Best vacations for mixing up relaxation and activity
kaliyama
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Hello,
I'm looking to get away for 7-9 days. I'll probably be going between july 6-18 but won't know for a little bit, so won't have much opportunity to plan. There are two of us, and the all-in budget is about 4000 or so. I certainly don't need to spend that much, though. Mostly i'm looking for something that will let us relax and be beachy for a couple of days, and then be active and outdoorsy for a couple of days. I'm in CA but am very flexible as to location. I've been thinking Hawaii mostly but wanted to turn to the group to get perspective from others.
I was looking at REI packages, which seemed way cool, but none seem to be working out.
I'm looking to get away for 7-9 days. I'll probably be going between july 6-18 but won't know for a little bit, so won't have much opportunity to plan. There are two of us, and the all-in budget is about 4000 or so. I certainly don't need to spend that much, though. Mostly i'm looking for something that will let us relax and be beachy for a couple of days, and then be active and outdoorsy for a couple of days. I'm in CA but am very flexible as to location. I've been thinking Hawaii mostly but wanted to turn to the group to get perspective from others.
I was looking at REI packages, which seemed way cool, but none seem to be working out.
kaliyama on
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I've never been to Hawaii, but I hear Maui especially has some really cool outdoorsy stuff. Just about anywhere you can think of sounds good if those are your only two criteria.
I just remembered a family reunion my family went to when I was a kid, it was a this beautiful touristey town called Red River, New Mexico. It was surrounded by mountains, and it was beautiful. Of course, you could always just go to Colorado if you want Mountains, there are plenty of great places there for relax and rec.
Another fun option would likely be running some rivers in CO or similar. If you've never been to Yosemite, that is also fantastic.
Cruises are definitely out - I might do the meditterranean that way, but a) i'm stuck eating cruise ship food, b) with other people, c) on a boat. I'm definitely going to landlub.
Portland's great, but i'm definitely thinking tropical.
Call em up, a lot of Oregon trails are not hard at all, just smooth and swoopy, so anyone could do them. It isn't necessarily "lots of rocks" mountain biking so much as it's "soft loamy trails winding through the trees"
I highly recommend an all inclusive resort just so you don't need to worry about food problems.
The view from our hotel room:
I can go to $5,000 if someone can point to a great resort/experience I can't get at a lower price point. I'd just like to put away these $80,000 in student loans.
i want to say we spent 2 grand or so on the room there for i want to say 10 days
you should be able to find a fairly cheap ticket from Cali especially if you are near Sac, SF or LA since you can grab a direct one to Honolulu
Sit on beach all day or check out snorkeling, hiking, diving.. whatever you want.
Also pearl harbor is there and the big market at the football stadium is pretty neat.
We found the problem with Maui is that everything shuts down so early there wasn't much to do in the evening.
Costa Rica is my recommendation. I've been there twice, and both trips were fantastic. I also used to design trips down there for clients when I worked in the travel industry, and never had an unhappy traveler. One of the most beautiful places on earth, and you can enjoy rain forest and take some nice hikes in one area and then relax on a gorgeous beach or do some snorkeling on the coast before heading back home.
I'd say visit Monteverde, Arenal, and 1-2 Pacific Coast locations. Monteverde is cloud forest, as in you will drive into the clouds on your way up there. They have good trails for seeing exotic birds, animals and insects, some great spots to see butterflies and hummingbirds, and some enjoyable canopy walks and zip line treks. A little more touristy now than I would like, but touristy for a reason and still worth visiting. Arenal is an active volcano, and it's worth 1-2 nights in the area to see the lava flow (from a distance, but still cool) and visit the hot springs. There are a variety of nice places to visit on the Pacific coast, both for additional hiking in the rain forest and for your typical beach activities like snorkeling, scuba, parasailing, etc...
In July you could also consider visiting Tortuguero for something even more unique. You'd be there at the beginning of the season for the giant turtles to come lay their eggs. Night hikes can be arranged down to the beach to actually see them as they lay eggs or travel between their nesting areas and the water. Pretty amazing stuff, but there aren't many other activities in the area (or at least weren't when I went there in late July once, though that was back in 1994). You can do a canal tour of the area by boat as well, which was great.
Horizontes is the local operator we used to book hotels, guides, and internal transportation through. If you're interested, check out some of their offerings, and strongly consider using them to make your arrangements. They're good people and did a great job for my clients, and for my own vacation down there. My first trip there was a course in rain forest ecology in high school through Costa Rica Expeditions and they also do a good job, though they used to be more expensive than Horizontes, generally.
I've done costa rica. I loved it! I hadn't thought about going back but i'll give it a look.
The other islands have awesome things and are beautiful but they definitely don't have as much variety and are mostly for outdoor things. But if you want a lot of outdoor activity mixed with beach longing and not as many people they are amazing options.
You can also island hop if it's feasible. Big Island has the volcano parks, Maui has some gorgeous spots, Kauai is super relaxing... plus it's pretty inexpensive to do so. The biggest thing would be lodging.
The picture and where we stayed was the Melia, we liked it a lot.
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Just a gorgeous place with really friendly people. Even with a general tendency to dislike warm weather I found the entire experience pleasurable. Beaches, botanical gardens, volcanoes, biking down volcanoes, para-sailing, snorkeling (if you enjoy it on a beach, I highly recommend hunting up one of the locals who run groups out on boats to fancy locations,) eating... lots to do there.
Yay. Advice. Thanks. Why? From what I was reading the beach area this hotel is at is very nice, if more remote than what's going on over at Lihue.
its really 6 in one half dozen blah blah. its all amazing, but we found ourselves mostly heading north of Lihue rather than south. we went to our hotels beach once during our time there but it wasn't amazing.
I would look at a guide book (this one is the one you want) and see where things that are interesting to you are located.
you can't go wrong. you should definitely go do the napali coast kayak trip. highlight of our trip, we used napali kayak and they were great