The Best Trip of Our Lives

May 24-28

SJO to Drake Bay on Sansa air. We decided to visit the Osa Peninsula for our last stop of the trip. You can drive there but it takes 13 hours from the airport and requires driving across multiple areas where the roads completely flood over if its rainy. We chose to fly instead and it was an easy 45 min flight on a tiny 8 seater plane which was a new experience for me. We sat directly behind the pilot and co-pilot and could see all of their controls and everything. It was a little unnerving but SO cool. You could see everything because you fly so low.

Let me take a minute and say if you have time for only once stop in Costa Rica, go to Drake Bay. My husband and I believe it is the most beautiful and fun place we've ever traveled to. It IS a bit rustic, you will have bugs inside your cabin, you will see spiders and all sorts of crazy animals everywhere, but if you're into that, you will ADORE this place. It is truly beautiful and wild.

We stayed at La Paloma Lodge for our time in Osa. Getting there was an adventure in itself! A guy was waiting at the airport to take us in an old beater truck. We got to the Peninsula and they dropped us and our luggage off right on the sand. Then a boat showed up and picked us up and took us to the lodge! I cannot recommend this highly enough. Drake Bay is very secluded and while you can find lodging thats just a traditional 'hotel' most places are all inclusive meaning they feed you all your meals while you're there. There is a tiny town with a grocery store if you really want to go that route, but there is so little around I would recommend eating the food that the locals make which was DIVINE. La Paloma offered a "local" option and an "american" option at breakfast, and multiple options for each lunch and dinner. We chose the Costa Rican breakfast every time. Plantains, beans, rice, and the best fish we've ever had. All the food served was locally caught and typically fresh from that morning. It was unbelievably good. There were monkeys EVERYWHERE around the lodge, we had so much fun following them around and dodging the mangos they'd throw at us (I'm not even kidding!) Occasionally, we woke up with them banging on the roof of our cabin! 

I could literally go on for hours about how amazing La Paloma and the Drake Bay area was but lets get a little more specific. There are tours you can take through the Lodge and we chose to do the Corcavado National Park, Cano Island Snorkeling, Deep Sea Fishing and The Bug Lady tours. 

Tracie the Bug Lady - if you love wildlife, you MUST do a night tour with Tracie and John. We did our tour with them the first night of our stay and were so blown away that we booked them AGAIN for our last night at La Paloma. They know EVERYTHING about the wildlife in Osa. We would literally come across any bug or animal and they would immediately identify what it was and have ten stories to go along with it. We couldn't believe the wealth of knowledge and hilarious stories they told us. We saw armadillo, three species of bats including one that Tracie said is so rare that even a bat scientist would be super excited to see it in the wild, endless numbers of spiders, ants, scorpions and more. They also send you an personalized email after your tour with a list of everything you saw that night and more reading you can do if you're interested. It was so, so good. My single favorite thing I did during our entire trip, and possibly the best tour I've taken in my life.

Corcovado National Park - this was so fun. We saw a lot of animals including a giant hawk, a family of coatis with their babies, toucans, macaws and so many more. The guide was informative and the provided lunch was delicious.

Cano Island Snorkeling - if you like to snorkel, I would recommend bringing your own mask. My husband had some serious mask leak issues due to his facial hair and ended up shaving clean for the first time in a decade so he could snorkel easier! Anyway, this was really cool and it wasn't even that great of visibility. We saw a school of jackfish, which was unreal it was soooo large, so many smaller fish and a reef shark swam under me at one point!

The coolest thing about Drake Bay is that its very well protected, so the wildlife is not scared of humans and also has no interest in hurting you because they've never been hunted there. The ecosystem is fully in tact and as a result, you don't have to worry because nothing is starving and willing to take a bite of you as a result. This was never more apparent than when we took kayaks out onto the river behind La Paloma that feeds into the bay. We were told there are a ton of crocodiles in the river, but that they don't care about humans at all. We saw it first hand and got to watch a little croc sunning himself on a rock. It was really awesome.

Finally, we did a 1/2 day of Deep Sea Fishing. Unfortuantely, they said the water is typically like glass but it was windy so the boat was pretty rocky. I got relatively sea sick but I just jumped off the boat and floated around every once in a while which helped immediately cure the nausea. We caught big eyed tuna, bonita, mahi mahi and more. I think we caught 9 fish total between my husband and I. There is no commercial fishing in Drake Bay as I said before it's protected, so only the locals fish here so the catching is easy! We brought the tuna back to La Paloma and fed the entire lodge with it! It was so awesome to have ceviche for dinner that night and tuna steaks the next. It was UNREAL how delicious it was. Gosh, I'm salivating over a year later just thinking about it.