Costa Rica Luxury Vacation Review: San Jose, Manuel Antonio National Park, La Fortuna, Arenal Volcano, Nine-Day Trip

Costa Rica is a beautiful country, with a variety of microclimates, so we packed our trip full of adventures to best take advantage of the terrain. It's also an incredibly friendly country because so much of the economy is dependent on tourism. The "service economy" is very much at work.

Here's an abridged look at our itinerary, with some commentary:

Day 1: Land in San Jose; transfer to the hotel in Manuel Antonio. Along the drive, we stopped for fruit at a large roadside stand (excellent variety and quality at reasonable prices) and for lunch at a fairly "tourist-trap" location, where there were crocodiles with funny names. The views from our room were stunning and the birthday dinner at the restaurant was fantastic.

Day 2: ATV riding, including a stop at the Rainmaker waterfall. This was a fun activity and the first time we had ever ridden ATVs. While it took a little getting used to, everyone had a good time. In the evening, we walked around town and had a "typical" dinner in a restaurant.

Day 3: Guided tour through Manuel Antonio National Park. There was an early start to beat the crowds and our tour guide was fantastic. We saw lots of animals (capuchin and howler monkeys, and two- and three-toed sloths, etc). I had let the travel team know it was our son's 16th birthday, and they arranged for a cake to be presented while we were on a snack break following the tour. In the afternoon, we took the hotel shuttle to the beach, where we spent a few hours enjoying the sand and water. In the evening, we again walked around town and had dinner in a restaurant. There was live music and they sang Happy Birthday to our son.

Day 4: Transfer from Manuel Antonio to La Fortuna/Arenal, with a stop at an adventure park, where we went ziplining and had lunch. The park was huge (all kinds of activities, including ATVs and horseback riding) and the ziplines were a lot of fun (we'd been ziplining before and these were quite good). The buffet lunch was "typical" Costa Rican fare and quite good. We stopped at the same fruit stand as we'd visited on day one and a coffee stand closer to La Fortuna. It's a very long drive (five-plus hours), with lots of elevation changes/switchbacks and some serious weather changes (from hot and humid to cool and foggy/rainy). All the roads are one lane in each direction (and not always well paved), but our driver was great and made sure we were safe. In the evening, we checked into our hotel, had dinner at the "sushi bar" (not very good), and swam in the thermal pool (lovely and warm).

Day 5: In the morning, we went on a guided sloth-watching walking tour at a private reserve. We saw some birds and sloths, getting closer than we did in the Manuel Antonio National Park, but it was less impressive (and a bit duplicative) than what we'd done previously. In the evening, we went to nearby hot springs, which was very enjoyable (I'd say "super cool", but it was really "super warm". Sorry for the dad joke). We had dinner there (another "typical" buffet, but the food was not as good as in other places we'd been).

Day 6: The family split up, with my wife and younger son going caving, while me and our older son went canyoning. We enjoyed our adventures immensely, with the canyoning (rappelling through waterfalls) probably my favorite of the activities we did on the trip. In the evening, we went into town, walking through the central park, which was all lit up for Christmas. We bought a ton of goodies from Chocolate Fusion (amazing!) and had dinner at the Mercadito Arenal (a kind of food court).

Day 7: We took a boat from Arenal to Monteverde, finally getting the chance to see the Arenal Volcano (it was cloudy/rainy the entire time we were in Arenal), and then another long, windy, bumpy car ride to Monteverde, where we checked into a lovely hotel. We had an early dinner at The Green in the "strip mall" across from the hotel (maybe our favorite meal of the trip), then had an excellent guided night walk in the cloud forest. We saw a number of animals, including a beautiful toucan (the one thing my wife really wanted to see on the trip).

Day 8: We went on the Selvatura treetops walkway tour, another guided walk that included a number of hanging bridges. We had an excellent guide (who'd been a guide on the night walk the previous night) who pointed out a number of animals, including more sloths, birds, bats, and a tarantula! We then went to the butterfly garden, which was the one real disappointment ( we found the one in Aruba much better). We went back to the restaurant for dinner. It was Christmas Day, so we made a reservation the previous night and it was as good as it had been then.

Day 9: Before departing for San Jose, our tour company arranged for us to visit El Trapiche for a coffee/chocolate/sugar farm visit. We're so glad we did it because, as a family, we agreed this was probably our favorite adventure of the trip. The staff were fantastic and we loved how hands-on the tour was (we got to taste everything). We then headed back to San Jose, where we spent our last night in an airport hotel before heading back to the US the following morning.