Our family vacation this year was to the beautiful Guanacaste province of Costa Rica. We wanted to visit somewhere new and soak up all of the warm weather, so Costa Rica was a perfect fit! In the initial stages of planning, we were super lost on which area to focus on, and made the mistake of looking in a region that was about 5 hours from the nearest airport!
We narrowed our search to the Guanacaste Region, specifically Coco Bay/Beach. This area was only about 40 minutes from the Liberia airport, and provided us with easy access to several excursions along with beautiful ocean views. If you are wanting a vacation nestled in the jungle of Costa Rica, this blog won’t be for you. Just note that many of those locations are 3-5 hours from the nearest airport.
We stayed in this incredible Airbnb, which boasted breathtaking views of the mountains and ocean while providing us with plenty of space and comfort. Our host, Alex, was extremely helpful in all of our plans and essentially served as our personal coordinator from start to finish. I would highly recommend leaning on your airbnb host for this, as Alex was able to book all of our transport and excursions.
The Airbnb itself is located in Coco Bay Estates and has access to the Club at Coco Bay, but unfortunately this is nearly impossible to get to without a car. The hills that lead up to the house are extremely steep, so you need a ride to/from the club. For this reason, we were only able to visit once and couldn’t take advantage of the amenities as much as we hoped.
Since our rental was picturesque, we spent a good chunk of time here! We played ping pong and pool, lounged by the pool, cooked with a view, and shook up plenty of cocktails in the outdoor bar. However, we wanted to take advantage of the adventure and beauty Costa Rica offers so we participated in a few excursions.
La Leona Waterfall Hike
This hike was located about 1.5 hours from the house. Our driver, Johnny, was very friendly and pointed out several spots of importance along our drive. Once we arrived, we were given a wet bag for our items and driven to the trailhead, where our guide accompanied us on the hike. I don’t know the exact distance of the hike, but it didn’t feel longer than 1.5 miles each way. It does require some scrambling and lots of swimming, so come prepared to get wet! At the end, you’ll use a rope to propel yourself in the water towards the waterfall itself. It wasn’t difficult for our group but would caution against anyone who isn’t comfortable swimming or hiking.
Arriving at the waterfall was so beautiful! You can spend as much time as you’d like basking in the waterfall before heading back onto the trail. Many people get their phones out of the wet bag to capture to sight. On the way back, our guide showed us a slight detour where we could do a small cliff jump into the water, which we were all excited to do!
The company we booked the excursion through included lunch at a local restaurant right off the trail, so we enjoyed local cuisine before the ride back to the house. Our total time away was only 5.5 hours, which was perfect so that we could enjoy the second half of our day with the rest of our family.
Sunset Cruise
We wanted to do a sunset cruise, but I don’t think that we quite knew what we were getting ourselves into! While I would still recommend, I suggest looking into a more private cruise option. The catamaran we got on had about 100 people and felt very touristy (ironic coming from a tourist, I realize). It also departed at 2pm, so took up a big portion of our day when we really just wanted the sunset hour. However, it was overall convenient – picking us up and dropping us back at Coco Beach (about 5 minute drive from the house).
The boat sailed us to a beach where we could get off the boat and swim or snorkel in the ocean for about an hour. After getting back on the boat, they had chips and dips for everyone, plus they opened the slide! A few of us took the plunge 🙂
The sunset itself really was worth the trip – seeing it dip into the ocean with music and cocktails is hard to beat! We had a blast dancing our hearts out as the sky turned into stars.
Diamante Adventure Park
Ziplining was another adventure we wanted to partake in and we considered a few options. We landed on the Diamante Adventure Park due to it having a line that overlooks the ocean and is almost a mile long! The park offers several different passes based on which activities you’d like to do, but we solely wanted to zip line. The wait time was a little aggravating as we had to wait for a giant group to get suited up and be ready before we could begin, but I am not sure if this is everyone’s experience.
Nonetheless, the 4 zip lines were so much fun. The “superman” option that is almost a mile long was a one-of-a-kind experience and worth it all!
I wish I had photos to share but we didn’t have our phones and didn’t purchase any of the professional photos. Just trust me when I say we had big smiles!
Food
We did not explore many restaurants in the area since we had a house with a great kitchen, and opted to cook our own meals most of the time. We did enjoy having a local woman named Ofelia come cook us breakfast one morning and dinner one evening – the dinner was a traditional Costa Rican chicken, rice, and beans meal and we all LOVED it. Thank you, Ofelia!
Of the places we did explore – Sugoi was the hibachi restaurant located at the Club and we would not recommend. It was extremely overpriced and kind of a strange experience. We got pizza one night (after the sunset cruise) from and thought it was pretty darn good.
Overall we really enjoyed our vacation to Costa Rica and would recommend it as a perfect place for R&R plus some adventure!