Jaunted - cr

Help Costa Rican Families This Holiday Season On A Volunteer Vacation

cmb — 2009-10-07T16:02:34-05:00

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.

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

JetSetCD — 2009-09-03T11:24:45-05:00

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.

How to Hike Costa Rica's Corcovado National Park

juliana — 2009-08-28T16:16:11-05:00

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.

The Ultimate Packing List for Costa Rica

The Lost Girl — 2009-08-27T17:04:41-05:00

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.

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

The Lost Girl — 2009-08-26T17:33:44-05:00

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.

How to Rev Your Adrenaline in Arenal

The Lost Girl — 2009-08-25T17:06:21-05:00

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.

Winging It to Costa Rica: International and Local Flights

The Lost Girl — 2009-08-24T16:54:20-05:00

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.