This weekend I avoided doing my usual cheap travelling and decided to splurge a little bit and stay in an all-inclusive four star resort on the beach. I was invited by the former Saco employee Emer and Randall, her Costa Rican boyfriend. After she stopped working here at Saco, they started up a web design company in Bagaces. One of their clients was this resort on a beach in nearby Papagayo and they were offered a good discount for this place. Her two other employees, Katherine and Jessica, also came, along with Katherine's boyfriend Henry.

I took Friday afternoon off of work so we could get down there early and take as much advantage as we could of the all inclusive part of the resort. It was only about an hour and a half drive and the road down to the beach was actually paved and had no potholes. I was expecting a one building hotel, but it was actually a group of separate buildings, each with a view of the ocean. A van was constantly circling the resort, so moving from building to building wasn't difficult. There was two types of restaurants, the buffet style and a regular sit down restaurant. The sit down restaurant was only available for reservations, so we made reservations for the Saturday when we checked in. After checking in we immediately went down to catch the end of the lunch buffet. The lunch had less choices than the supper buffet but still had plenty to offer. After lunch we all took it easy and relaxed in the pool and the swim-in bar. There were about as many local guests as there were foreign guests in the hotel and there were a group of employees called the "Fun Club" that went around encouraging everyone to get involved. In the evening they put on an impressive dance theatre show.

On Saturday we had planned to take a boat trip at 9:00 am, so it was a struggle to get up, but I definitely didn't want to miss the breakfast buffet. The boat ride was a short trip to a nearby, more secluded white sand beach. The main beach at the resort is black sand, which is interesting, but not as pretty. The first thing we did after arriving at the beach is test out the hammocks. It was shady and food and drinks were brought out. Later we played beach volleyball and soccer with some of the employees. It was very hot but the water was cool and clear. We returned to the resort in the afternoon and there were plenty of things to do around the pool. There was 8-ball pool, ping pong and foosball. We met a young Canadian guy on vacation from Calgary. He is the first Canadian that I have met in Costa Rica, although I have been told there are plenty here. In the evening we got dressed up and went to our restaurant reservation. It was a fancy Italian restaurant with excellent food. We had 3 course meals with wine and thoroughly enjoyed the food. After we returned to the pool where they had a live band playing popular Cosa Rican songs and everybody was dancing. We stayed out until 2 am and everybody had way too much to drink but it was a lot of fun. I managed to get up for the breakfast buffet but I returned to the air-conditioned room to sleep. I woke up again just in time for the lunch buffet and then we had to check out at 1pm. I thoroughly enjoyed the all-inclusive part of the resort and the resort and setting were very beautiful.

I was lucky to get sun during the weekend because the rainy season started on Tuesday. It poured down and has rained everyday since. It's amazing the changes that have occured since the season has started. The roads are so deteriorated already that I can't imagine how they will look after six months. There are many different types of birds and many frogs and toads have appeared out of nowhere. The rainy season is called 'winter' in Costa Rica because the rain cools the air down slightly, however the humidity now is very high, so I don't think I will need any coats this 'winter'.