Costa Rica has been a place I have wanted to visit for the majority of my life. My dad has been several times and each time he came home with a cool souvenir, I knew I wanted to go too. My friend Grace and I booked a 7-day tour with a Groupon through Costa Rica Monkey Tours leaving in November of 2016.

We arrived in Liberia in the late afternoon and spent the evening relaxing and getting our first taste of the very popular Imperial beer at our hotel. We got some rest for our big day tomorrow. There were 4 other women on the trip who were all great ladies! We met our Tour Director, Christian, who was amazing and knew a ton of info. We met our bus driver, Francisco (or Franny as we liked to call him) and also two photographers were on the trip, Jesus and Miri. All of that was included in the price we paid for the trip and they were all such amazing people!

We made our way to Hotel Hacienda Guachipelin for a full day of fun! Starting with horseback riding through the trees. The weather was absolutely perfect for everything we did that day.

Up next was white water tubing and we had the BEST time. It was so so so much fun! The water was a little cold, but you quickly get used to it. This was the first time I’ve ever been on rapids like we were on and it was exhilarating! At one point my tube flipped over and I thought I was a goner, but I made it.

Then came time to zip line through the forest…I told you we had a fun filled day! After getting some instructions on how to zip line, I was ready to cross this off my bucket list. All of the people that worked there were great! Everyone was so helpful, but also really fun and entertaining. Our whole day was filled with laughter and happiness. The zip lining experience also included rappelling down, swinging across a gap in the mountains and rock climbing your way back up. It was such an adventure!

To finish off our day of activities, we went to the hot springs that they had on their property. We put the very mineral rich mud all over our bodies and it left our skin feeling like brand new. The hot springs were amazing and so refreshing!

Our hotel room was perfect and the hotel property was surrounded by beautiful scenery. Also, dogs everywhere. We became best friends with a cute dog named Charlie 🙂 We had dinner that night on site and learned some great dance moves from the guys. If you’re making a trip to the Liberia area, I highly recommend looking into staying at Hotel Hacienda Guachipelin because the staff is great, it’s a beautiful place and there is so much to do!

The next day we headed to the Monteverde Cloud Forest and I was blown away by how gorgeous it was. We took the sky tram up to the top of the mountain which made for amazing views of everything around us.

We walked through the forest for about 2 hours on several sky bridges and learned a lot about nature in Costa Rica. Walking along the sky bridges was a great way to take in all of the sights.

We stayed at El Establo Mountain Hotel in Monteverde that night and it was stunning. Our room was literally on the side of a mountain and I never wanted to leave. We were only there one night, but it was gorgeous and I would go back in a heartbeat. That night a few of us went and did a night forest walk to explore and see critters. They gave us a flashlight and we quietly made our way through the forest to see what we would stumble upon. We saw sleeping birds up close and a kinkajou up in the trees! Throughout our trip, we saw and heard howler monkeys, which was really cool!

Costa Rica is so amazing that I’m going to make this into a two-parter, so you’ll have to check back for an update on the remaining days of our trip!

Happy travels! 🙂