This summer, my children and I decided to spend some time in Costa Rica. It was a guess-and-see trip, meaning I didn’t have much input from others on what to do, and quite honestly didn’t do much research myself. Sometimes biting the bullet and buying the plane tickets (3.5 hour direct flight from Houston - who knew?) is the kick in the pants that I need to get a trip planned. Once the plane tickets were bought, I flipped through Airbnb listings, and found two that met our budget and looked like interesting places to visit within the country. This was literally my only planning of the trip. Rented a car before we left, and the extra steps of contacting my credit card company to get letters of verification for insurance and scanning and uploading passport documents took just about all the energy I had in me. I was running on leftover steam towards the end of the school year/beginning of summer.

But once I started communicating with the Airbnb hosts, I found out that these home owners were more than eager to share their favorite places to visit in the area and favorite activities. So off we went, driving to different beaches to spend the days, setting up snorkeling trips and surfing lessons, finding hiking trails that led to the most magical of waterfalls, and eating at wonderful restaurants. It was a very active vacation, one that left the three of us sun drenched and exhausted and ready for bed just about right after sundown most evenings.