If you're planning a March break getaway, take note: When JOANNE KATES packs her bags and her kids and heads off into the Costa Rican cloud forest, she finds learning how to entertain her teenagers more challenging than horseback riding through the jungle Family Vacation with Teenagers, Take One:
Our family vacation avec two teenagers begins inauspiciously. As parents, we've chosen Costa Rica for its famed big nature moments. We're imagining a holiday fraught with outdoorsy activities -- hiking, biking, kayaking -- swathed in a golden glow of togetherness. Our flight (on Skyservice, one of those cheap Christmastime charters) leaves at 6:20 a.m., which requires being at the airport by 4:20. "Great," says my 17-year-old daughter (hereafter to be referred to as TD), "I'll stay out all night and be home at 3." It's hard-wired in the teenager to a) push limits and b) make parents worry, in this case that she'll cause us to miss our flight. But she doesn't.

Family Vacation, Take Two, Airport Boarding Gate: It's not only one's own family that can be terminally irritating. Other families also can provide murderous moments. Overheard, a mom talking: "You could stay home the next time, Taylor, if this isn't good enough for you." The child responds in kind. Dad: "Shut up." Are we having fun yet? Having landed in San Jose, Costa Rica, and unfolded ourselves from the sardine can they call an airplane, we get the rental car and head for the Monteverde Cloud Forest. They call the road the Pan American Highway: It has two lanes, no shoulders. We find lunch at a "soda" (cheap local café) with solid wooden tables under a corrugated tin roof. The equivalent of $10 buys four people plenty of moist roast chicken with tasty beans 'n' rice, squash stewed with corn and sweet peppers, potatoes boiled with sausage, and strong coffee. Having driven four hours uphill, we arrive at the Monteverde Cloud Forest and settle into the Trapp Family Lodge, only somewhat disappointed not to be greeted by yodellers. This is the closest hotel to the cloud-forest reserve. It is quite pretty, with cedar walls, ceilings and floors, as well as extremely quiet (save for the ruffians we've imported). After dinner, my 13-year-old son (a.k.a. TS) says: "Is there a games room?" No games room. No TV. TS: "What are we going to do? There's nothing to do here." In the morning, we hike the cloud forest and then lunch at Stella's Café in tiny Monteverde village, on fresh heart-of-palm pie and spinach, with fresh blackberry shakes. Oh the joy of tropical dining. Once back at the hotel, the kids say they're bored. Which occasions a parental lecture on the benefits of finding the personal resources to entertain oneself without TV.

To which TS replies: "Why?" The parental units decide on a late-afternoon nap (surely one of the sweetest gifts of vacation). Next door are the sounds of several herds of elephants at play. The kids are inventing games, all of which are noisy enough to disturb everyone in the hotel, reckless enough to destroy property, or both. I fake sleep (a tactic that has been serving me since the days of 3 a.m. infant awakenings). Paterfamilias (a person of greater social conscience than me) goes next door to quell the riot. TD, who knows that the best defence is a good offence, counters with a suggestion that she be allowed to buy a cocktail in the bar -- on our tab. Canada has drinking laws; Costa Rica does not appear to. We compromise on a beer, for which she is appropriately grateful. At dinner, TS says Costa Rica is boring. Do I repeat the predictable sanctimonious parental lecture? Of course. "We spent a lot of money and trouble to bring you here." Paterfamilias grabs the shovel from me and digs us into a deeper hole: "This is one of the few remaining rain forests in the world. They're fast disappearing. You're lucky to be seeing it." Their eyes glaze over. The next morning, we go horseback riding. It's like when we're skiing and the three of them (dad plus kids) want to race downhill, the bigger the moguls the better, while mom is the wimp. They canter, I walk. They try not to rub it in, and fail. I am unbearably jealous of their physical courage, and how deliriously happy they are when they're invoking it. The humiliation is horrendous.

My consolation prize is the breathtaking visual bounty, a narrow winding trail through the jungle, under the canopy. We see monkeys, banana trees laden with fruit the length of my thumb, a strangler fig tree that's 250 years old and three storeys tall. Strangler figs grow up around other trees, slowly choking them to death, thus creating a hollow space inside the victor tree. The kids climb up the inside of the strangler fig, delighted at the adventure. Afterward, we ride back to the stable along a cliff with a view of faraway mountains sloping down to the Pacific. We pass orange trees in blossom, heady with sweet scent. I suddenly feel unbearably lucky, enriched -- and brave: I give the horse a kick, he takes off, cantering. I catch up with them, whooping and hollering for joy. After lunch, it is decision time. Travelling with teens is suddenly just like travelling with infants: They require fairly constant entertainment. Among friends, these negotiations would be polite; family politics are not so pretty. One person wants to hike in the cloud forest again, one wants to visit the local hummingbird garden, I vote for reading a mystery novel. We settle on a night hike in the cloud forest, which turns out to be a magical mystery tour, complete with flashlights and a knowledgeable guide. He shows us a sleeping sloth in a tree, a tarantula as big as my hand, and huge ant colonies at work. We watch warriors and workers, all hurrying purposefully. Everyone on the hike, kids included, is riveted by this tiny, complex world. Clever Costa Rica keeps its sons and daughters at home by offering them an ecotourism stream in high school, which trains them for a career that will allow them to stay home and earn a decent living. These young people then also become a generation of enviro-champions, understanding how self-destructive it would be to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Hence Costa Rica's choice not to improve the terrible road that leads up to the cloud forest -- lest too many tourists come.

The next day, we hemorrhage money on more ecotours. The zipline is an adrenaline rush, wherein you're attached via climbing harness to cables, and you "zip" along them, above the rain-forest canopy. The kids love it. We prefer a more sedate canopy walk on suspended bridges. Seeing a cloud forest from a monkey's eye view is enthralling. Because the vegetation is so dense and the trees so tall, almost no sunlight penetrates to the forest floor, ergo the paucity of both blossoms and birds on the ground. But on the suspended bridges above the canopy, in the sunlight, it's a wow a minute. Peak moment: An orange hummingbird lets us watch her sitting on eggs, to the tune of howler monkeys singing their songs. That night, TD is invited to a barbecue being held by locals. Where is the barbecue: "Dunno." Who's having it? "Dunno." When will you be back? "Dunno." So off go my kids, with somebody they met on the riding trail. We are grateful that TS is going, for he will surely be the sole factor standing between TD and rape and pillage. There are clichés galore to cover this situation: Kids are like library books: They are only lent to us; give them roots and wings; if you do not set them free, they will either be emotional cripples or never come home again. Bottom line: compromise (a.k.a. bribery) is key. They're back at 8:30. "The party was boring. It was just a bunch of grownups." We get the brownie points anyway, oh joy. In the morning, we drive four hours to Arenal Volcano north of Monteverde. This is Central America's most active volcano, famous for having wiped out a village in its last major eruption in 1968. Today, we experience an upside of travelling with teens: They pack their own bags, and carry mine to the car! Not only do they manage a four-hour drive with no complaints, but they entertain us.

We kill at least an hour making up nonsense songs about the Soprano family (proving that an unhealthy family addiction to a TV series has a purpose). We are being reminded again of the almost incredible mutability of the teenager of the species, their habit of turning from Mr. Hyde into Dr. Jekyll (and back again) with no notice. By mid-afternoon, we can see the volcano, its peak spewing smoke in giant plumes. A rainbow-coloured iguana half a metre long strolls across the road. A howler monkey hangs out on a wire overhead. We are overwhelmed at the visual bounty on all sides. We drive past coffee fields planted on improbably steep mountainsides, and my spousal tour guide offers: "That's what has taken over the rain forest all over the world -- for your addiction. Don't you feel guilty?" Of course, he drinks just as much coffee as I do, but spousal self-righteousness would be ill-served by remembering that right now. That night, we sleep at the Arenal Paraiso under the volcano -- or so it feels when we are awakened by a deep rumbling. The next day, we do a mountain-bike tour in the vicinity of the volcano. We ride around beautiful Lake Arenal and uphill into the cloud forest, where we stop to watch howler monkeys loitering high in the trees. Once back on the bikes, we ride close to the volcano and stand on a frozen lava river from the last big eruption in '68. The volcano speaks, deep huge rumbles that cannot be mistaken for thunder. Suddenly, we hear the rat-tat-tat of heavy rain, but feel no moisture. We hold out our hands and see black dots on them; crush a black speck and it fades to soft grey -- volcanic ash from the eruption we've just heard. While her dad and I marvel at our proximity to Earth at its most elemental, TD snorts in derision: "Yeah, so a little ash. Big deal." For once, I zip it.

The tropical vacation is so mellowing. Two toucans fly by, their huge hollow bills just like in the pictures. My reward for ignoring teenage lip. The next day, we drive five hours to Allegro Papagayo Resort on the Pacific coast. This is our first all-inclusive resort experience. At check-in, adults get a green hospital bracelet (a.k.a. all the booze you can drink). Under-agers get the yellow bracelet. TD scams a green bracelet and starts on Daiquiris at dinner. As an ardent fan of Dirty Dancing,she knows that a Latino Patrick Swayze is out there waiting for her. Should we stand in the way of that? After dinner and several more drinks, TD is off. We're tired, she's ready to party. This has to be the upside of a gated all-inclusive resort with bad food and water aerobics. It's all too benign and Disneyesque to be dangerous. The next night, it's more of the same. Except at 4 a.m. she's still out. Paterfamilias dresses, searches the beach, phones security. Nothing. I am so scared I can't even say my thoughts out loud to him. She strolls in at 4:30. Us: "Where were you?" Her: "On the beach with some people." Us: "We were terrified!" Her: "You never gave me a curfew." Me to him: "We chose to have kids." In the morning, we take the resort boat across an azure bay to another beach. If there is a postcard of paradise, the view en route -- of sea, mountain, white sand -- is in the running. Even the kids acknowledge the glory. The next day, it's time to leave. Two weeks on holiday and I'm still waiting for that Hallmark moment of a family-togetherness epiphany. There were tastes of it (Sopranos ditties, cantering on horseback in the cloud forest), but just as parenting is in the peanut-butter sandwiches, family-vacation joy is between the lines -- in the small moments that go by so fast you could almost miss them. Joanne Kates is The Globe and Mail's restaurant critic If you go
GETTING THERE
There are weekly charters to San Jose, Costa Rica, from Toronto on Skyservice and Air Transat. Air Canada also has regularly scheduled flights from Toronto, via Mexico City. Flight time is five-and-a-half hours. Air Transat offers flights once a week from Montreal.
WHERE TO STAY
For accommodations in Monteverde and near the Arenal Voclano, visit http://www.monteverdeinfo.com or www.monteverdecostarica.info.