Jaco Vacation Rental condo

This is an excellent property to stay with a family. The owner provided us with two pages of useful tips for our vacation and was friendly and informative through several phone calls. Paloma Blanca is well run by friendly, efficient staff. We had a great time here, waking up every morning to a beautiful view of the ocean. Every evening was spent on the terrace enjoying the view down the length of Jaco Beach with a glorious sunset. The south end of the beach is uncrowded with silky soft sand. No rocks, seaweed or other gunkies. We took surf lessons and boogie boarded in the ocean. Great waves and warm water! We did a zip line (kids loved it, scared the heck out of Mom, enough said). Took a great nature walk through Carrera National Park with Randall as our guide. A highlight of the vacation. Ask the owner about booking Randall. A trip to Tortuga Island was okay (lovely white sand beach, good snorkelling) but could have been better organized (feed you lunch but you get swarmed by wasps - they need mosquito nets, charge you $1.00 to use the outhouse on the island - not cool, charge rent on the chaise lounges - enough said). The four pools at the resort are crystal clear and well maintained. The condo is well decorated, clean and has a really neat shower with stonework and a giant showerhead. One surprise was there is no dishwasher (they don't list one but I never thought to check when I was researching properties). The upside to this was,"Who cares?". The restaurants here are all very good to excellent and very reasonable. This was a pleasant surprise and another highlight of our vacation. We ate out every night. Downtown Jaco is a short ten minute walk or cheap cab ride (cabs are very plentiful). There is a ton of restaurants downtown. Some of our favourites were Pili Pili (excellent French food), Rioasis, Papparazzi, Cafe Hidalgo and a great little open air pizza joint right around the corner from La Paloma Blanca run by Argentinians. For breakfast and casual lunch items there is a wonderful bakery (Pachi's Pan) downtown where you can load up on muffins, danish, empanadas, pizzas and excellent French baguettes to bring back to the condo. Across the street is Max Menos, a large grocery store where the cabs are lined up to whisk you back to your condo after shopping. Our feeling of the Costa Ricans we met are they are warm, friendly, smart and humorous people. Everyone should visit Costa Rica before they die!