Delyon Dingemanse arrived in Tamarindo on March 2017 from the Netherlands. He came here to do an internship in Costa Rica and get to know the Tico lifestyle. He has done a great job as a Contracts Manager and has shown a great attitude within our team.

On Saturday, May 6^th, Delyon went with his friend Charlie Van Oosterhoust, intern for Tamarindo Vista Villas, to the Vandara Hot Springs and Adventure with our friends from Jacamar Naturalist Tours. Here is the story of Deylon’s experience written in first person.

Delyon Dingemanse visits the Vandara Hot Spring:

Heading for adventure! So my friends and I left the Best Western Tamarindo Vista Villas Hotel at 07:00 A.M in the morning.  Everyone was planning to sleep in the shuttle, because we went out the day before at the Crazy Monkey Bar and we all slept for only 3 hours. As it turned out, nobody was actually sleeping, because every one of us was way too excited for the Combo Tour.  We made a quick pit stop at the supermarket to get breakfast and continued our journey to the Vandara Hot Springs & Adventures.

We began our journey with the horse riding part; my friends had never ridden a horse before, so this was very fun to watch. You would almost say that the other guys where a bit scared to be around 6.5 feet above the ground.

After the horse riding experience, we felt like real cowboys and continued with the zip lining activity. I have already done some zip lining in the past, so I was quite familiar with the process. However, you can already guess it: The others had never done it. Therefore, because of safety reasons, we first got clear instructions what to do and what not to do.

There were around 10 ziplines including some very fast and long ones. They were so long that we had to break every 5 seconds to make sure that we would not crash into a tree or something. We have also ziplined over the Vandara Hot Spring giving us a beautiful view.

So, what activity was next on the list? Not knowing that coffee production has a big role in Costa Rica and it’s history, we eventually got an introduction to this beautiful product by getting a small coffee tour!

The whole process was explained, but also the differences between beans, degrees of roasting and the way quality is measured by tasting experts.

Beside this, they showed us the traditional sugar cane juice production, including sugar cane distillation systems for alcoholic beverages.

After this, we had the honour of trying some sugar cane juice, a taste of some real Costa Rican coffee, but also with some typical Costa Rican treats.

We continued our journey by entering the big, really fast water slide where we ended up in a pool.  We dried up and continued to the Vandara Hot Springs. But first, MUD! Here we took a volcanic mud treatment to cleanse our skin and to give it a very soft feeling. After around 20 minutes, we washed ourselves in the river to get rid of all the mud.

Now it was really time to relax, so we ran off to the big Vandara Hot Spring to relax our muscles, joints and minds. We stayed there for 30 minutes and continued to the restaurant where we got a very delicious, biological lunch.

Everything was organic and tasted very pure and healthy. We got a spinach soup and fried plantain as a starter, grilled chicken as a main dish with different salsas and veggies and a melon sorbet as a dessert. I wish I could have had some more because I was really craving some good tasting food.

We finished eating and drove back to Tamarindo. We got a flat tire on our way back, so we had to stop to fix the problem. This was no problem at all, as we had an amazing view to enjoy.

However, our tour guide and driver from Jacamar fixed the problem very quickly without any difficulties and we were back on the road again! It was an experience we will definitely never forget in our internship in Costa Rica.