Day 12: We rented another small 4x4 for the day and headed to explore some more of this beautiful country!

I can't say that I travel as much as some people do but I have been to some beaches and I have to say that Beaches in Costa Rica in this area are by far my favourite! So our goal for the day was to find some local beaches... we sure found some! This one is Playa Hermosa.

Last night my sister said to take a photo of a sleeping dog on the road.. well, here you go :)

We stopped at this nice restaurant for lunch.. very nice food!

Second beach stop, this time is at Playa Del Coco :) It was great to watch some locals playing football on the beach.

We do have a GPS but Tracy is my navigator for this trip so I pointed on the map and said, this looks like a nice beach for some sunset shots... I don't know how, but we always seems to find the craziest (pretty much off road) roads to get places. On our way to the beach we came across this pretty much river that we had to cross... I was happy to see that some other cars drove across, otherwise I wasn't sure :)

We made it to the beach in one piece! Beautiful place once again... This time beach at Potrero :)

Beautiful sunset once again!

Day 11: Relaxing family day :)

In the afternoon I did a mini photo session of my sister and her baby Lucas... Here are a few photographs :)

When Oliver got up from his nap we had a nice family sunset swim at the pool :)

Great time at sushi place for dinner!

Day 10: Coffee in the morning.

Followed by some swimming :)

Than some beautiful food for lunch!

After lunch my sister, Lucas, and I went for a stroller friendly hike :)

I like the look and feel of the resort we are staying in so today will be the day when I will show it a bit... I went for a walk around and took some photographs.

A nice sunset once again.. this time this is a view from our building.

Room service for dinner and bath time on our balcony to end our day!

Day 9: After all the adventures for the last two days, we took it easy today and just enjoyed swimming and relaxing. I decided I would just do a sunset blog post. Sunsets here are beautiful!

Day 8: In the morning we loaded our rental car and headed to find our adventure for the day!

Overall I think roads in Costa Rica are pretty great... but there are some interesting sections out there :)

Our timing was perfect.. as soon as we got hungry, it started to rain and we pulled in to some local place for some pizza :)

We did hours and hours of pretty hardcore off roading today... This little Toyota did great! I'm sure 99% of all Toyota Rav4 in Canada will never see this much off road in their lifetime as our car did today... great adventures! You can see the volcano in the distance... on our way!

Once again we are out for a little hike, this time, at the base of an active volcano :)

Our view from the top of the hiking trail :)

Quick stop to take in this beautiful sunset and we are ready for a very long drive back to our hotel.

Day 7: My favourite part of any vacation.. rent a car and explore! We rented a car for a couple of days and in the morning we headed to Palo Varde National Park. We were given some Costa Rican money by Tracy's mum, so this trip to the park was pretty much covered by her... Thank you!

So far, I love it here.. very beautiful and people are very friendly!

This is the coolest bird I have ever seen... if you know the name, comment below and let me know what it is!

Original plan was to go and get a boat at the park for some wild life viewing but we are here off season and the boats were not there :( We still had fun! We went on this little trail with a beautiful view at the top :)

Crazy amount of mosquitoes!!!!

Look at this big guy on a tree... this thing was huge!

We got our rented car proper dirty!

I can't complain about our little Toyota but I would rather drive one of these Land Rovers :)

Some of the roads here are very bumpy... rocks and mud... driving in the dark and with rain din't really help... but it was super fun!

My sister and her baby Lucas were voted out of our group for tomorrow because they were crying too much and we are going on another adventure without them, so comeback tomorrow for some more photos :)

Day 6: One more relaxing day at the resort... We rented a car for a few days so tomorrow should be different... Here is Oliver and baby Lucas playing chess, I think Oliver is winning :)

My little burrito :)

I really needed some more artistic shots, so to recharge my creativity we went for a walk on the beach at the sunset.

Day 5: Now that I'm a coffee drinker for 2 days (yesterday I took a day off)... I started my day with a cup of coffee :) Just a short blog post today, nothing exciting, just relaxing.

Baby Lucas relaxing by the ocean :)

Love Oliver's book reading before bed!

Day 4: In the morning we had some family time at the beach and the pool.

Our cool little dudes.. ready for lunch! :)

Once again, when Oliver went for a nap, I headed for a walk on the beach and than a pretty nice jungle hike :)

I did see 3-4 wild monkeys on my hike.. but you may have noticed that all my photographs today are taken with 24-70 wide angle lens... well... after yesterday's rain and with all the humidity and air-conditioning... My big lens stopped working and I don't know if I will be able to fix it while I'm here, so I guess I will be only able to shoot with wide angle :( When I arrived back at the resort, I saw a bunch of friendlier monkeys and was able to take a few shots.

Day 3: Today is my birthday, I turned 36 years old :) Today also is when I drank coffee for the first time... I can't say I like it, but I'm scared I will get into it. If you ever seen movie "Kicking and Screaming"... you may know what I mean.. I think that could be me :)

The tide was pretty low and exposed a bunch of rocks, so we decided to go for a little walk on the beach in the morning.

Local fisherman is showing us his catch.

After lunch, Oliver went for a nap and I decided to go for a hike in a search for monkeys :) Good thing I brought my hiking shoes with me!

As soon as I got to a pretty steep hill, it started to rain... hard! And that is when I found a few monkeys.. they were very close and If not for the rain, I would love to stay and take better photographs but I had to turn back and head down.

Here is a view.. you can see a bit of our hotel down there and our beach, of course the visibility is not the best due to the pouring rain :(

To celebrate my Birthday we decided to go for some sushi here at the resort. Not the best sushi I ever had but not too bad :)