Day 1 in Costa Rica

This summer, I was incredibly fortunate to spend 49 days travelling around Costa Rica on my honeymoon.

The fun part was that I had absolutely nothing to do with any of the planning, and for anybody who knows me knows that I always like to know what’s going on… so this was definitely something new, but I loved the surprises each and every week.

We started out flying from Edmonton to Calgary and then direct to Liberia.

It’s an overnight flight, and you arrive in Liberia at about 6:30 AM, so we picked up our rental car and eventually hit the road… Today our drive was to make it to La Fortuna.

Now, I had never been to Costa Rica. I am a die-hard Mexico lover, so this was going to be an adventure unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

I am also a die-hard all-inclusive person, so the fact that every single week was a different stay in an Airbnb… all-inclusive was definitely not on the menu.

Our day was rainy and overcast, but the drive was stunning.

We stopped at a little restaurant that had been recommended to us on many other blogs we had read, and we sat at a little wooden table and just stared out over the lake.

Now, I don’t know if it’s just us, but we always attract, or maybe search out, all the local cats and dogs, and at this little restaurant there was a little black cat that jumped up on my lap and decided that this was a good spot to have a nap.

Definitely the first thing that you notice as soon as you get to Costa Rica is how green everything is… Back home we get some green for a few months, but this was a whole new level of lush.

We got to our first little Airbnb, which was called Posada en El Campo.

It was rustic.

There were hammocks outside.

The rain was falling, the birds were singing, and it was just paradise.

We took a drive back into La Fortuna so we could get some groceries, and we could hear the monkeys before we could see them… There were people randomly stopping and all staring up into the trees, so of course we had to go find out what was going on as well. So we jumped into true tourist fashion and joined the group, and got to see our first little howler monkeys up in the trees.

It’s just amazing… I know it’s just an everyday thing for people who live here, but we don’t get monkeys back home in good old Alberta.

We found a little restaurant for dinner, La Street Gastro Fusion, and I can honestly say that this was probably the best meal we had during our entire summer. And Sase was in heaven because they had the most flavourful, hottest pepper sauce for his salmon… and they sent us home with a little container of it, so we had that for about a week — and by “we,” I mean him, because I don’t do hot sauce.

One would think that you would find some really flavourful, spicy foods in Costa Rica… I know that’s what I thought. But Costa Rican food is actually quite bland. Their staples are rice and beans, and unlike Mexico, you don’t sit down and have random jars of homemade pepper sauce on your table.

But day one of our honeymoon was amazing, and we still had 48 days to go… We stole a title from a Kenny Chesney song to be the theme of our honeymoon, so every day became Nowhere to Go….nowhere to be…

Deanna