Our family trip to Costa Rica

The slog of everyday life hasn't left me much room for inspiration when it comes to this blog, but a family trip down south— way south— sure serves as fodder. It's been a week since we've gotten back and I'm still dragging my feet on writing this up. My blogging began as a glorified photo album, so today I'll embrace that side. After all, a picture's worth a thousand words, right? So here's my Costa Rican novel.

En route to Costa Rica via an overnight in Mexico City, complete with some fabulous guac and tacos

A happy discovery along the ride to visit a volcano: the Starbucks Hacienda Alsacia, where we saw all the steps of coffee production, from seedling to ripening fruit to roasted bean.

Not too far from San Jose, the capitol of Costa Rica, lives the Poas Volcano, an active volcano, at least according to Wikipedia. As far as we were concerned, it might very well have been a quick hike over to a very large fog machine.

The La Paz Waterfall and Peace Lodge Gardens are a private animal sanctuary and resort for wild animals rescued from illegal capitivity that are not fit to be released to the wild. This place was a major highlight of our visit, and definitely merited more than just one collage. Here we've got the birds and butterflies, including the world's friendliest tucan.

The sloths at La Paz merit their own collage.

Monkeys at La Paz!

A few of the "cuter" snakes at La Paz - yikes!

The big (and not so big) cat at La Paz

The frogs at La Paz were unexpectedly charming, especially Costa Rica's iconic and highly photogenic red-eyed tree frog!

Scenes from San Jose, sculptures by the Costa Rican sculptor Deredia, and artefacts from the city's Pre-Columbian Gold Museum.

Finally, we headed down to the Caribbean just north of the Panamanian border, for afternoons on the white and black sand beaches, crisp Costa Rican beers, fruity cocktails, and fresh iced coffees straight from the coffee bean farms.

Our Airbnb in Puerto Viejo was nestled in the jungle just a few minutes from the beach.

Like good tourists, we checked off the jungle canopy zipline tour, complete with the stomach-dropping tarzan swing.

My favorite part of the vacation: the Caribeans chocolate tour. Just outside of the center of Puerto Viejo, we kicked off with some incredibly fresh iced chocolate drinks while waiting on our tour. Wandering into the jungle that hugs the coast line, our tour guide taught us all about cacao farming. As she walked us along the jungle trails and we developed an eye for it, we starting realizing that the cacao fruits were just everywhere around us, in so many different colors from bright yellow to pale green to deep purple-red. We learned about the fungus that's been devastating Costa Rica's cacao farms, destroying over 80% of the crop, a fungus which the locals believe was brought in by the big banana companies, who took over the land when cacao farmers went bust. (I loved how what they called "farms" were basically jungles carefully tended to ensure 50/50 sunlight/shade for the cacao plants.) We learned about new resistant strains that are being bred, to help Costa Rica's cacao farmers make a comeback. We learned that the cacao fruit is shockingly substantial, a white slimy tropical food so yummy that it surprised me that anyone got past it to realize that the bitter inner seed might have so much potential! And finally, we learned to taste chocolate, in an experience surprisingly similar to wine tasting, just without the buzz. We even learned that chocolate mixes surprisingly well, of all things, fresh garlic. And in case that wasn't enough, we got to know a very hardy sloth en route back to the cafe when a crash landing caught us all by surprise.

Finally, back in San Jose, we bid the rest of the family goodbye on an early morning flight, and then enjoyed the wait until our late night departure with a day trip out to Tortuga Island on Costa Rica's Pacific Coast. In a tropical paradise, just the two of us for the day, it nearly felt like the honeymoon we're still planning on getting around to.