I had two goals for myself on this Thanksgiving trip to the beach: soak in as many sunrises as I could and make sure to move more. I was very grateful to fulfill both goals. The first 3 mornings were the best for admiring the sunrises as the cloud coverage was perfect. One morning, I couldn’t see anything while I slept in on another morning. I couldn’t believe I slept more than 10 hours that night! One way to exercise on the beach is to take a walk: I definitely do not run on the beach, it is difficult enough for me to walk on the sand, so running is…

Last month, we stopped by the botanical gardens after church to take advantage of our yearly pass one more time. It was before the scarecrow exhibit, but the pumpkins were out. It was a beautiful day and I took blog pictures for our Ageless Style link up (see my post here). There is less in bloom in the fall so I end up taking pictures of the cool lilypads. We took our time to find all of the frogs in the little pond. The large lily pads are so cool. For the first time I paid attention to the different stages of opening: very cool! Of course, I didn’t take…

One of the places I wanted to visit in the La Fortuna area was this park with hanging bridges. We did not visit the waterfall that is well known (La Fortuna Waterfall) as I wasn’t sure how busy it would be and I wanted to feel more like a local than a tourist. That is one of the reason we did not eat in town but at the resort and the roadside sodas. We had wonderful weather for this outing and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I always worry about how the children will react to walking for a couple of hours but the hanging bridges and wildlife kept it interesting.…

When choosing a place for us to stay near Arenal Volcano, it was very difficult to make a decision: all resorts have incredible views of the volcano and most had great reviews. I ended up choosing this particular resort, Arenal Spring Resort and Spa because of the pictures of the pools. This vacation was definitely not a budget friendly vacation (accomodations and food sure added up) but we were able to save some money only having to purchase one plane ticket (+ taxes for the other 5) thanks to Delta Sky Miles. Picture perfect: I told my family this picture is like a postcard: what a great spot to put…

Ah, the joys of traveling using GPS in a foreign country! After this particular day’s adventure and a conversation with a local person, we now understand the struggle and harships we encountered! We traveled from Manuel Antonio to La Fortuna for the second part of our trip. We used the app Maps.me, a map system that uses your phone satellite location instead of wifi to travel since we did not want to pay international fees. At the car rental, we were encouraged to use Waze instead of Google but from what I understood, all apps would have probably ended up with the same detours. We departed from Quepos before 9…

Just like on  our past trip to Costa Rica, we only visited beaches on the Pacific side of the country on this trip too. We actually stopped exactly where we had last year on our way to Quepos and the only new beach to us was the one in Manuel Antonio National Park. I love the beaches in Costa Rica as they seem wild with their grey sand, rocks and wild vegetation. On our way to Quepos The drive to our resort from the airport was about 3h30 so we made a couple stops for pictures with the children. One was a scenic picture overlooking the tourist town of Jaco.…

One of the main reason I wanted to take the boys on a trip to Costa Rica was because of the wonderful wildlife. We knew from staying in Tulemar Resort last year, that there would be opportunity to see animals on the property and in the trees and from the ride there, that there would be animals to see from the road too. We’ve always enjoyed visiting zoo but seeing animals free, in the wild in their own environment is just amazing. On the way south to Quepos and the Manuel Antonio National Park (where these pictures are from), we saw some crocodiles, many macaws and hermit crabs. On the…

One of our favorite ways to relax on this past vacation to Costa Rica was to take advantage of the beautiful pools where we stayed. Our favorite by far was the family pool at Tulemar Resort and we spent at least 2 to 3 hours daily enjoying it the two full days we spent there. Tulemar Resort The resort boasts 4 pools including a pretty infinity pool by the restaurant (it was being worked on while we were there), a jungle pool (hubby and I used that one last year as it was by our room), a family and an adult pool. We did not use the adult pool, but…