Costa Rica

For our five-year anniversary, Peter and I decided to go to Costa Rica for 6 days.  Colin stayed with my parents, and it sounds like he didn't even miss us at all.  He had a blast with them and wore them out while he was there, as well.

I thought I'd include a few pictures from our trip here, even though it's not really about Colin.

We woke up Tuesday at 3am to get to the airport on time for our connecting flight to Houston.  We decided to go big for this trip, and we flew business class to and from Costa Rica.  Little did we know that our "breakfast" on the flight to Costa Rica would be our last meal until dinner.  We ate like hobbits that day.  We had first breakfast at 3:30, second breakfast at 5:30, and then we had 11sies on the plane.  Except then we didn't eat again for another 8 hours.  I knew that it was a bad idea for me to go that long without eating, and I paid for it dearly that night when my migraine came on suddenly and I got sick.  Regardless, the views from our room in Arenal (3 hours inland, like riding a roller coaster) were amazing.

Looking out over Lake Arenal from our porch, our bed, and then from the restaurant that night, we go to see the sun set.

We had a great villa for the two nights that we stayed in Arenal, and we were two of four guests in the whole place.

I promise I only used my phone to check my e-mail to make sure Colin was still alive and to let me family know we arrived safely.


Wednesday we woke up for our 13-hour tour.  Reminder, I'm recovering from a migraine and have barely eaten in 24 hours.  Our tour guide's name was Victor, and he developed a special friendship with Peter from the beginning.  He didn't remember my name, but he referred to me frequently as Peter's wife.  He and Peter bonded throughout the day, in a way that became more comical as it went on.  Our first stop was a tour through the rain forest via hanging bridges.  Not your typical bridge.

 When our group was on the bridge, it swayed violently back and forth.  Helpful when feeling ill.

 The view down.

 It's hard to see, but there's a bridge all the way up between the trees that we were hiking to.  Did I mention I am afraid of heights?

However, the view was worth it.

By the time we finished this hike, our guide was not sure I would be successful in surviving the next hike, which was down 500 stairs to a waterfall and then back up the 500 stairs.  I agreed with him.  I slept on the bus, while Peter went down to the waterfall unfortunately.  However, this allowed for more bonding time with Victor.

After the nap, I was finally feeling better.  We stopped to have lunch, and I ate more than 4 bites!  We then got to see a demonstration of how they create sugarcane liquor.

The sugarcane and the juice were great.  I opted out of the shot of moonshine, due to just downing some serious medication, but Peter had some, and he loved it.  I think doing a shot of sugarcane moonshine with a large group of people from Spain in the middle of Costa Rica was one of the funniest memories.


From there we headed on another hike to view Arenal Volcano.  We met another younger couple on this part of the trip, and it was nice to talk to them for a while.

We finished our day at the Hot Springs (which were amazing).  We both needed it, as we were sore and tired.  We got to watch a lot of lightning while we were there--safe?  Probably not.  Then we went out to dinner and back to our villa.


Thursday, we headed out on a boat across the lake to take us to Monteverde, which is home to the Cloud Forest.  This is much what it sounds like--a forest in the clouds, as it is so high.  The boat ride was fairly short, and this is the "dock" where they dropped us off.

The roads in Arenal were paved, but the roads in Monteverde were not.  We had a bumpy, climbing drive to our hotel, but it was worth it when we got there!  This second hotel was phenomenal.

When it was clear enough, you could see the Pacific Ocean from our room.

This was a hotel that was very interested in using all natural food, conserving water and energy, and being environmentally friendly.  Their food was phenomenal, we had something different for almost every meal.  Once we finally stopped drinking the tap water, we both felt better.  I had still never fully recovered from Tuesday.  The tap water was safe, and it tasted fine, but something about it was still unsettling my stomach slightly.  We spent Thursday afternoon relaxing.

Friday was the day I was most excited about and scared of.  The ziplining in Selvatura.  It's supposed to be one of the best ziplines in the country, and the longest line was over a half mile long.  We met another young couple, and she was just as scared as I was.  They provided some colorful commentary for the few hours we went ziplining.

 We never had to walk on these, but they freaked me out just being there!

 One of the first ziplines.

 The view of the last one...you can't see the end point because of a large cloud that you disappear into.

The final zipline--we got to do this one together.

It was definitely my favorite part of the trip; once my adrenaline got moving, it wasn't so bad.  But there were times when we were flying over the ground, and I started to think about falling.  So then I tried to focus on all of the beauty that God had created in Costa Rica, because it was unreal sometimes how green and beautiful it was.

We finished that trip up with another hanging bridge tour, where we got to see (and hear) some howler monkeys.  Those bridges seemed much steadier than the ones in Arenal.

That afternoon, we got massages.  It was Peter's first time, and he said he now understands why I go and get them!  We may have created an expensive habit.

Saturday we went on a bird-watching/animal-watching tour in a private wildlife reserve.  I have birder colleagues who would have loved it.  We had another good guide for this tour.  We spent the afternoon exploring some of the little shops near our hotel and hiking around.

 This millipede smelled like Amoretto.  Yes, I was forced to smell him.

Just one of the awesome pictures Peter got of some of the hummingbirds in the preserve.  There were so many of them!

Sunday we began the trek home...another 3 hour car ride to the airport, where I was thrilled to sit in the lounge in a big comfy chair and have someone bring me a drink.  We also had a good lunch on the plane on the ride home, and we spent several hours in O'Hare before finally arriving home at 1:00am on Monday.

One last picture of the Continental Divide on our drive to the airport.  We're definitely going back to Costa Rica.