A Costa Rican Getaway

Toronto’s current weather has me seriously yearning to be where the sandy beaches and clear blue skies are. Like the ones in Costa Rica.

My Instagram photo of the resort

Going to Costa Rica as a Muslim woman who adorns the hijab, along with four of her Muslim friends, three of them who wear the hijab, required a lot of planning. Not only did we have to do what the average person usually does before booking their flight such as looking for reputable hotels and resorts and which flights to take, but my friends and I also had to conduct a thorough search of any halal restaurants in the area. Needless to say, there were none.

Mid-afternoon, my friends and I made our way to Toronto Pearson. As we were walking through security at the airport, all five of us were pulled aside for being selected to go through a “random” security check. Female security staff patted us down hijab to toe (thankfully they hadn’t asked us to remove our hijabs) and let us go. We arrived at New York’s LaGaurdia Airport and were required to stay the night because our next flight to Miami was at 6AM the next day. We spent the night exploring New York and visiting Times Square. We were also starving and made a visit the famous Halal Guys – a halal food stand located on the streets of New York where we were served huge portions of rice and kebobs. This indefinitely kept us full all the way to Costa Rica.

Monkeys being...monkeys

We were greeted at Costa Rica’s airport by our taxi once we landed. Since we were famished with all the traveling, we asked him to stop by at any restaurant before he took us to our hotel. He took us to Restaurante Liberia, where the menu was written solely in Spanish. This was a huge barrier for us because the waitresses only spoke in Spanish as well and we had a difficult time determining which dish was halal (or in other words, consisting of only vegetables and/or seafood). After much contemplation, we ended up ordering vegetarian linguini, fish and shrimp pastas. As we could not understand the menu, and the currency was foreign to us, we could not understand how much to pay the waitress, so we gave her an amount that we thought was correct. Thankfully, our taxi driver (who was eating with us) realized that the waitress had pocketed the extra cash we had given her and demanded for it back.

Our taxi driver drove us to our hotel. We decided to stay in the rural area of Costa Rica first, before moving to a resort in order to gain experiences from both sides of the island. We had picked the Magic Mountain Hotel located in the city of La Fortuna where we unpacked and prepared for our next 9 days in Costa Rica.

Our hotel

As far as activities go, we did absolutely everything. From zip-lining to horseback riding to visiting the Arenal volcano, we made the most out of every experience. Water-based activities such as snorkeling, water rappelling and hiking through waterfalls and ravines were especially enjoyable. It was an absolutely unforgettable experience.

Water rappelling

En route to climb this volcano!

We spent 4 days in the rural area of Costa Rica, and spent the other 6 days at the all-inclusive Flamingo Beach and Spa Resort, where we enjoyed unlimited non-alcoholic Pina Coladas and margaritas. We spent the next few days going Tarzan swinging, white water rafting, ATV racing and sailing.

On our final day, we packed all of our belongings and headed towards the airport, taking the same connecting flights from Miami to New York and eventually coming back home to Toronto.

The beach