{"id":20122,"date":"2023-05-19T10:40:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T00:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intrepidtravel.com\/adventures\/?p=20122"},"modified":"2025-03-26T23:04:30","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T12:04:30","slug":"family-travel-best-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intrepidtravel.com\/adventures\/family-travel-best-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"The best thing about a family tour? Seeing your children make life-long friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

My nine-year-old daughter Rosa loves a countdown chart. Twenty-five days until Christmas, 14 days to her birthday, a month to gymnastics camp\u2026 you get the picture. But her\u00a0countdown to Costa Rica<\/a> smashed all her records: 100 days to cross out until the most thrilling adventure of her life!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think we all love to have some travel planned. It\u2019s a marker in the calendar, and the anticipation of incredible experiences to come is very much part of travel\u2019s allure.<\/p>\n

We had done our homework so we knew that Costa Rica was a natural paradise: lush, green with the promise of turtles, three-toed sloths and exotic bird life.<\/p>\n

\"Three-toed<\/a>

Three-toed sloth, Costa Rica<\/p><\/div>\n

Rosa and Jack (aged 11) absolutely love animals and the thought that he was going to spend his 12th birthday at Monteverde National Park, high in the cloud forest, was beyond exciting.<\/p>\n

Would this trip\u00a0create budding zoologists? What impact would Costa Rica have on their sponge-like characters? The promise of exposure to so many new experiences was, for us as parents, the main reason we booked an Intrepid family trip to Costa Rica.<\/p>\n

How to spot sloths in Costa Rica
\n<\/a>Discovering the joy of travel in Costa Rica <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The educational value of our trip to Costa Rica was everything I had hoped for. You ask my kids their highlights of the trip and they\u2019ll recount the stormy night on the Caribbean beaches of Tortuguero where we saw green turtles laying their eggs.<\/p>\n

They will mention the thrilling jungle river boat rides, cheeky, breakfast-stealing monkeys, white-water rafting, zip lining 1,000 metres through the canopy at Monteverde, swimming in the warm clear sea at Manuel Antonio National Park\u2026 Every day a new and wonderful experience unfolded. It was all so very different to life at home in England.<\/p>\n

\"Manuel<\/a>

A beach at Manuel Antonio National Park<\/p><\/div>\n

But by the end of the trip, there was a different reason why I became convinced this was the best holiday decision I had made in my life. The most surprising and enduring highlight was the incredible friendships that developed between the eight children.<\/p>\n

Aged six to 13, they bonded on the first day, pronounced themselves best friends and bagged girls\u2019 and boys\u2019 areas on the bus for the journeys to come.<\/p>\n

Find an Intrepid Family Tour for you <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On day two, the girls were walking hand in hand through the sandy \u2018streets\u2019 of Tortuguero while the boys were vying for the day\u2019s funniest photo! Us adults? Well, we bonded over a few beers at the pool bar and congratulated ourselves at our choice of holiday.<\/p>\n

\"Rosa<\/a>

Rosa and friends back home in the UK. Image c\/o Daniel Pawlyn<\/p><\/div>\n

The friendships have turned out to be lasting. We\u2019ve already met up twice with two of the families who live in the UK. The girls bought pretty flower print dresses in Costa Rica, which they wore again when they met up back home.<\/p>\n

But there is a real \u2018problem\u2019 with such an incredible trip: the kids want to do the same trip, with the same families, every year! I can see another record-breaking countdown chart on its way!<\/p>\n

Daniel and his family went on Intrepid’s Costa Rica Family Holiday. Check it out for yourself<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘On the first day, the eight children pronounced themselves best friends and bagged girls\u2019 and boys\u2019 areas on the bus for the journeys to come.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15459,"featured_media":20148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1870,286],"tags":[275,88,1275,292],"class_list":["post-20122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-stories","tag-central-america","tag-costa-rica","tag-family-travel","tag-wildlife","ipf_theme-family","ipf_theme-wildlife","ipf_region-costa-rica"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe best thing about a family tour? 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