Costa Rica

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Our time in Costa Rica felt like a crazy whirlwind of, I don’t know, crazy whirlwind stuff. I booked flights from GUA to SJO just a couple of days before we actually needed to leave, so the trip was destined to be a little nuts from the get go. Overall, I’m happy with our experience there, but felt we didn’t get a great and authentic experience because of the lack of planning on my part.

A few things I wish I would have known about going to Costa Rica before we had to find out the hard way would have been:

-Costa Rica is expensive. Or maybe I was just used to Guatemalan prices so the sticker shock felt extreme there, but we paid a lot of money for all the things. Because we flew into SJO instead of Liberia, and because someone lost ANOTHER driver’s license so couldn’t get a rental car, we had to take a shuttle to our hotel allll the way over in the Guanacaste region. We ended up busting out just about, hang on, I need a moment to write this because it still hurts… About a THOUSAND dollars for shuttle services. So. Painful. And no, I didn’t use any points for this one.

-The Andaz Papagayo is an aspirational resort that many rave about and at 20k points a night plus free breakfast if you are Globalist, it’s not a bad deal. Plus, it’s like the most beautiful resort ever. Oh, and the free child care is like the best thing since donuts. Where you save on points and miles, though, you spend on food and activities. We felt pretty resort captive after only the first day and we were there for 5! The salesmen trying to sell us tours were pushy and really overwhelmed me, enough so that I avoided the beach at all costs so I didn’t have to deal with them.

After our stay at the Andaz, we headed west to Tamarindo. Tamarindo was much more our style of vacation. I was able to snag a great little hostel near the beach, which included breakfast. We met up with some friends we had met via Instagram, @mac_explore, which you should totally go follow them if you don’t. They have been traveling since January of this year, I believe and have such beautiful pictures and inspirational posts.

We only stayed two days, but we had such a great experience there. My two big boys learned to surf.

I also got yelled at by a really really mean lady after a misunderstanding. To be honest, I still don’t even totally understand what she was screaming about, but you better believe that I had tons of awesome comebacks….twenty minutes after she left! Why can we never think of things to say during a situation? Ah well. Fortunately, I didn’t let her get me down too much and we continued to have an awesome time at the beach.

This post is allll over the place so I’m going to just end it here with a summary of which points and miles we used:

100k World of Hyatt points transferred from my Ultimate Rewards account for our stay at the Andaz.

15k WoH points for 3 nights, 2 at the beginning and one at the end, at the Hyatt Place in San Jose. Great little property, by the way.

15,000 Bank of America Travel Rewards points to cover our stay at the hostel in Tamarindo.

$80.00/person for flights from GUA-SJO. I had some straggler points from a Capital One card to cover some of the costs here, but not the entire thing.

An arm, leg and first born child for shuttle services around the country.

~$400.00 for food at the Andaz. Another ouch, especially since we only ate dinner there, and my daughter ate for free.

17.5k miles + $80ish per person to fly home. SJO ending in SLC.

I think that about covers our trip cost for Costa Rica. Let me know if you guys have any questions!