Country #30: Costa Rica! (Part 1)

I have been incredibly lucky that my parents made travel a priority while I was growing up. Together, my family has been to nineteen countries. (In order: the U.S., Canada, Mexico, England, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Vatican City, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Scotland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, and Costa Rica).

My siblings and I have benefited greatly from my parents' incessant wanderlust. I am eternally grateful for the skills I learned through travel including how to be adaptable, resilient, and appreciative of the world around me. It also taught me how to be confident enough to travel on my own and subsequently travel has become one of my priorities as well. I have traveled to eleven other countries on my own or with friends, making Costa Rica the thirtieth country I have traveled to. So thank you, Mom and Dad!

Now that I'm working full time, fitting travel in necessitates more strategy. Coordinating five adults who have jobs or are in school is challenging, but we figured it out! We managed to squeeze in the vacation between Christmas and New Years. And in typical Trumbull travel fashion, we saw and did a lot in that short amount of time.

We converged at home from our respective cities scattered up the west coast in time to celebrate Michael's 21st birthday and Christmas Eve eve with our extended family. On Christmas Eve morning, we exchanged gifts, finished packing, and headed to the airport.

His first beer!

I love flying and airports, which is lucky considering that we spent the next twenty four hours flying or in airports. I live in LA, so our first layover in LAX made me feel right at home.

Then we flew to Houston where we landed at 3:00am on Christmas morning California time. Using our backpacks as pillows, we wrapped ourselves up in the thin blankets gratuitously provided on our previous flight and tried to fall asleep to the repetitive intercom announcements and the inexplicable full blast air conditioning.

Just in case anyone was under the impression that travel is glamorous

The last leg was from Houston to San Jose. My parents got upgraded to business class, where they swear they meant to save us the waffles they got for breakfast. When we landed we got a quick lunch of chicken and rice from a little restaurant near the rental car place.

Our travel was not yet complete, however. Dad drove us four hours on windy mountainous roads to Potrero in the Guanacaste Province. The way this usually goes is that the four of us swear up and down that we'll stay awake to keep Dad company while he so graciously drives and then we all immediately pass out the second the car gets rolling. 

We made two brief stops: at a gas station for cookies and other snacks and at a grocery store for real food. Our road trip culminated with a drive through a street carnival with lots of people out and about and on horses. We made it to our aribnb late, which was also known as the Hostal del Instituto de Oceanologia, a local ocean conservation nonprofit.

My mom cooked up a lovely comfort food Christmas dinner which included heaping piles of spaghetti and red sauce, broccoli, and a relatively new addition to our family meals: beer and wine. We ate on the balcony of our airbnb, overlooking the pool. The heat and humidity never entirely dissipate, so we sat very comfortably outside in our bathing suits.

Salud y feliz navidad de Costa Rica!

The airbnb had a pool, dark salmon tile floors, and lots of bugs. The windows only had screens, no glass. A few fans spun distantly, not seeming to actually move any air.

The airbnb was hot at night and the mattresses were lumpy, and for a family of insomniacs this posed a challenge. I managed to snag the best bed (lo siento familia). It was the top bunk on the sleeping porch. I was surrounded on three sides by screen windows, so I was exposed to a light breeze and the soothing cacophony of the jungle sounds to lull me to sleep. The night is loud in a different way than it is in LA, but I do enjoy the white noise in both locales. 

Except for the howler monkeys. God, is that an unpleasant sound. They sound like possessed dogs retching. They woke some of us up one night. It was definitely cool to hear, to be like 'whoa that must be a howler monkey! I've never heard one of those before'. But only for like the first minute. 

The first full day was a boogie boarding bonanza. But first we made coffee and eggs and fruit while trying to avoid the tiny streams of ants and bugs in the kitchen.

We drove to Playa Grande and scoped out the beach. 

We all benefit from my mom's photography skills. All photo credit goes to her!

Allured by a sign on a surfboard advertising boogie board rentals and cocktails, we stopped by a little shack. The two Ticos working the bar were extremely friendly and extremely worried that I would think they would sell me a drink in a plastic cup. Without even knowing I work in environmental policy, they felt like they had to convince me that the cup was made from corn and was 100% biodegradable. 

We wanted to see some turtles, and heard there was a beach nearby where that was possible. We stopped by a tiny tour office to ask for more information. Most people in Costa Rica spoke wonderful English. There were a few opportunities to speak Spanish, though. Luckily, we all had taken Spanish at some point in our educations and we were able to get by. The guy at the desk didn't speak English, so I tried out my Spanish. ¿Donde estan las tortugas? I asked the guy kindly, trying desperately to not sound like this:

He gave us directions to another beach. We went and asked, but it was this whole complicated thing where the turtles only nested at night, and there were full waiting lists, and they only called you off the waiting list if the turtles came that night.

We went back to Playa Grande and ordered delicious burritos from a stand, before setting up on the surprisingly non crowded beach and jumping in the water.

We boogie boarded for hours. The waves were perfect - not too big, consistent. We had a blast with the GoPro, too, and took hours and hours of GoPro footage of us sloshing in the wash and catching waves.

Before calling it a night and heading back to the airbnb, we drove to the estuary to see if we could see some crocodiles and were unsuccessful. That evening we walked to an American themed bar with terrible service from our airbnb for a drink and some cards. I loved how the restaurants and bars were big and open - no windows and doors, just a roof open to the pleasant evening air.

The next morning we woke up, made eggs and coffee again (I love breakfast), and headed down the road to our snorkel excursion. They fitted us for gear and we drove down to hop on the boat. 

Snorkeling was easily one of my favorite things we did on this trip. I loooove the water. I love swimming, being in the water, all bodies of water. Lucky for me, my family loves the water, too.

The currents were too murky or something for the scuba divers at the normal location, so they boated us to a little tiny island off the coast. There are lots of tiny little islands that dot the horizon. We were told this was lucky for the snorkelers - this location had more to see for those closer to the surface. 

We pulled on masks and flippers and jumped off the end of the boat into the blue water.

Objectively, it was clear our family was the most comfortable in the water. We eschewed the wet suits, the floaties, the pool noodles, and any help whatsoever. Except, for some reason, my wonderful mother, who is actually incredibly athletic. For some reason she worried that she might drown so saddled up with a life jacket, two noodles, and water wings. Most of the others on the excursion did this, though. 

I feel very free and very calm when I'm in the ocean. You're somewhat at the whim of the tide that ebbs and flows and tugs at your body back and forth. But without trying to be too cliche, you go with the flow. I love being in the water. Floating on the surface is very peaceful, looking at the little fishies glinting beneath the surface. Kicking down to submerge is also peaceful, and you're suspended in the water, and everything seems still.

For some reason I find it very comforting and freeing being in the water, so I fully enjoyed the experience of being let free to kick around in the somewhat open water to gape at the sand and starfish. 

All of us constantly free dove, kicking our way deep down, fully submerged to get a full surround sound experience. Sound is dulled underwater, quieter, but there's whoosing and the sound of thousands of tiny rocks cracking against each other as the water flows back and forth. We'd try to get close to scrape our bellies on the sandy bottom to look close at the underwater world.

Our guides were sweet teenage Tico scuba hippies who shaka waved at us. They pointed out juvenile sharks hiding under rocks and picked up starfish for us to hold and pass around. They let you do very non-American things like liability free boat travel. While the boat was in motion, without wearing life jackets, we were allowed to walk from the bow to the stern of the boat by clinging to the outside of the boat and walking back on a little ridge. 

They boated us to a second little island spot where we swam and snorkeled until we were cold to our core from soaking in the ocean water and exhausted from fighting the currents and inhaling salt water. I could spend hours in the ocean, and did on this trip. Eventually we boated back to the thin Latin American mainland and made our way back to our airbnb. 

We showered and snacked on packs of Chips Ahoy like cookie packs from the local convenience store. 

We drove a little north of our airbnb to a beachside bar to watch the sunset and get a drink. It was somewhat quieter and more secluded than the other beaches we were at. We went for a short walk along the beach. 

The sun set almost perfectly between two outcroppings. The bay was calm, and some locals started a bonfire on the beach as soon as the sun set. 

There is a feeling when you're sunburnt and exhausted and content and present,

you reach this state of relaxation. It's a feeling well earned. It reminded me of a similar feeling to the one I grew up so familiar with boating on Folsom Lake. Your skin is lightly toasted, your muscles tired. You feel like you lived a day well spent.

And to top that off with a giant ass margarita watching the sun set next to the people you care about most, you don't get much more relaxed than that. 

Día numero tres fue para surfear. Ah, surfing. I love it, and desperately want to be good at it, but am not. Shannon on the other hand is a fantastic surfer. On the morning of day 3, we drove to Tamarindo, a world-renowned surf location. My family has now surfed in California, Hawaii, and Costa Rica together. We can catch waves. But we're not gonna be at the U.S. Open.

Tamarindo was crowded. By beach town standards, at least. There was traffic and difficulty finding parking and honking. We found a little street restaurant for lunch with no AC and plastic tables serving what was advertised as authentic Tico food. Dripping sweat in the humidity, we had sight of iguanas climbing fences and tourists walking in hordes down the street.

Iguanas are the squirrels of Costa Rica

We bought sunscreen and more cookie packs form a small little grocer. We rented boards from a local shop on the beach side of the road and walked down. Multiple DJs were competing for the soundwaves on the beach and the electronica and Top 40 beats began to blend together if you stood equidistant between the booths. We laid out our towels on the flat sand and headed into the waves.

We spent hours paddling desperately for waves that would either 1. topple us forward over the nose of our boards to be washing maschined by small tides or 2. to have us slide pitifully off the backside of the wave. Every tenth wave (maybe) we would catch, and let me tell you, it's such a high when you feel your board sync with the energy of the wave, and you're able to ride the flow. Whether or not you're able to take the next step to stand up (which is a whole feat in itself). And every one in one hundred that you (you being me) are able to catch and ride in to shore in the choppy wash around your ankles is such a thrill and feeling of accomplishment. You feel your stomach drop and the wave propels you forward. It's great. I just wish I was better at it.

We shared the two surf boards and the one boogie board we had rented. For good measure we traded off the GoPro and ended up with hours of splashy up close in action footage.

Eventually we surfed ourselves out. After paddling for one more, just one more wave, several times, we absconded reluctantly to shore, dragging our surfboards behind us.

I'm a pretty practical spender, and for some reason coconut drinks always seemed like this unattainable luxury to me. I've always secretly wanted to drink from a coconut on a beach and so I was thrilled when my mom appeared with two coconut drinks. In typical Trumbull family style, all food and drink is communal and we generously passed the refreshing coconuts around.

We had associated Tamarindo with crocodiles. Crocodiles. A native Californian, I have never seen one of these prehistoric reptiles. In fact, boats sit on the estuary in between two major surf beaches that you can pay to take you across to avoid getting eaten by these terrifying creatures.

"We, uh, heard there were crocodiles around here. Is it safe to swim?" We polled a number of locals with our earnest question and consistently got the same answer. Everyone told us, "Absolutely 100% do. not. cross the estuary. Psh, but swimming in the ocean is totally fine." Despite the unequivocal responses we received, we were still a little skeptical. 

Do crocodiles respect arbitrary boundaries like that? Honestly, they seem like shady, non-reliable reptiles to me. It was like crossing the stitching in the back seat of a car when you're ten years old and squished between your siblings. Equivalent to the arbitrary delineation of 'this is my side this is your side.' Like little siblings, I'm pretty sure crocodiles don't abide by those rules. 

It turns out crocodiles don't respect the rules, but luckily we didn't find out firsthand. I definitely would not have been standing so close had I known that. AND crocodiles can literally snatch you from out of the water. Look how close I'm standing to the crocodile-infested estuary!

That's not to say we weren't still a little anxious. 

We walked back down the shore, sipping our coconut drinks and watching the golden glow of the sun set on the surfers and sailboats in the equatorial Pacific. 

We had one last day in Potrero, on the Guanacaste coast. We didn't have any concrete plans, and the ones we had tried to make fell through. Occasionally this happens with travel, and you adapt. (Side observation: when issues occur with travel, I feel like 90% are somehow transportation related.)

We decided to go to the beach. A natural choice for a week on the Costa Rican Pacific coast. There are a number of beaches with appealing names lined up in a row. We picked one and tried to drive to it. Ultimately, after driving past the beach, we drove on what can be questioningly called a road (a fully dirt, deeply pockmarked path) for a significant amount of time. We stopped for a second at a locals beach, before continuing on this non-road on a ridge through some coastal trees, past a resort with a pseudo forest parking lot and vendors selling bracelets and coconuts, through a literal pond back to where we started in Playa Conchal.

Hungry from the mini road trip, we sought out some food. There was a place right on the beach that surprisingly got vetoed for the menu and not the fact that there was no roof to the restaurant or tables or chairs.

We drove a little ways to Lucy's diner where we got some local Imperial beers and waters served with paper straws (yay environment!).

We went across the street to the beach and laid down on our towels to rest for a moment, exhausted from all of this relaxing vacation. 

We kicked around a ball and splashed in the grey water.

In an almost comically perfect conclusion to our last evening in Potrero, a perfectly arced double rainbow emerged above the grey skies and palm trees.

We continued to body surf even as the sky turned grey and the sun set.

After some more margaritas from our favorite beach side bar, we went back to our airbnb and fell asleep in the humid evening to howler monkeys and mosquitoes buzzing.