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Tags: Christmas Alternatives / Volunteer Travel / Costa Rica Travel / Holiday Travel / → All Tags

Help Costa Rican Families This Holiday Season On A Volunteer Vacation

Who needs another awkward family Christmas watching Aunt Betty get drunk and grandpa fall asleep? Instead, why not spend the holidays spreading some much needed holiday cheer in Costa Rica and participate in fun activities like zip lining and river rafting?

Tropical Adventures has created a special tour, dubbed The Holiday Project 2009, which mixes fun adventures with much-needed visits to diverse communities to spread the joy of the holidays. The trip is open to families and children of all ages are welcome to join in on the fun. As part of the package, families will spend a total 9 days/8 nights in Costa Rica, 2 nights will be spent in a hotel in San Jose, 4 nights in Puerto Viejo with a host family and the final 2 nights are spent on an Indigenous Reservation. The trip also includes all on-the-ground transportation, most meals, 3 holiday parties with local children and retirees, and 3 adventure tours.

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Tags: Summer-Signature-Cocktails-Map / Drinking Travel / Costa Rica Travel / Labor Day Travel / → All Tags

The National Drink Of Costa Rica Redefines 'Sweet & Sour'

After Labor Day, summer will officially be over, and with it our list of Signature Summer Cocktails. It's been a good run, and to top off the glass so to speak, we'll finish with our tenth cocktail: Costa Rica's national drink the Cacique Guaro Sour.

Like the Pisco Sour in Peru, Cacique Guaro is to be found everything in Costa Rica. Heck, we saw (and drank) plenty of it on our recent Costa Rican Field Trip. It's an alcohol made from sugarcane, so expect the taste to be sweet but eye-widenly strong. In fact, it's an aguardiente, or "firewater" liquor between between 30 and 60% alcohol content.

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Tags: Costa Rica Field Trip / Corcovado National Park / Hiking / Camping / → All Tags

How to Hike Costa Rica's Corcovado National Park

All this week, Lost Girl Amanda Pressner will be bringing us reports from her recent trip to Costa Rica with her entire family. Any questions about traveling to Costa Rica or family-oriented activities to do while you're there? Let us know.

While the list of natural wonders in Costa Rica is practically endless, few are more revered by the locals (and industrious tourists) than the Osa Peninsula. Located in the far Southwestern portion of the country, the Osa is the home of Corcovado National Park, a dense swathe of jungle that National Geographic once dubbed “the most biologically intense place on earth.” The place is absolutely teaming with wildlife of all shapes and varieties, and contains a greater variety of birds, insects, trees and mammals per square kilometer than almost anywhere else in the world.

Thanks to Costa Rica’s commitment to protecting its most valuable natural resources, primary rainforests once slashed and burned in Osa to make way for pastureland and farming back in the 70s have almost completely returned as secondary forest—and so have a multitude of species that were headed for extinction.

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Tags: Costa Rica Field Trip / Packing List / Suitcases / Packing / → All Tags

The Ultimate Packing List for Costa Rica

All this week, Lost Girl Amanda Pressner will be bringing us reports from her recent trip to Costa Rica with her entire family. Any questions about traveling to Costa Rica or family-oriented activities to do while you're there? Let us know.

When I returned from my yearling round-the-world adventure with The Lost Girls back in 2007, I swore that I’d retire my trusty blue Snowgum backpack and only travel with a rolling suitcase from now on. Fast forward two years to July 2009, and you’ll see me digging around my aunt’s basement in upstate New York, trying to find the only bag I really trust to get me and my three weeks worth of clothing—across rives, through jungles and overnight buses in Costa Rica.

The first time that I had to traipse through two feet of seawater to board a boat that took me across the Gulf of Papagayo from one destination to the next, I realized that it would have been near impossible to accomplish the task with a big suitcase on wheels. Not getting rid of Big Blue was the best travel decisions I ever made (that and running away from an insane cab driver in Vietnam, but that’s another story).

While living out of a backpack for 12 months straight got pretty old on my last big trip, it did teach me one important life lesson—how to pack effectively (if not exactly lightly). Some may look at the list below and think “holy crap, girl…that’s way too much stuff!” but I truly did utilize each and everything below at least once, and usually many times during my recent Costa Rica trip.

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Tags: Costa Rica Field Trip / Spas / Eco-Travel / Eco Spas / Green Travel / → All Tags

How to Indulge in Some Earth-Friendly Pampering in Costa Rica

All this week, Lost Girl Amanda Pressner will be bringing us reports from her recent trip to Costa Rica with her entire family. Any questions about traveling to Costa Rica or family-oriented activities to do while you're there? Let us know.

Ever wonder where this whole sustainable travel, eco-tourism trend got its legs in the first place? As I learned during my family vacation, it was the formerly impoverished banana republic of that Costa Rica almost single-handedly spawned the concept back in the 70s.

After the price of “yellow gold” crashed back a few decades ago, the nation fell into a devastating depression. Sensing that CR needed to identify an alternative industry—and fast—a few government smarties kicked off the nation’s Green Revolution, reforesting huge tracts of jungle that had once been clear-cut for farming and turning them into protected wilderness areas and national parks. By successfully marketing itself as a nature-lovers paradise, Costa Rica no longer needed to export bananas to survive. They started importing tourists.

And with those tourists came the birth of another trend: Eco-Spas.

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Tags: Costa Rica Field Trip / Volcanoes / Adventure Travel / Ziplines / White Water Rafting / → All Tags

How to Rev Your Adrenaline in Arenal

All this week, Amanda Pressner will be bringing us reports from her recent trip to Costa Rica with her entire family. Any questions about traveling to Costa Rica or family-oriented activities to do while you're there? Let us know.

With just four days to spend in the Costa Rican jungle, my family and I wanted to pack in as much pulse pounding excitement as we possibly could—and what better way, we figured, than to set up base camp just down the slope from an active volcano?

Arenal (the name of the volcano, a lake and a region in Costa Rica) is one of the country’s popular destinations—and for very good reason. Not only is it possible to see the fiery red lava flow at the top of the cone on a clear night (usually from the comfort of your hotel room) but there’s no shortage of ways to experience the nearby rainforest and cloud forest and the rivers that cut through them.

In fact, according to Elaine Knight, owner of the Lost Iguana Resort & Spa, the biggest mistake people when planning their trip to Costa Rica rushing to hit too many different destinations and booking too few nights in Arenal.

In an email before the trip, she encouraged our group of six to spend four nights, and four days in the local area. If figured that she might be a tad partial, but in the end, I’m so glad we followed her advice.

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Tags: Costa Rica Field Trip / Nature Air / First Person Flight Reviews / Jaunted Travel Videos / → All Tags

Winging It to Costa Rica: International and Local Flights

All this week, Amanda Pressner will be bringing us reports from her recent trip to Costa Rica with her entire family. Any questions about traveling to Costa Rica or family-oriented activities to do while you're there? Let us know.

My sister and I are notoriously belated when it comes to sending birthday gifts and cards, so it probably came as no surprise to our Dad when we finally made good on the 65th B-day gift we promised him—a full five months after his 66th! For the man who already has everything, Jenn and I decided, along with our step-mom Nadine, to take Dad on a fantastic family vacation.

Because I have the most stamps in my passport, the fam decide that it automatically fell to me to decide where six adults of varying ages, activity levels and budgetary restraints should go to get away from it all—and to plan out the full details of our group adventure. Ideas were tossed out: Caribbean cruise? (Too hot in July) European sightseeing tour? (the $1,000 round trip ticket—a big turn off).

In end, we all agreed on Costa Ricaa country where none of us had traveled, but by most accounts, was the adult version of Disney World. Orlando may be the happiest place on earth for kids, but according to CNN, it’s the happiest place on earth for adults.

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Tags: Family Travel / NatureAir / Free / Travel Deals / Costa Rica Travel / Green Travel / → All Tags

Kids Fly Free On Carbon Neutral Costa Rican Airline

If you thought Costa Rica was just for hippie backpackers and torturing Spiedi, you should know that tourism companies are now pushing the eco-friendly destination as a family-friendly trip.

To back this up, Costa Rica's domestic carrier NatureAir is offering a sweet deal for those with little ones: free flights for children. Now through the end of August, kids up to 11 years old can fly free on all NatureAir flights within Costa Rica. Unfortunately, the offer doesn't apply to Jon and Kate-sized families—you only get one free child's ticket for every two adult seats purchased. Still, free is free.

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Tags: I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here / Reality Television / Television Travel / Heidi Montag / Spencer Pratt / Janice Dickinson / Celebrities / → All Tags

"I Guess This Is What We Deserve for Being Little Crybabies"

Well we're in to week two of the Speidi quit-a-thon, and Spencer and Heidi have said goodbye to "I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here" for the third, and apparently final time. Last night we got an inside peak at the couples' alleged torture session in the Costa Rican jungle; they spent a night in the spider-infested "lost chamber" as punishment for their first attempt to quit the show, but Heidi couldn't take it and had to be flown to San Jose to seek medical treatment.

Although don't let it be said their trip was all for naught—Spencer admitted Costa Rica was worth the trek because he did get baptized in the river by Stephen Baldwin—they did get the exposure they wanted. Spencer even admitted, "I guess this is what we deserve for being little crybabies." And for the first time, America agreed with Spencer Pratt.

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Tags: I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here / Reality Television / Television Travel / Heidi Montag / The Hills / Spencer Pratt / Janice Dickinson / Patti Blagojevich / Celebrities / → All Tags

"I Wanna Go Back to the Hills"

The D-Listers (and let's be honest, a few sub-D-listers) parachuted into the Costa Rican Jungle last night for the debut episode of "I'm Spencer Pratt, Make Me Stop Talking." Errr, "I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here."

While we're in it mostly for the glamour shots of volcanoes and iguanas, we have to admit it's hard not to enjoy watching Patti Blagojevich getting whisked away by a rapid river and Janice Dickinson doused with unidentified "jungle slime." But a few distractions aside, the first episode was, unsurprisingly, all about our old friends Heidi and Spencer.

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Tags: I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here / Reality Television / Television Travel / Heidi Montag / The Hills / Spencer Pratt / Sanjaya / American Idol / Stephen Baldwih / Lou Diamond Phillips / Torrie Wilson / John Salley / Janice Dickinson / Rod Blagojevich / Patti Blagojevich / Celebrities / → All Tags

Travel Advisory: D-List Celebs to Descend on Costa Rica Next Week

Sick and tired of recessionomics and staycations, America is in dire need of distraction by a good D-Listy celebrity travel show, and boy is NBC coming through for us.

Starting next week, the new season of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here will air live from the Costa Rican jungle, with viewers getting to choose which harrowing challenges to dump on what looks like the most villainous reality show cast yet.

Heidi and Spencer from The Hills will be conniving against American Idol's Sanjaya, Stephen Baldwin, Lou Diamond Phillips, wrestler Torrie Wilson, retired basketball star John Salley and Janice "I'll go on any reality show" Dickinson. The last addition to the cast is Patti Blagojevich, the former first lady of Illinois, who filled in for her disgraced husband Rod when a judge ruled he couldn’t leave the country, even for as important a matter as this.

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Tags: Celeb Travel / Gisele Bundchen / Tom Brady / Destination Weddings / → All Tags

Once More, With Feeling: Brady and Bundchen Have Costa Rica Destination Wedding

One party just wasn't enough: After tying the knot in a private ceremony in Caifornia last month, Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen got hitched again this weekend at her house in Costa Rica.

25 guests witnessed the re-hitching of Brady and Bündchen, who left her house to prep for the wedding separately at the Milarepa Hotel and Hotel Flor Blanca in the city of Santa Teresa. Guests included Brady's 1-year-old son, the source of controversy in Bündchen's recent Vanity Fair profile in which she said she felt like his mother (news to his real mother, Bridget Moynahan) and Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Paparazzi who managed to figure out the date and location of the ceremony were fired on by security guards hired for the occasion.

There are competing schools of thought on whether destination weddings will take a major hit or a minor hit during this recession. Bridal Guide magazine predicted destination weddings would be up 14 percent this year despite the downturn because they often involve fewer guests (and thus lower overhead). But AdAge found the average price of a wedding in the U.S. dropped in 2008 for the first time in 17 years, indicating that many brides are not only actively looking to cut costs, they're actually doing it.

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