Home   >   Front Page   >   Featured Articles   >   Going Wild in the New Costa Rica, Part 1

Going Wild in the New Costa Rica, Part 1

Adventures with kids in Nicaragua

By: 

Say the words “Nicaragua” and “family vacation” in the same breath, and you may get odd looks. There’s just something about the combination that sounds a little off. Kindly older ladies in the grocery store will gaze with grandmotherly concern at your young children and inquire if there’s still a war going on. The manicurist during a marathon layover at the Houston airport nail salon will assume you must be doing mission work. Even the flight attendant on the plane to Managua will ask why you’ve picked Nicaragua for your family beach adventure, gushing longingly, “Costa Rica is my favorite!”

It’s enough to give you second—or third—thoughts.

We’d chosen Nicaragua because last spring we’d traveled to Costa Rica. It had been for us and our two daughters, the perfect mix of inland jungle—complete with monkeys, an organic farm, and volcano views—and idyllic Pacific coast. Costa Rica was so easy to love—maybe too easy—and we loved it so much, in fact, that we just had to go someplace else, someplace like Costa Rica, only maybe, possibly, a little bit better. Someplace with steaming mountains and sandy beaches, with fewer foreign tourists, where not everyone we met spoke English, where there wasn’t a zip line in every corner of jungle.

Read the whole story.

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/the-current/raising-rippers/Going-Wild-in-the-New-Costa-Rica-Part-1.html?