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We spent the entire month of December 2018 living in Costa Rica with our 3 young kids. Colby and I visited Costa Rica about 8 years ago before we had kids and loved it, so we were eager to take our kids back. One of the things we loved was all of the wildlife.
Costa Rica’s jungles are home to some amazing animals, however one of the things we either conveniently erased from our memories, or skipped experiencing the last time (since we were moving to hotel to hotel) was the BUGS!
November 29th we arrived to our home in the jungle in the pouring rain after a long day of traveling with 3 young kids, and if you’ve lived anywhere with bugs you know the rain brings them out of hiding. And out they came. We had huge ants on the floors, counters, walls, dishes and even inside the toilet bowl! (Zoe began protesting using the bathroom for fear of ants crawling out of the toilet and onto her bum) We had spiders of varying types and sizes, creepy worm-like centipedes (and lots of them), and some critters we didn’t know how to identify.
Colby and I even had a scorpion invade our hug in the kitchen after putting the kids to bed one night. But, the funny thing is, and I can’t believe I’m typing this, we got used to them! :0
Sure, I’m not certain we slept quite as sound the whole time we were there, (read more about that here) but we learned to see past the bugs. We learned to accept them as a daily part of life and leave them alone as long as they did the same to us :)
So, we came to “tolerate” (and I use that word loosely) the bugs, but what really made Costa Rica worth putting up with them?
The BEACHES.
My goodness the beaches. Holy gorgeous. Imagine beautiful green tropical jungle growing right up to white sandy paradise, now sprinkle some colorful scarlet macaws flying in pairs in the blue sky overhead.
Not only were the beaches gorgeous, they were anything but ordinary. Our go-to beach, Playa Mantas, has several little streams emptying from rivers right into the ocean, which made for THE perfect place for little kids to play. There was also an abundance of trees growing right at the beach’s edge providing the perfect amount of shade. And if you’re not a relax-in-the-sun-or-shade kinda person the beaches had miles of less traversed territory for exploring.
The constant 70–80 degree sunny December weather was a perk too. Colby loved early morning surfing at the beach in Jaco and we became the neighborhood’s most frequent quests to the pool where we stayed. It was an amazing pool, with perfect water temps and ideal for kids. We’ve all had longing pangs for it since leaving.
Besides the weather, the beaches, and lush jungle, the country just has a great vibe to it. With Pura Vida as the heartbeat of the country and arms open wide to tourists we would return in the blink of an eye.
We might request that the laundry room door to our place be sealed off from the jungle though. ;)
There were lots of other things we loved about Costa Rica too!
Click here if you want to read about those!
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