My first big trip out of the country this year was to Costa Rica with a group of friends. It was my first time in this beautiful country and it didn’t disappoint!
We were there from Thursday-Sunday and we stayed at this house (they’re also on Instagram – we highly recommend!) which is in Playa Hermosa, near the city of Jacó. The owner was great! She was in communication with one of our friends the whole trip and gave us a list of things to do and see. She also set up our private airport transfers (Jacó is about 1.5 hours from Juan Santamaría International Airport).
We arrived a day after everyone else in our group so while they were already on an ATV excursion the morning we got there, we took advantage of the pool to start the day.
It was already too late to book another excursion, so we ended up walking across the street from our house to the beach and enjoyed lunch at one of the restaurants.
That night, we caught a taxi to Jacó where we could go to the clubs/bars that we heard about from locals. Across from our house, was a store and pizza place (Pizza Plata – you’ll see these all over Costa Rica). It’s not very easy to catch a taxi in C.R. (at least from our experience), so the people that worked at the store had to help us several times.
Mostly all of their clubs/bars are on the same street. A few worth mentioning are XTC and Republik Lounge (even though my fiancee`s phone got stolen here, so be careful!). Everyone was pretty friendly and made sure we had a good time. The nightlife there was actually pretty good!
On Friday, we made breakfast at the house and chilled by the pool most of the day since we didn’t wake up in time to book an excursion to Tortuga Island like we had hoped and they were pretty much booked the rest of the weekend. It was also our friend’s birthday so we decided to stay in and go out to a nice restaurant in the evening.
We ended up stumbling upon El Hicao Seafood Restaurant which was right on the beach near the same strip in Jacó with all the bars/restaurants. The food was delicious and the view made it even better.
After leaving the restaurant, we explored a bit and found the tiki bar the owner of the Airbnb told us about. – KoKo Gastro. It was really cute and right on the beach. They made fresh fruit margaritas and had pretty good appetizers.
We ended up booking an excursion for 10 Hidden Waterfalls on Saturday afternoon. This excursion included transportation and lunch, but be aware! If you’re not up for an adventure, a slightly dangerous one, or hiking about 4 miles – this isn’t for you! We didn’t have a warning as to how challenging this was – many of the reviews said you should be in good shape if you’re doing this, which we clearly didn’t read before booking, lol. But we made it! We hiked through rocky water and climbed up slippery rocks as the waterfalls got larger the further we went.
It was definitely the most memorable part of our trip. Our tour guide was very helpful and taught us a lot about Costa Rican culture.
We stopped by a local restaurant on our way back. We were starving and the food was good!!!
We were so tired after coming back from our excursion, which took about 4 hours. But we didn’t want to waste our last day there. We kept hearing about the surfing competitions on the beach and that we could watch from Backyard Bar, which was walking distance from our house.
Once the sun went down, everyone went over to the bars next door to watch the night surf competition. We enjoyed a few fruit margaritas and local food before going back to the house. We stayed up talking and playing Uno on our last night. We wished we had more time there, but it’s definitely a place I’d recommend and would love to visit again. I would try more excursions next time, especially zip lining!
We also post a Costa Rica Vlog, so check out our channel to see more of our trip!
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