A summer in Costa Rica – how our family made it happen
How we made it work for our family of 5 to spend a month in Costa Rica this summer.
Background: our family – kids age 3, 5 & 8 – spent five weeks in Costa Rica this summer. We spent most of our time in the small town of Nosara in the province of Guanacaste, but also took a few days visiting Arenal, Rincon de la Vieja, Rio Celeste and more. We worked some of the time we were there, and were also joined by my parents and our friends’ family for a week each.
Why a Month in Costa Rica?
We wanted to do something both adventurous and relaxing with our family – something that would create family memories for years to come, help break our children out of their shells and allow them to explore the world, and create a diversion from the daily “busy-ness” that is part of raising 3 young kids and upholding 2 demanding jobs, so we could enjoy quality time with less distractions as a family.
I have also always liked seeing a new place from the eyes of its inhabitants, rather than just a tourist. Being able to stay somewhere for a long period of time to actually get the feeling of living, grocery shopping, working, etc. there creates that experience.
We realized, about two years ago, that we were both in a position with our jobs that we indeed could manage to work at a distance from our home for several weeks, and we began considering our options. Where would we want to go that we could work remotely from and that we’d want to spend that much time at. Europe immediately was tossed out, although we certainly would love to spend that much time there, because of the time zone difference and the difficulty being responsive and available to communicate during the workday. Our immediate thought after that was Costa Rica, because we had visited back in 2007 and loved it, knew that it was foreign but had a feeling of safety, was worldly but also had a lot of comforts of home with a large American ex-pat community, and we had wanted to return since our first visit.
And that’s how, the idea of taking a month away from our daily life at home and renting a house in the jungles of Costa Rica, became our dream for the perfect getaway.
Would it Work?
The largest hurdle we had to get through was whether we could truly, from a logistical standpoint, be able to work while we were there. Would there be reliable Internet? Was there a summer camp or way to get childcare? Would our jobs survive the distance?
When it came to our jobs, we both had a feeling we could manage the time away. We both do work remotely at a distance from our clients and coworkers for a large part of our time already. Also, we both tend to be risk-takers and believe in following our guts and our dreams at the risk of stability… so that was settled pretty easily that we’d be willing to try it, as long as we could get Internet service and determined the amount of time that was reasonable for us to be gone.
The childcare became the number one hurdle that would determine when, how and where we would go within Costa Rica or at all. We weighed the option of finding an aupair, inviting friends or family to come with us in trade for help with the kids, or finding a summer camp. We knew we’d be happy to have my parents come out, but didn’t know if they’d be able to or for how long. I didn’t like the idea of an aupair because it sounded like a large time investment to conduct a search, and so I began looking into whether we could find a decent summer camp option that also would take very young children, since Sierra would only be 3 by the summer.
Step 1: Finding Childcare and Determining Exactly Where Within Costa Rica to Stay
I thought I’d have it easy looking for a summer camp for the kids. We’d stayed at a place in Vancouver in 2010 that had a great summer camp as part of the resort. I remembered that even if you didn’t stay at the resort, they allowed guests at nearby hotels to use the summer camp for a fee as well. So, I started my search by looking for resorts in Costa Rica with kids programs. Unfortunately, not much turned up from this search — most of the resorts with kid’s programs had very little information on their websites – making it unclear if they even offered it daily, and usually if something did come up, the age minimum was 5 and up. I then posted on tripadvisor in the Costa Rica forums, and surprisingly got very little help as well. The few responses sent me to surf camps that were for older kids. Same for Google searches.
I was near giving up, when I decided to get creative with my Google search terms. Rather than looking for ‘summer camp,’ which I started to think may be more of an American term, I looked for preschool and summer classes in my searches. Up popped a few new results I hadn’t seen before, with schools that were geared to both Ticos (Costa Ricans) and foreigners, and a few with programs for short term stays.
One school, in particular, immediately caught my attention, as it boasted a weekly visiting students program that went through the regular school year and summer, was Montessori-based, was in the Guanacaste area which we had visited in 2007 and loved, and included programs for age 4 and up. Sierra would be 3 when we visited, but I thought it was worth a try to ask. I contacted the school, Del Mar Academy, in October 2012 and they responded within a day and confirmed my hopes. Yes, they could accommodate the kids, yes they’d be willing to let Sierra join even though she was a bit younger than most their students, and yes, they had availability. The town the school was in was Nosara, a place I’d never heard of and on blind faith decided it would be the place we would stay.
Step 2: Determining if We Could Rent a House that Met our Needs
Finding a home rental that met our needs was one of the most difficult steps. Choosing somewhere that you will be happy staying for several weeks, without knowing much about the town, neighborhoods, etc. can be very challenging. The super-researcher I was, I put together a list of “requirements”, based on what I saw was reasonable for our budget, which included being walking distance from the beach, close to restaurants, air conditioning, a pool, reliable Internet and more. I began a thorough search on vrbo.com, homeaway.com, tripadvisor.com and flipkey.com to see what was out there. I also learned of a couple local websites, including surfingnosara.com and visitnosara.com which had homes that weren’t available on the more mainstream sites. I put together a spreadsheet, listing each home’s price, which requirements and wish list items were met (such things as ‘includes a dishwasher’ which was rare).
I also had to learn some of the idiosyncracies to ask about – it turns out that a good amount of homes – maybe 50% of those I inquired with – had bedrooms that were separate units from the main house. While this isn’t a problem for many travelers, it was a problem for us, since we couldn’t fathom our kids sleeping in a separate unit from the main house, with their only access to us, be it first thing in the morning or in the middle of the night, requiring them walking outside and past the pool, unlocking the main house, and coming in. I felt lucky I learned about this early on since it disqualified many good houses from being adequate for our needs.
In the end, I found several good choices, developed a good sense of what our budget should be, and got a good sense of the layout of the town. I also learned from several sources that the Internet was indeed reliable in Nosara, even if there were regular power surges that homeowners there couldn’t guarantee against. All in all, I probably spent 60 or more hours researching rental options. Yes, this was a lot, but considering that the first time I thought about spending the summer abroad with family, I thought Tim and I would need to go down there for a quick visit on our own and scout out our options, this was reasonable for me.
We had enough information from my initial research to see that the trip was possible – I had determined that we had childcare, a place to work, and home rental options that met our needs and budget – so the foundation was set for us to make it happen. Oddly, until you pull the trigger, you never quite feel sure it will happen.
Step 3: Committing to Dates and Length of Trip
Pulling the trigger for us meant buying our airline tickets. I had wanted to book the home rental first, but we were having trouble making a decision based on the possibility of both my parents and friends visiting us sometime during our stay as well. Their visits were welcome, of course, but made home looking more complex because the size of the house we would rent, and number of bedrooms, instantly changed when we had the possibility of 2-5 more people staying with us. I had started my search based on just the 5 of us. Some of the homes I had found wouldn’t even fit more than us 5.
In November, I had called up customer service for our United Mileage card, and learned we had enough points accumulated, from our nearly 10 years of use of the card, to send 3 family members to Europe and back for free! I was elated! The question was, how would this work to go to Costa Rica, would there be flights that matched our dates, weren’t red-eyes, and how would we work around 3 free round trip flights and 2 paid ones?
We also needed to determine just how long we were going to stay – I wanted to stay 6 weeks while Tim was leaning towards 4. I ended up printing out multiple sheets showing the same set of calendar months, and mapping out dates to leave and return that were available with our miles, that would also work out with the kids’ school schedules and the dates that some of the homes we were interested in renting were available. It was all quite complex.
It was mid-January by the time I started feeling the pressure to get our airline tickets before it was too late… and we still hadn’t figured out which home to rent based on some overlapping of dates homes were available and flights were available. We had settled on roughly a month, and we didn’t want to go too far into August due to the increased chance of rainy weather and lack of return flights at all in the month of August. But, things weren’t matching up and in a series of 3 days in January we saw half of the possible available flights become sold out each day. We scrambled to make some decisions and decided that we would buy our flights out – all together with the United miles, and get one way return flights with regular tickets a few days later when we had time to evaluate more. We decided to purchase flights leaving the country on July 1, working with very limited availability, and deciding to miss 4th of July in the states and enjoy mine and Rylan’s birthday while traveling abroad. (Note to self – landing in a foreign country the day before your birthday puts a little too much pressure on what to do that first day! Turned out we were exhausted from travel and Rylan had a new ear infection so half our day was spent working around finding a Costa Rican doctor!).
Soon after purchasing our tickets to Costa Rica, we felt the relief of knowing we were committed, and bought our return tickets for August 5, making it a full 5 weeks that we would be away.
Step 4: Lodging Specifics
We decided that we would spend the first 4 days at a resort before going out to Nosara. I was also very concerned – what if we didn’t like Nosara? What about all these people telling me how great Manuel Antonio is? Or the Osa Peninsula? There’s a lot of pressure that comes from knowing you will be in a foreign country for 5 whole weeks and wanting to spend it the best possible way.
I didn’t need to fret – Nosara was perfect. But, we didn’t want to put all our eggs in one basket, so our trip ended up including a few mini-stays, including time in Arenal area, near Lake Arenal, Rio Celeste, near Liberia, and near Rincon de la Vieja. Most of these were very brief stays. I worked towards staying one long period in one place – so we did 3 full weeks in Nosara. That was well worth it, and next time we will know its ok to stay the majority if not all our time there. We also ended up renting 2 separate houses while in Nosara – we took a very small modest house for the first week, when it was just us 5, and then took a much larger (and more luxurious house) which we stayed in for a week with my parents then a week with our friends, the Lims. This worked out pretty well, because we got to enjoy a nice fancy house, but since we saved so much the first week in the smaller house, the cost worked out to near our expected budget for the entire 3 weeks.
I had thought that it would be nice to have some freedom of choice for some of the lodging outside Nosara, to decide once we were there. In retrospect, it would’ve been better to confirm all lodging in advance. The few stays that I had left up in the air took way to long to plan around and figure out during the trip. Driving times are the most difficult to calculate, and the best thing to do is talk to someone local who has done the drive. I called the hotel in Rio Celeste and they were able to tell me driving time from Nosara to there (and which road to take), and the manager at Leaves and Lizards was able to tell me driving time from Arenal area to Nosara. However, I could’ve called and found that kind of info out before my trip just as easily and next time will plan to do more legwork for those knids of logistics beforehand so all my lodging is figured out before hand. I’d say this is especially important when there is a possibility of spotty internet (which we had everywhere in Costa Rica except Nosara) and when traveling with kids, who take up so much time already.
Step 5: Last Steps and Preparing for 5 Weeks Away
Other than purchasing some required supplies (including a Costa Rican GPS system, a new laptop, and lots of foot and rain gear), and packing, that pretty much sums up in a nutshell how we made it happen.
We also had to deal with leaving our house for 5 weeks. Luckily for online bill pay, we were able to check in on most of our accounts during our time away. But, to make sure we didn’t run into any problems, I decided to go ahead and prepay most of our bills prior to leaving. It just required paying 2 months of the bills instead of 1, and luckily we had the money to front this. We were fortunate to have the help of neighbors to pick up mail, watch the house and feed our pet reptiles as well. And my parents and my aunt and uncle shared time taking our dog in.
To help save some money, we put my cell phone plan and our internet/cable on hold, saving a month’s worth of unneeded fees. We also experimented with peer to peer car sharing, using RelayRides and FlightCar to potentially rent out our vehicles while gone to get some extra money for what was otherwised being unused for 5 weeks. Our car didn’t rent through RelayRides, but we did park for free at SFO through FlightCar, and made $350 for rentals during our 5 weeks away.
Speaking of costs, one might wonder how we managed to pay for such a vacation. You may be surprised to hear that it really was quite reasonable in terms of costs. In fact, the total vacation cost less than what we would have spent for a similar one week vacation for our family of five plus the cost of paying for a new SUV for a year, which we decided to forgo last summer in order to justify taking the trip. Of course, some of our cost saving measures mentioned above contributed to the overall cost feasibility.
Will we do it again?
I sure hope so! We loved Nosara and it was so relaxing having quality family time, without distractions, for such a long time.
Aubrey said, when we were on our way home, that the only thing she missed about home was riding bikes and doing crafts (and, as she reminded us throughout the trip, her favorite blanket). Sierra, just home 2 days, has already said she misses Costa Rica. All in all, it was an amazing time.
You can read more about our trip on other blogs on this site…