Costa Rica

Jon and I just returned from a wonderful week in Costa Rica with Jon's brother Tim and his wife, Erin, and our pals Kerri and Jeff. We spent the first days down in the village of Dominical at a wonderful small hotel. If you are ever looking for lodging by the ocean, check out Cuna Del Angel. It was perfect. We filled our days with whale-watching, surfing, hiking, and a river rafting trip. I loved it all. Our evenings were usually spent with a cool drink on the hotel's patio, watching the sunset, and the toucans, and the sloths, and the howler monkeys. After four lovely days of lounging in the south, we drove north of San Jose to the Sarapiqui river area. We moved into our first hotel around sunset- it seemed nice enough, but very very quiet, and dark- kind of moody. In a non-romantic way. We had picked this place in part because their website boasted of a great chef who catered to vegetarians. So we eagerly sat down at an elegant table and awaited our meals. The waiter entered and grandly lay before us a large platter of....dry, toasted wonder bread? Not what was expected. In the morning we headed out to the other hotel we had considered because they advertised lots of trails through primary rain forest. All four of us (Tim and Erin flew back home after Dominical) fell in love with the forest, our guide, the hotel, and the lovely patio overlooking a rushing river. We quickly canceled our previous reservations and settled in at Selva Verde Lodge. Highly recommend it. Sadly, we only had one day to spend there. Overall, I'd go again in a second. Even though there are so many places to go in the world, I think there is still so much more to do in Costa Rica. And it's not terribly far away, it's in the same time zone, and the people are so amazingly nice. Go!
The absolute best part of our trip was, incidentally, returning home to St. Paul at midnight to find little love notes from the boys on our pillows.