Kyra Sedgwick, star of The Closer and next month’s The Game Plan, wanted adventure. She and her family found it on an eco-friendly trek through Costa Rica. By Mark Seal. Photograph by Andrew Eccles.

Kyra Sedgwick wanted something different, something exciting. She and her husband, Kevin Bacon, and their two teenage children, Travis and Sosie, were tired of lazy days on Caribbean beaches that seemingly all of Hollywood had discovered. “The decision was mine,” she says. “I wanted to make us go on an adventure vacation. We had been going to Anguilla and staying at the Cap Juluca. We love Anguilla, but it has started to become super-Hollywood. Also, I was not in the mood to plotz. Do you know what plotzing is? Plotzing is just sitting around, not doing anything. I was tired of the plotzing. So I said, ‘I want to go on an adventure vacation.’ And Kev said, ‘What about Costa Rica?’ And he really made all the plans for it, as he always does. He’s always the plan guy.”

And what a plan it was: two weeks in the wild, sharing eco-friendly lodges with howler monkeys and toucans, far from civilization and from Sedgwick’s red-hot midlife stardom. She recently won a best actress Golden Globe award for her role as deputy police chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the hit TNT series The Closer, and next month, she stars opposite Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson in the Disney football film The Game Plan. Sedgwick’s game plan in her personal life has long been the same: “At home, I do all I can to tread lightly on the earth,” she has said in interviews. A few years back, she found a way to incorporate that attitude into her family vacations.

Between takes on her hit TV series, Sedgwick recounts for us her environmentally sensible adventure vacation in Costa Rica, where, with her family in tow, she rode the rapids, flew over the rain forests, dusted off scorpions, and ran with the wild pigs — while always avoiding the beaten path.

Okay, Maybe Just a Little Plotzing
We first stopped in San José, the capital, which is where you stop on your way into Costa Rica. We spent a night at a beautiful environmentally aware hotel called the Rosa Blanca. Absolutely beautiful. All wood, probably correctly culled wood from different forests. Environmentally responsible in every way. It is owned by this guy who was, I think, an artist in San Francisco, and then he moved to Costa Rica. He had, I believe, a small coffee plantation there, and he also raised flowers. I think that’s why it’s called the Finca Rosa Blanca Country Inn. We stayed in this room that has a circular wooden staircase in it because we had the two kids with us. We slept upstairs; they slept downstairs. It was almost like being at the front end of a ship, a beautiful wooden ship. The windows look out on the plantation, and it was very windy. The room has a beautiful white canopy bed, and you can close yourself in while you’re sleeping.

Goodbye Hollywood, Hello Scorpions!
Most of the time, we were on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. We first stayed in Tiskita Jungle Lodge, which has maybe 10 or 15 cabins — no electricity, candles with an outdoor shower. Everything is super basic but very pretty. Our room had a thin mattress on a wooden platform. We had a beautiful porch that looked out on the rain forest and ocean and had two hammocks. We ate sort of camp-style — breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the rain forest, looking at all the animals. At night, we went to bed when the animals went to sleep, and in the morning, we woke up early.

So we explored the rain forest during the day, and when we got hot, we’d go down to the beach and surf. They have great surf there, and a great surf instructor, and a really great guide at Tiskita Lodge. You can hear the howler monkeys, which scream day and night. We saw a three-toed and a two-toed sloth, which live in trees and barely move, hence the word slothful. If you see them move, it’s a real monumental moment. We saw a crocodile when we went into the rain forest. We saw a bunch of toucans — the bird that’s on the Froot Loops box. We saw a scorpion in our room. Kev and I were getting ready for bed, and I looked down at my arm, and I said, “Honey, is that a scorpion?” He looked down and said, “Yes! That’s a scorpion!”

You get to this place where you’re thinking the animals are all your friends, and you’re seeing them in their natural habitat, and you’re kind of just observing them and not threatening them, and they’re not threatening you. So all of a sudden, the scorpion — and I’m thinking, Here he is! I’m in his house, and I’m observing him, and he’s observing me. We’re not going to hurt each other. Meanwhile, Kevin brushes the scorpion off my arm and gets him out of the room. In the rain forest near Tiskita, our guide told us, “The only thing you have to worry about are wild pigs.” Because they can be really angry, and they can charge. I saw a herd of them, and I was like, “Oh, honey, get the camera!” And the guide was like, “Don’t get the camera! Run!”

The amazing thing about the guides is that when you don’t think you’re seeing anything, then, all of a sudden, they’ll stop and point. They’ll see something from very far away, that the bird stopped or that there’s a howler monkey around. They know all these amazing things about where they live. I mean, of course they do. But it’s pretty incredible to watch and to see everything through their eyes.

Packing Light, Traveling Smart
You take a small plane from San Jose to Tiskita, and you can have only 25 pounds of luggage each. That’s a pretty small amount for most people. I come to L.A., and my bag can be, like, 70 pounds. So you really have to taper down. Plus, it’s so hot. Another thing that is so great about Tiskita Jungle Lodge is it has a beautiful waterfall, with a cold pool where the waterfall ends. It’s so natural and so beautiful. It’s a little bit of a climb, but it’s a great way to cool off after being in the hot sun.

While we were in Tiskita, we went to Playa Pavones, which is a beach with a famous left-hand surf break. What you can do is ride the wave for three quarters of a mile and then get out and walk all the way back to where your towel is. You can stay on the wave for several minutes, and that’s really unusual.

Muy Buen Equipo!
Then we stayed at Arenal Observatory Lodge, about three hours northwest of San José. We stayed in a cabin called the White Hawk Villa, really up high. Arenal is the name of the big volcano there that’s always erupting. It’s rare to actually see the volcano because there’s so much rain. But we got to see it because it cleared up. We took a lot of walks on the hard black lava there. We had a great guide there too. There’s also a rain forest in the area. We went into the Arenal Volcano National Park and did the zip-line tours. When you go on these zip-line tours, you’re basically as high as the clouds. There’s what they call a cloud forest, because you’re so high up. You go along the canopy, which is the top part, of the rain forest. It’s really incredible and terrifying. On these zip-line tours, there’s a wire hanging over two mountaintops, and it runs over the tops of the trees, the top of the rain forest. And it’s a whole tour. You go on eight or nine of these zip lines. You’re really high; it’s terrifying. My daughter wasn’t heavy enough, so the guide had to go with her. Otherwise, she would have sort of gotten stranded halfway through the zip line, because you have to have a certain amount of weight to make it to the other side.

We also did some white-water rafting, which was awesome. We had this really great guide who took us down to white water. Every time we made it over a particularly difficult pass, where there was actual big white water, he would have us raise our oars and say, “Muy buen equipo!” which basically means, “Yay! Good team!” Like we’re all a team and we made it through. I like that sentiment. My kids made fun of me because I could never say it right. We did it for weeks after we got home. There’s a whole Costa Rican sentiment that’s sort of like, “Enjoy your life. Don’t sweat the small stuff.” And that’s what I came away with. And also, of course, as I do on all these environmentally correct — or, at least, intelligent — vacations we’ve been taking lately, [I realize that] it’s not our earth. We share it with millions of species and different kinds of people, and we owe it to everyone to do better in every area environmentally.

Another thing we did in Arenal was take a three-hour bike ride that, when I look back on it, was so incredibly dangerous. It was pouring rain, first of all, and when you’re in a place where it rains so much of the time, people don’t stop their lives when it rains. They continue on with the program. And our program for that day was to take a mountain-bike ride along these sort of back roads around the Arenal Volcano National Park. We would go up and down really steep hills — rocky, steep hills — on our mountain bikes, and it was pouring rain. My youngest was 10 or 11 at the time and really small. The idea that I let her do this bike ride … and then we went on the highway for about an hour, with pouring rain and people screaming by on the highway. I was thinking, Is this dangerous? Yes, it is dangerous, but it’s also that thing you get, just like the thing with the scorpion, when you’re in another country, in another world: You think somehow you’re untouchable in some way.

Mother Earth’s Bathtub
We finally got to our ultimate destination, the Ecotermales Hot Springs. It was a very authentic place. It was so beautiful, especially after being cold and rained on for three hours while biking. We got into this hot spring, and we were all in heaven. Our hands were cold and white. We were white-knuckling it to this place. And it was cold and rainy and exhausting — the ride. When you arrive there, you just peel off your clothes and leave them in lockers. And you go in there in your bathing suit, and it’s so hot and lovely, and it’s all natural. So you think, There’s no energy that’s being wasted now. This is all just Mother Earth heating our bones. It was so beautiful, and we just sort of vegged out in there for a really long time. There were hardly any people there.

Afterward, we had this amazing meal out on the patio that they just brought out to us. It’s so great not to have to order anything. I get really stressed when ordering food. It makes me crazy. So they just come out with these hot, fresh corn tortillas with delicious fish and some chicken and black beans and rice. It’s just so great. It’s amazing.

Back to Civilization
After that, we went to the Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica at Peninsula Papagayo. As far as I’m concerned, you might as well go to the Four Seasons in Miami. All I kept thinking was, Why aren’t we back at our little lodge where we had to rough it, where not every single private school student from New York City who’s come to Costa Rica for his or her family vacation is?

The drive from the Caribbean side to the Pacific side takes about four hours. It’s really, really hot and wet and moist on the Caribbean side, and as you get to the Pacific side, it gets drier and drier, and you feel your skin shrivel up because there’s no more moisture in the air. And then when you unpack your clothes, everything feels wet. It’s not really wet, but it holds the moisture from the Caribbean side. We went to another famous surf town, Tamarindo, two hours away. We went to a restaurant that was very close to the beach. There was a real pig outside the restaurant, tied up. An expat from the United States, and there are a lot of them in Costa Rica, owns this very, very old, very, very big pig, and he is beautiful. And the Bacons took a picture with the pig. The name of the restaurant is Stella Fine Dining, and that might very well be the name of the pig.

Low Crime, High Literacy
One final story? On our way to the Four Seasons, we were stopped on the road by what are called agouti. They kind of look like a cross between a rat and a possum, and they’re really prevalent in Costa Rica. We had to stop the car because there were like a hundred in the road. When we stepped out, they licked our hands and sort of halfway crawled up our legs, trying to get food. That was kind of fun. They’re a little freaky looking. If you were to come to New York having never seen a pigeon before, you’d think, Oh, look at the pigeons! Aren’t they beautiful? Agouti are kind of like pigeons.

The people in Costa Rica are so very nice. They love their country. There’s very little crime there. In fact, they abolished the army, I think, back in 1948. And instead, the government puts all the money that they used to put toward the army into teaching people to read and into education. It is one of the most highly literate countries, I think, in the world.

My kids were totally into it — they are totally into the adventure. We went to Thailand the next year. And then this last year, we went to the Galápagos. So we do a lot of these adventure vacations. Now we’re sort of trying to go for the ecotourism kind of thing. Because I don’t want to go places and use twice as much water as anyone living there because I’m staying in a hotel that washes the towels and sheets every day. You know, I don’t want to go to a place and mess it up. I want to go to a place and observe what’s beautiful about it, and leave and not have tread too heavily on the landscape.

Mark Seal is an American Way contributing editor. His work has also appeared in Vanity Fair and Playboy.