Why Costa Rica?

From the moment we disembarked at the Juan Santamaria International Airport we fell in love with Costa Rica! Really! It might though, have had alot to do with the fact that it was -20 celsius in the country we had just come from!
We had been die hard Mexico travellers in the past but visiting Costa Rica changed all that! No more dry ol' Mexico for us...it was Pura Vida Costa Rica all the way from then on out.
Our first trip was for our 25th Wedding Anniversary in March of 2005. A big milestone like that deserved a special holiday. After all was said & done it turned out to be the trip of a life time!
Everything was perfect from start to finish....transportation, accommodations, the people we met...everything!
Looking back now & hearing all the bad experiences others had endured, I guess we were pretty lucky it all went so well.
It all started when we bought our first computer. What a wealth of knowledge these gadgets hold! Once I typed in the words "Costa Rica" we were hooked! There was so much information, so many choices, it was mind boggling!
I spent so many months pouring over the hundreds of websites, clicking each one's numerous links, cutting & pasting in to my word program information for future reference that my wrists were aching & my clickin' finger was numb! It definately didn't help that I had Carpal Tunnel Syndrome at the time & in the end had to switch hands to peck at the keyboard. Still, every key punched meant I knew that much more about Costa Rica. We were darn near experts before we even got there! In fact we had a dispute with our Travel Agent on where the San Jose Airport was! She insisted it was right in the heart of downtown San Jose, therefore we should let her make us hotel reservations for this area. Hmmmmm, obviously she knew nothing of Costa Rica & we knew we were right. We thanked her for booking our flights & said we would look after everything else ourselves. To this day, I am glad "we did it our waaaay"...I'm humming along with Mr. Sinatra in my head as I type this! Words to live by for sure!
Once we had our airline tickets in our hot, little & oh, so excited hands, we were ready to map out our destinations. Of course we wanted to see everything! Unfortunately to see "everything", it could take years. We would be there a month & transportation had to be figured in to every leg of the journey.
Short distances on maps can be very deceiving when planning travel days from one destination to the next. Just because a map indicates a place is only 90 kms away, it does not mean you can expect to arrive in said destination with in an hour. Case in point, (more details to follow in a later post)....from Arenal to Monteverde via jeep-boat-jeep, it took close to 5 hours & it was only about a 25 km trip! Fortunately, because of diligent research, we knew this & planned accordingly.
It took us over a year to plan our trip. The fact that we spent so much time getting to know Costa Rica in advance was more than worth it.
Dale joked that our holiday started a year before we even got there & lasted well after we had arrived home! He was right, as he always is :).