"Two Vacatio ..." a Provincia de Puntarenas Travel Page by Bwana_Brown

My wife and I travelled to Costa Rica for a week of vacation, in early February, 2001, in order to ease the painful passing of another Canadian winter. As a result of an ice-storm delayed departure, it was close to midnight when we landed in the capital city of San Jose and were picked up by a mini-van for transportation to the Pacific coast side of the country. There were only 6 passengers, plus the driver and his buddy for the nightime drive. I found it to be a very interesting trip down the twisting mountain roads as we wound down to near sea-level, even though all we could see were some magnificent displays of town and village lights spread out below. It was past 3 AM when we arrived at our first destination, a planned 3-day stop in the rain forest at an eco-lodge call Villa Lapas. As it turned out, we had a very pleasant stay there and found the staff to be extremely friendly! Villa Lapa was relaxing because it has only a limited number of rooms and it is located in the rain forest, away from other resorts. The site has a nice brook running through the property as well as its own sky-walk trail with suspension bridges within walking distance of the accommodations area. A Costa Rican-trained zoologist leads the tours and he did a fantastic job pointing out all the hidden delights of the forest canopy! From there, we travelled onward to the Pacific coast where we stayed in a traditional holiday resort just outside the town of Puntarenas for the final 4 days of our trip. Once again, the accommodations at the Fiesta Resort were first-rate. While there, we also took a one-day bus excursion to the Arenal volcano, with the drive through the Costa Rican countryside being worth the cost of the trip in itself! Altogether, we had an extremely enjoyable visit to Costa Rica!