Costa Rica - short but beautiful!

We took the bus from Nicaragua to Liberia where our rental car was supposed to be waiting for us, but (for some reason) there was a small error in the booking and we could only pick up the car the next day (or pay $100 for a day...). So we rented a hostel/hotel or whatever it was for one night to finally set off with our rental car towards Samara the next day.

There we had a cozy hostel 100m from the beach with a mango tree in the garden that reliably dropped 2-3 mangoes every hour, so pure luxury :-). The only downside was that all the lights went out at 10 pm and we were left sitting in the dark. Not a problem in itself, if it hadn't started raining in the evening and we couldn't leave the hostel because of it.

That's why we decided to move on to Santa Teresa after 2 nights and various trips to different beaches and a little visit to Rainer (warning, insider!).

As it sometimes happens when traveling, Garreth approached me while we were loading the car and in a blink of an eye the car was full. Mary, Katy, and Garreth joined our road trip to Santa Teresa and because it was so nice, we decided to treat ourselves to a 5-person Airbnb apartment instead of staying in a hostel.

So we spent the next few days in a really nice apartment, about 200m from the beach, enjoying funny conversations, lots of music, a day of watching sports, a ladies' night including salsa dancing, a few beers, and exactly one sunset. Because here too, we were not safe from the rain, which is why we didn't have much beach weather and why we were doubly happy with the apartment.

Time flew by and we managed to take a trip to Montezuma to visit the beach and the waterfalls, which actually had water due to the rain (we had already had different experiences on our journey...).

From Santa Teresa, our road trip continued briefly with 4 of us, as we took the girls to Monteverde before spending 2 more days in Jaco and the surrounding area.

In the high season, Jaco is a party town and it also has some dreamy beaches nearby. Unfortunately, we couldn't enjoy any of them in their full splendor because it was either cloudy or raining.

We used the time and also a bit of the gradually spreading frustration about the weather to deal more intensively with the weather and the end of our trip.

Our problem is that we started 3 weeks later than planned and now we are in the middle of the rainy season, which of course was not part of our plan. We wanted to end with nice weather, sun, beaches, and not really do much. You could also say that we wanted to end our trip with 10-15 days of vacation, which is not much fun in the rain.

That's why we decided to change our plans and not travel to Panama. Instead, it's now: Mexico, here we come!!

The anticipation after the booking was/is huge and the rain didn't bother us so much anymore in the following days, as we knew it was only a matter of time before we would have really good weather again.

To end our visit to Costa Rica, we wanted to hike to the Volcano Brava (including 2 lagoons), but we only made it to the first lagoon. On the way to the second lagoon, the rain (a stronger thunderstorm) once again spoiled our plans.

But at least we were still a bit in the jungle and had a nice, soaking wet 4-hour hiking experience, which we wouldn't want to miss.

Now all that's left is to return the car and head to the airport the next morning and off to Cancun.