We’ve been back from our trip to Costa Rica and Nicaragua for a week. I would have posted an “I’m back” sooner, but both Renée and I caught elephant-sized colds within a couple of days of returning home. I’m just now beginning to hold my mental shit together long enough to stare at the computer for a bit, though even five days after impact I’m still a bit bleary-eyed.

Costa Rica is easily the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen. Travel guides kept referring to Costa Rica as being especially verdant, so I was expecting lots of shrubbery. I wasn’t disappointed.

With this being the so-called “Green Season” (Costa Rica’s rainy season) I expected bad weather but was surprised at how nice the weather ended up. Yes, it’s hot and often insanely humid (so much so that my glasses often fogged up when I went outdoors) but we barely had any rain at all. The exception was one massive downpour during the drive back from a day trip to Arenal Volcano and Tabacon Hot Springs (which, I might add, is a Must See if you ever go to Costa Rica).

One big first for me on this trip was the fact that we stayed at an all-inclusive resort. This was my first time staying at a resort, and while it was pleasant, it also was very much like staying on a land-locked cruise ship. The convenience was great, but with not much else to do but eat, drink, swim, and attend suspiciously titled live music revues with titles like “Hooray for Hollywood” (replete with purple sequined costumes) the experience got kind of stale really fast.

I still feel a little bit uncomfortable if I’m on vacation and not making at least a bit of effort — probably part of the whole journey is the destination thing I was brought up in — and the resort seemed a little too easy. We ended up using the resort as a home base and spent most of our time taking day trips into the surrounding Guanacaste countryside, which worked out well.

If you’re interested in seeing some of the places we checked out, take a look at my Costa Rica / Nicaragua Flickr photoset. For some of the photos I’ve added little micro-posts that might make them more interesting, or not.

This was our first true vacation in over five years, and my first full week unplugged from email, the web, cell phones, information overload, news, and the rest of that nuttiness. In the end of it all the country, the people, my sweet travelling companion, and the gloriously disconnectedness of it all: pure bliss.