I love when my friends come to visit.  It is a perfect excuse to screw off for a few days and gives me tons of material for you guys.  So when my good friend Janie came to visit from Colorado, I took her to Hacienda Guachipelin.  I just had to roll out the red carpet.  It’s not every day a princess comes to the jungle you know.  We grabbed my Amiga Stephanie and the bald eagle Eric, along with Costa Rica Joe, and we headed out at 7 am.

Our good friend Jose owns the resort Guachipelin at the base of the Rincon de la Vieja Volcano and promised to take extra special care of us.  There are many places in Costa Rica like his resort, but personally, I rank Hacienda Guachipelin at the top of the list.  It is located less than 70 minutes from the beach, so it doesn’t take half a day to get there, like some of them, and you can easily be back by dark so you can still catch the sunset on the beach.  I have to be honest with you though, I was just as excited about going through Liberia at breakfast time, so I could grab an Egg McMuffin at McDonald’s.  I have clients who always frown when they hear that Costa Rica has fast food.  Hello!!!! Of course it has fast food!  Everywhere has fast food but Somalia. 

I remember a woman once telling me that she would NEVER eat at one of these joints.  Really?  Seriously?  There has to be something wrong with a person who won’t eat fast food.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it is not like I eat it every day.  But there is a reason there are millions of these restaurants around the world.  THEY ARE GOOD.  And they are fast!  What is so hilarious is that when you go to the McDonald’s, Subway, Pizza Hut or Burger King in Liberia, 99% of the people eating there are Ticos.  Come on man, if you had to eat Beans and fricken Rice every day for your entire life, you would go bananas for fast food too.  There is nothing better than sinking your teeth into a Big Mac and the world famous fries.  Admit it.  You love it too.  There is no place like home.

So after a quick pit stop for a McMuffin and hash browns (there is NO way you can tell me that the hash browns don’t absolutely rock your world) we were headed up the mountain. 

The list of direct flights to Liberia airport keeps getting longer.  In another sign of further momentum building towards growth in the Papagayo region, another North American airline is providing nonstop service into Costa Rica’s Liberia International Airport (LIR) which is the gateway to the famed Guanacaste region and our own Papagayo area. 

On Monday, November 1^st, 2012 the Canadian airline, WestJet, inaugurated the first of its regularly scheduled flights to Liberia.  The flight connects Toronto, Canada, with Liberia, Guanacaste in the northern Pacific of Costa Rica.

The airline will be travelling twice a week (Mondays and Saturdays) to Costa Rica, using a Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with capacity for 166 passengers.

According to information from the Costa Rican Tourism Board (ICT, in Spanish), this flight will allow the country to provide 34,528 additional seats to and from Canada per year, its second most important tourism market, after the United States.

According to Allan Flores, Tourism minister, the arrival of WestJet is the result of the “open sky” agreement signed with Canada recently.

The executive vice-president of operations for WestJet, Cam Kenyon, stated that this new route, which is free of layovers, between the Pearson International Airport in Toronto and the Daniel Oduber International Airport, represents a milestone for the company, which was founded in 1996.

“This is the first time in 16 years, in which we are providing service in Central America, which will allow us to continue offering our clients more opportunities to experience new destinations. We hope the service between Toronto and Costa Rica will be very successful,” he added.

WestJet is a low cost airline that offers regular service to 81 destinations in North America and the Caribbean.  The airline provides jobs to 8,600 people, and has 99 Boeing 737 aircraft in its inventory.

According to ICT, the typical Canadian visitor spends approximately 15 nights, and spends an average of $88 per day (data from 2005-2010).

The activities that most attract Canadians in Costa Rica are adventure tours such as canopy, snorkeling, surfing, and other more traditional activities such as enjoying the beach and bird watching.  And now that there are more flights to Liberia, it’s even easier to enjoy what Guanacaste has to offer.