Costa Rica *~* Pura Vida

It's like a dream. Like it almost didn't even happen. Or like we blinked and we missed it. 

Costa Rica was honestly such an incredible place. I've never been anywhere like it.  

*~* Wednesday *~* Travel Day *~* 

It was an early start. 2:30am to be to the airport in time to make our flight at 5:18am. Grabbed a breakfast croissant sandwich and an overpriced cup of grapes and boarded our flight. We tried to sleep on the plane but, needless to say, it was pretty useless.  

 
Don't mind the overpriced breakfast in Ty's mouth. I'm always taking awkward, wrong moment pictures.
Layover in Houston.

   
Flying over Central America we saw several plumes of what we thought was smoke but we figured out it was steam and that we were flying over a volcano and a bunch of hot spots.
  
After making it to San Jose, trying to figure out how to use an ATM, finding the rental car shuttle, we finally were on our way. But we had to get gas first and seriously the street signs were pretty non existent. We found a gas station, no self serve, they pump gas for you and then we had to self navigate back to the road that would take us to the coast. It was quite an adventure and I just couldn't help but laugh, a lot. Ty was kind of a nervous wreck, seeing as how he was the one driving in a foreign country, I didn't blame him. 

  

Once we got to the coast the drive was beautiful. I couldn't believe how many palm tree farms there were and they stretched on so far! The first glimpse of the beach got my heart racing. The tail end of our drive led us into a torrential downpour which we were told was a fluke since it was the dry season. Since it was dark it was a bit nerve wracking until we got to the restaurant and met up with Erica and Nick. 

       

Our rental people, Lani and Leon were great. Leon met us at the restaurant Real la Costa and we followed him up the mountain on a wet dirt road for 15 minutes or so, over crazy skinny bridges in 4WD. We were a bit worried but it all worked out. Leon and Lani showed us around La Casita and we called it a night. Leon gave us a machete in case we had any 'creatures' we needed to ward off, like snakes or something. Not terribly comforting but we never had to use it. In the binder they have in the Casita, Lani said she had had some encounters with a panther. Also, not terribly comforting but again, we were fine. 

*~* Thursday *~* Rehearsal Dinner *~*

Breakfast on the patio, our view, humid hair and reading by the butterfly bush. Ah it was heaven. Every morning I would find Ty out on the patio just like this, enjoying the view. 

     

Our view for the week. 

    

Our 'neighborhood.' 

   

 

Several times during the week we drove by this escuela. I wished I could go inside and just be a fly on the wall. Not that I would understand a ton but still. The kids wore uniforms and they looked so darling. It was just one room with several different age groups. 

      

Our first attempt at venturing out on our own for food and supplies. 

We hit up the grocery store and the kind cashier didn't know how to tell me I needed to bag my own groceries but somehow I figured it out! Haha! We accidentally bought OJ with carrot in it and later on in the week when we thought we were buying sour cream it ended up being cream cheese (eye roll)!

Anyway, the lunch we had was so tasty. The two workers didn't speak a lick of English but, again, we somehow figured it out. 

    

That night we got cleaned up and headed up to the Bamboo Room for the Wedding Rehearsal dinner. EVERYTHING is up a dirt road, usually a fairly steep dirt road and I don't know how anyone survives here without 4WD. The Bamboo Room was so beautiful and had a fun atmosphere. Did I mention that we didn't eat at a single place besides our Casita that had walls? All the restaurants are open, no walls and this place was no different. It rained as we ate and kept the temperature down and kinda misty and magical. The owner provided live entertainment and I had the best shrimp tacos in probably the entire world!

  

*~* Friday *~* Golf *~* Wedding Day *~*

Ty couldn't resist. Especially since this was one of the only golf courses on the West Coast of the entire country and it was only 10-15 minutes away from where we were staying. He didn't even need to make a tee time, we could just go whenever we wanted to. For the first several holes we were the only ones on the small 9 hole course. He golfed, I drove the cart and read my book while trying to get a nice tan on my legs. We were both doing exactly what we wanted to. 

   

   

    

Ah... The wedding was magical. Erica looked so elegant and beautiful. The rain just added a layer of magic to the moment. We were all soaked and warm and so happy for Erica and Nick. Ty was pretty annoyed that I made him kiss me for this picture but honestly, he will thank me for it in the future I'm sure. We hung out at the mansion and ate a yummy dinner. It was so fun to sit and talk with Janie and Craig and reminisce, tell funny stories and share memories. 

 

*~* Saturday *~* Nauyaca Waterfall/Hike *~*

As a group we all ventured out on a fun hike in the middle of the humid jungle to experience the beauty of some gorgeous scenery and waterfalls. The spikes on that tree were strong enough to puncture a water bottle. We saw lots of cool things on the hike like a funky caterpillar, lots of pea sized black baby frogs, part of our group saw monkeys, cool hanging vines that were strong enough to swing on and a random restaurant half way up the mountain. The falls were so fascinating. I love the sound of waterfalls. Ty went exploring and found a cool cave. 

    

   There were upper and lower falls. The lower falls were better for swimming.   

     

  

     

      

*~* Sunday *~* Catamaran Cruise and Snorkeling from Manuel Antonio *~*

This was easily one of my favorite things about the trip. Cruising the ocean with my love, soaking up the sun, smelling the salty air, reading my book, swimming in the ocean and enjoying the view of underwater sea life while snorkeling. When we got to our little town before we boarded our boat, our GPS took us up some random road and wasn't really working all that well. I'm super proud to say that I navigated the sin out of this little town and got us there in one piece. We went as a whole group and the crew made us yummy food throughout the day. While we were swimming one of Erica's friends (her photographer) got stung by a jelly fish and she was swimming right by us. It was kinda crazy. 

  

  

   

         

After being out on the ocean and having to come back to land I really wanted a smoothie, Ty didn't. He wasn't super thrilled but I enjoyed the coconut pineapple smoothiness anyway cause I didn't want to miss out. 

   

*~* Monday *~* Osa Canopy Tour *~*
Ty said the zip lining was his favorite part of the trip. It was super fun and really was so cool to be so high up just sailing through the air. There was a group there from Canada celebrating their 40th birthdays and there was a family there from Germany with their 3 year old daughter. Super brave little girl. 

  

This tree and it's roots were so huge and it almost looked like elephant skin. It was a bit of a hike sometimes to get from one platform to the next. Ty was a bit nervous because on one platform they hooked you to a wire around a tree because there were no rails and you could fall off the side of the platform and then after you walked around the tree you were hooked to, you had to hook yourself to a line and walk across this Indiana Jones style bridge. He was breathing pretty hard after that. Next we had to kind of rappel down from a couple platforms and that was fun. One of the guides made me do one of the rappels upside down haha! At the end of the tour we got some yummy fruit (best mangos I've ever had) and got to take a whirl on the Tarzan swing while we listened to Howler monkeys chatting in the jungle. Wish we could've seen them but no such luck for us. We did see a black and green poisonous frog during the zip line which was pretty neat. 

        
    
       

Ended the excursion with a yummy meal of Chicken Cordon Blue and Oven fired pizza. All the food seemed so fresh. 

 

Panorama of the restaurant. 

The first jaunt to the beach was that night (not sure what took us so long) to watch the sunset and we went to Playa Tortuga. Not the best beach but it was beautiful and romantic and simply breathtaking. Those are the moments that fuel my soul. Something inside my heart just comes alive on a beach with the waning and spreading rays of sun, salty sea air, the sound of the waves crashes and the disappearing footsteps in the sand.  

   

Again, the eye rolling moment of making him kiss me on the beach AND taking a picture of it. 

 

 *~* Tuesday *~* Cascada Waterfall *~* Uvita Beach *~*

A short jaunt off the beaten path but such a cool little place. Ty stacking rocks. 

   

For some odd reason our sunscreen did not work the entire day. We both got fried so bad. It was still beautiful and so fun jumping waves with Ty as the tide came in. We are definitely beach rookies because even though we got there at low tide, (thinking we were doing awesome on our own) when we realized upon departure that it was now high tide and the 10 minute walk down the beach we had taken to get to our cozy little spot earlier, now meant we had to traverse a river inlet to get back to our car. Wish I would've taken a picture but right before we crossed Tyler told me to make sure my phone didn't get wet. After we crossed the practically waist deep little inlet Ty realized his phone and wallet were in his pocket in an unsealed water pouch. Yep, phone=ruined. Good thing it was the last day and he took majority of our pictures so we thought they were all lost!!!! It was heartbreaking plus it was a hot, sunburned, high tide walk back on the beach, through a town and back to the car where we were still wet having had to wade through the high tide river. We laid out the dollars - Colones and US bills on the vents to dry them all out and made our way to the grocery store and back to the casita. It was super sad but Ty really took it like a champ. I'm always amazed that he doesn't overreact or even get crazy mad about things like that. Through some divine intervention, after we got back and purchased Ty a new phone, every single picture and video he took on his phone somehow uploaded and we didn't lose a single one! Tender mercy for sure!

       

*~* Critters *~*

Different geography calls for different animal life. Only saw a couple of spiders, praise the heavens, lots of pretty colored birds including parrots, hummingbirds and other kinds of birds like scavenger birds, tons of beetles and frogs. Our patio was graced with a bush that attracted a lot of butterflies so that was neat to get to sit back, relax and watch them all day. The first morning we came outside and there was a huge beetle on the ground by the pool that was nasty. We also had a beetle I named Mr. Beetle (so original) that stayed on our screen door for at least 24 hours. Lots of big toads that made really loud noises. Never saw any monkeys but we definitely heard Howler monkeys and they were loud and a little eerie sounding. Speaking of loud noises, cicadas are really quite loud as well and I had one fly right at me and it scared the crap out of me haha! The peacocks were randomly caged by the restaurant that was half way through our hike on Saturday. On our initial drive down to Ojochal, you have to pass over Tarcoles bridge and if you get out and look down at the Tarcoles River you see these massive crocodiles just chilling'. I was lucky enough to have a huge moth land on my side within the first 10 minutes of being at the Casita. I'm terrified of moths but I didn't freak out like I thought I would. During times it was raining and we were driving you could see crabs, tons of crabs, running across the road from the jungle to the ocean. Pretty sure a couple of them lost their lives :-/ We also almost ran over an iguana that ran across the dirt road one day. There were lizards everywhere. We had a little gecko friend inside our Casita for the week. He basically pooped on everything and we usually couldn't find him but we knew he was there because he was loud in the mornings and he ran around on the floor one night. Also, there are lots of dogs there and they just wander where ever. House cats too that visited us a couple of times. 

                       

Other fun stuff... 

It was so relaxing. I read 3 books! Yep that's right... 3 whole books! Seriously, I haven't read a book in a long time and I was in heaven. An Ember in the Ashes, Reign of Shadows and These Broken Stars. I was in a double fantasy/paradise. Something else I loved... the air! It was full of vitality, my skin loved it and my face cleared up quickly. My hair, even though frizzy, felt healthy. My lungs felt full every time I took a breath, it wasn't thin and dry like Utah air. It was glorious and I just felt  healthier down there. The rain was warm and the mist that would come down off the mountain was incredibly cozy and magical. It sounds cheesy but I seriously felt like I was caught up in a dream. A dream that flashed before my eyes. At the end of every day we would jump in our little plunge pool to cool off from the days adventures, talk and enjoy each others company. The power went out a couple of times too. Nothing too much to worry about though. Oh how I wish I could remember every single detail of this place but being back for only a week, some memories are already fading. Something that was terribly sad, we were going to go visit my cousin Ash's beach and palm tree where her ashes were spread but it didn't end up working out and it broke my heart. We tried to go visit her beach on our drive back to the airport but didn't think we would have enough time. Interestingly though, throughout the whole trip I hadn't seen a single blue butterfly and when we were driving away, throughout the drive I saw 3 or 4 huge blue butterflies. Almost like Ash was saying it was ok we wouldn't be able to make the visit to her palm tree and that she was still there, watching over us. Just little drops of Ash to say farewell from Costa Rica. 

Our trip home was bittersweet. Of course I missed Brynlee and wanted to see her but a part of me just wanted to sell everything we owned and fly her to Costa Rica and stay there forever. We were also terribly sunburned so carrying backpacks and sitting in the airports and plane seats were not the most comfortable things to be doing. When we were going to land in Houston for our layover, we were about to land but right before we got to the runway the pilot pulled the plane back up. He came on the intercom and said there was another plane on the runway! Eek. When we finally landed people started clapping. The guy sitting next to Tyler said he was about to start praying haha! I wasn't worried for some reason. Our flight from Houston to SL was delayed and we didn't end up getting up until 1:00 in the A.M. and by the time we got everything inside and actually got in bed and fell asleep it was closer to 2:00am. Luckily the kid was still at Maga's so we slept until noon and then finally got our selves in gear to go see her! Lucky for Brynlee she got to stay one more night since we both had our Self Reliance class that night and work all day the next day. She was happy to stay and Maga was happy to have her since Leila was there too. Brynlee cried and cried on Friday night saying she missed Leila and realized Mc was down in St. George so she couldn't see her either. It was kind of how I felt about Costa Rica. I'm just really glad she loves her cousins because they are as close to siblings as she's gonna get. 

While we were gone, Brynlee basically spent her Spring Break starting out at Maga and Papa's then in St. George for several days and then a few more days at Maga's to finish it up with Leila coming home with them plus MayMay spent some time with them too. So she was with her cousins for a week and it was hard for her to come home and be the only kid. She had so much fun that she didn't want it to end. 

They went shopping, played at the park, bowling, swimming and who knows what else. Their trip down to Little Jamaica in Arizona looked pretty fun and I'm a bit jealous we didn't get to go with them (next time for sure). 

 

  

*~*Pura Vida*~*