so many amazing things, anyone want to help me get my research started? Family of 4, D.C. aged 10&7, used to travel, good food, beach if possible but not strictly necessary, jungle would be amazing, budget friendly but flying from the US west coast so that might help....where to start?

Lonely Planet have an online guide to Costa Rica on their website that might give you a few ideas? We went 2 years ago and did San Jose/Arenal and Manuel Antonio. San Jose is not the prettiest city by any means but we did a day tour which did give us an insight into the countries history and politics. It's not somewhere that's a 'must see' though and the DH and DD would have happily skipped it! Arenal is interesting and there are a lot of activities in the area. I'm glad we went although was expecting it to be more of a wow! Manuel Antonio was brilliant - I'm sure there are national parks that get less tourists but it wasn't heaving when we went, the beach in the park is 'wow' and we saw so many animals there. We stayed at Tulemar which I'd recommend - it's a resort set in the jungle with multiple acres of rain forest, it's own beach and an on site sloth institute. There are loads of places I wish we'd gone to - the cloud forest in particular. The Caribbean side is supposed to be less interesting than the Pacific side but we didn't go there so that could just be hearsay! It was beautiful, we all loved it! People do hire cars but we used a local firm for transfers - happy to pass on their details if you want them