After more than 5 years, we are going back to Costa Rica to see old friends and spend Spring Break with the kids in that wonderful country.

This time one of my wife’s cousin, his wife and 11 years old son are coming with us and they are really excited about the trip as this will be their first time in Costa Rica.

We’ll have a very busy schedule. We arrive at Costa Rica this Saturday March 28th, the next day we are visiting Volcán Poas, a dormant volcano near the province of Cartago. The last time we were at the Poas, the sky cleared up enough for us the see the crater. I am hopping for the same kind of luck this time, as I am taking a good camera with me and I am looking forward to taking some decent shots of the crater.

On Monday we will visit Ojo de Agua, a public balneario that doesn’t offer much, except that the water comes from an underground spring and it is really cold, but my kids love it because they have several diving platforms and very few rules to jump from them. Ojo de Agua was my favorite spot when I was a teenager because they used to have free music concerts during the summer, so my friends and I used to go there almost every day during our time off from school.

On Tuesday we will visit friends and walk around San Jose. Things has changed a lot since I lived in Costa Rica and several of my friends are already warning me no walk around San Jose with jewelry or video cameras, as I’ll be a target for robbers.

On Wednesday we’ll leave for Volcan Arenal. We found this great hotel (at least the pictures look good) a couple of miles from the volcano. The night is around $130.00 for a room with volcano view. Arenal is an active volcano and I heard that at night you can see the lava spilling from the volcano. I can’t believe that in the 8 years I lived in Costa Rica I never went to Arenal.

We’ll spend the night at Arenal and then on Thursday  we are leaving for Guanacaste. This time we are going to Playa Hermoza where we’ll stay until Sunday.

We are coming back on Tusday, April 6^th.

I am really looking forward this trip. Not only we are going to reunite with a bunch of old friends, but I’ve taken a new hobby (photography) and Costa Rica is the perfect place to take good pictures.

I’ll try to post some details on the trip while I am in Costa Rica, and perhaps some pictures. Once I come back, I’ll write a full review of the hotels we stayed at in case you decide to travel there and visit these places.

Las Vegas at Night

My sister in law offered to keep the kids for a week so we could take a vacation just my wife and I. Suddenly a list of places I’ve been wanting to go, but didn’t have the time or the opportunity to go started rushing through my mind. I quickly thought of Punta Cana (D.R) where I heard the all inclusive packages are really attractive, Cancun (which I wanted to go back after spending 4 days there), Las Vegas or a Caribbean cruise.

I discarded Cancun because I’ve been there already and I wanted to go to a new place. I always enjoy cruises, but after doing some quick search I couldn’t find any cruise with an interesting itinerary, other than the same old  port of calls (by the way someone who works for the cruise industry told me that almost all the cruise lines decided to leave a lot of their ships in Europe during this summer because it was more profitable for them to charge passengers in Euro than in Dollars) I did check into Punta Cana, but I needed to save some money for our annual family vacation to Orlando in a month and Punta Cana would be too much money. So my last choice was Las Vegas.





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