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I can’t believe that just last week, my family was on vacation in Costa Rica. A lot has happened since we’ve been back, and the vacation already seems like an eternity ago!
Our spring break vacation was almost entirely on miles and points. We used World of Hyatt points from two credit card sign-up bonuses to stay at Andaz Costa Rica Resort at Peninsula Papagayo, and we used BA and AA miles for flights from Dallas to Liberia via Miami.
Overall Impressions:
- Andaz Papagayo blew us away! We’ve stayed at several nice resorts (Hyatt Regency Coconut Point, Hyatt Regency Lost Pines, Hyatt Regency Hill Country and Disney’s Aulani in Hawaii), but this was BY FAR our favorite resort ever! We booked it when it was 15k points. Last year it increased to 20k points, and this year it was supposed to increase to 25k points (except that Hyatt is delaying award chart changes until next year). It’s totally worth 25k points. All of us want to go back to this resort. I will have a detailed review of Andaz Papagayo on the blog soon.
- Whoever keeps saying “Don’t go to Costa Rica for the beaches” must not have visited some of the beaches we did! We took a tour to four beaches down the coast. They were lovely!
- We saw so much wildlife! Monkeys, iguanas, coatis and birds galore!
- Every Tico we met was very friendly, and everyone really did get the memo about “Pura Vida!”
I hope this vacation video gives you a feel for the Andaz Papagayo resort and the surrounding area.
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Author: Nancy
Nancy lives near Dallas, Texas, with her husband and three kids. Her favorite vacations include the beach, cruising and everything Disney.
We can’t wait to travel to Costa Rica. We love to find children’s books to read before the trip – and here are some of the great kids books I’ve found to get them excited about traveling to Costa Rica: http://storybooklists.com/country/storybooks-with-costa-rica/
Did the bugs bother you at all? When my wife and I were there a couple of years ago, we couldn’t spend long at the hotel beach because we would get eaten up by bugs. Did you take the shuttle to the other beach? We had an Andaz suite when we went, and it was awesome. That was back in the days of Gold Passport. I’d like to go back with our toddler and baby in the next year or so before the points cost increases again.
@Michael The bugs weren’t much of an issue last week. I brought bug spray with me, but the resort also had spray available at all the pools and beaches. The only time the bugs bit me was when we were dining at Ostra. We were in the thick of dry season, though.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful video. With all of our travel plans on hold or cancelled, it was great to see your family having a wonderful vacation!
@Tricia I’m sorry about your canceled plans. 🙁 Hopefully we’ll get to make new plans soon-ish.
Beautiful! I’ve been going back and forth on whether we should take the kids to this resort. Really tempted, well, once all this virus scare is no longer an issue.
@Leana The resort is so relaxing and laid-back. My kids didn’t care that there weren’t water slides or bells and whistles.