Coming Soon: Birthdays in Costa Rica & Nicaragua

This Friday, I’m headed out of Portland with my friend Cristina to Liberia, Costa Rica and soon after to the west side of Nicaragua to see my friend Brendan’s property.  Brendan has been out there since the middle of January and I figure it is about time to pay a visit and see what this land is all about.  I’ve never been to Nicaragua before, so I’m quite excited about seeing a new country.  Costa Rica on the other hand happens to be the first trip I ever did solo (2012), which I loved, and am glad to visit once again. Cristina’s birthday is the 17th and my birthday is the 18th, and I’m excited to go to another part of the world to celebrate our birthdays.

How It Happened

Early in March, Cristina and I were talking about traveling sometime, and decided we should just make it happen.  I had just acquired the Southwest Companion Pass again and 120,000 miles, so I decided to make use of it.  We both wanted some place sunny, and since Southwest now flies to a number of locations south of the US, we picked one that would suit multiple purposes.  Since we both know Brendan, we chose on going to Nicaragua.

Southwest doesn’t fly to Nicaragua however, so we’re flying into Costa Rica, and then looking to take a bus north into Nicaragua.  Much more affordable that way as flights to Managua, Nicaragua were almost double than flying into Libera, Costa Rica.

I wasn’t able to use Southwest’s website to book PDX to LIB, so I had to break it up in two legs.  A round-trip (RT) flight from LAX-LIB and a RT from PDX-LAX.

The awesome perk of the Southwest Companion Pass is that it lets you designate a companion, and for all travel for the main flyer, you can add that companion for the taxes.

In my case, I was using miles, so for my total, it was 50K miles and $80.  Adding Cristina then was only $80 more, doubling the value of those miles.  Awesome!

So two people, round-trip from Portland to Liberia, was 50,000 miles and $200.  Not bad at all!

Plans In Costa Rica or Nicaragua

We’re getting into LA around 9am on Friday and leave for Costa Rica at 2pm.  Arriving into Liberia at 9pm where we’ll get a ride to our hostel/hotel/airbnb for a couple nights before making our way by bus to Nicaragua to meet with Brendan.

Our itinerary is pretty open, as we’re just going to let the adventure take its course.  If you’ve got a recommendation however, send them our way and we’ll see what trouble we can get ourselves into.

Photo Credit – Brendan Mahoney