Costa*Rica

Ahhhh, beautiful Costa*Rica...Eric and I left the girls with my parents for a week at the end of February while we enjoyed a relaxing vacation. Our resort, JW Marri*tt in Guanacast*e was amazing! I loved everything about it -- the decor was awesome! I wanted to bring several of the decor items home with us -- specifically these little dark wooden carved chairs that would fit the girls perfectly....too bad I didn't even get a pic of them...they were so adorable....our room was beautiful as was the pool :) We had a great time and got to see some of the local terrain : rain forest, dry forest, volcano, and beach. SO FUN! Sorry for the thousands of pics -- but we LOVE our camera :) it's fun to use!

We rented a car during our trip - which at first we weren't going to do but are SO GLAD that we ultimately decided to do it because it allowed us the freedom to really explore the country and go a lot farther inland than we otherwise would have on any of the tours the hotel offered. We drove to Monteverd*e and visited a great butterfly garden one day.

The drive was 3 hours each way and on some seriously bumpy unpaved roads. This is one of the better roads :)

There were chickens and dogs EVERYWHERE! Seriously there must have been over a thousand dogs on the road between our hotel and the butterfly garden!

Here's one of the dogs --- waiting for the bus.

Ok -- so we had a Navigation System in the car --- which usually was really handy -- however, it failed to mention to us that the entire road would be shut down because of "construction" -- we had to back out and find an alternate route -- luckily there was another road not too far away that took us where we needed to go.

And this my friends is one of the many trucks we passed on tiny curving roads going up a mountain....

Another day we decided to drive to Rinc*on de la Vie*ja - volcano. It was a much shorter drive and the roads were better. We got to see a lot of different terrain on our hike to a fairly secluded waterfall and swimming pool. SO FUN! Although I must admit that I had read that there were cougars and boa constrictors in the area and wasn't too excited about encountering one of those on our trek...we didn't thankfully. But there was one point we were about halfway through our hike in when we started hearing some CRAZY animal sounds --- and I FREAKED out! I just knew we were going to be under attack soon by some crazy jungle animals...I wanted to turn back but Eric assured me that we were 'safe' and that the sounds were 'PROBABLY' just some Howler Monkeys. I made him google howler monkeys on his phone and let me hear what they sounded like before we continued on...lol....what would we have done without GPS and cell coverage on this trip! We would have stayed in the hotel...that's what.... HA!

I loved the trees here -- these are called strangler trees.

Out of the rain forest and into the savannah area. This hike seriously was the coolest because we got to see so many different landscapes in such a short time!

Where is the trail? Hmmmm....not quite sure.....here's hoping we make it to the waterfall...

Starting to tire of the hike and wanting to be there already....

SUCCESS!! We found it!

This is so not me -- I don't usually swim in anything other than swimming pools...but I didn't want to leave this place and regret not getting in...so I did it....and it felt great after our sweaty hot hike in this cool refreshing pool was AWESOME! aside from just being beautiful :)

That's Eric out there ;)

And the trek back to the car --- is that the trail? Not sure...at one point we both started questioning if we were lost...but thankfully we were not ;) and we found our car!

We were a little disappointed that we hadn't seen any "wildlife" on our hike...but when I say a little --- I mean exactly that --- because while it would be cool to see something on our jungle hike...I definitely did not actually want to encounter some of the animals that I had read about...but right before we made it back to the car we came upon a family of monkeys!!!! They were playing in the trees! SUCCESS again!

It was all fun and games until this momma monkey decided we were a little too close to her baby and she started hissing at us....I of course, being the brave person I am started running away....while Eric opted to take more pictures of this fanged thing!

This is a bank ..... we do not know why there is always a line here -- the first morning we drove by it I felt the need to check the internet to see if the worlds financial institutions had failed....but no, this is apparently just normal here....

And one of the more "exciting" roads we traveled on....narrow, windy, and full of ROCKS rocks and more ROCKS oh and potholes and chickens and dogs and people - walking all day everyday!

We wanted to do a canopy tour (zip line) and decided to drive all the way back up to the cloud forest in Monteverd*e to do one there because the trees were really really tall there and you zipped from hillside to hillside...it was fun. A little scary - b/c who knows if anyone actually regulates this stuff or how safe it really is....but we did it (I probably won't ever do it again) but we did -- and we're still here :) so yea for that!

It was pretty cool to zip through the cloud forest - it was beautiful and such a different experience than walking on the ground!

We did 13 lines, 1 tarzan swing, 1 rapel, 1 climb up the inside of a hollowed out tree, and one TERRIFYING ladder climb. Even though we were up above the trees -- like really really really high up -- I never got scared while up there....until I was climbing up this ladder thing. I started freaking out and hyperventilating ---- one of the guides had our camera and he kept telling me to wait for Eric to climb up closer to me to get a picture but the ladder started swaying more and more with each rung Eric climbed and it really started freaking me out....so finally I started ignoring camera/guide dude and just finished climbing up....

This doesn't look that high --- b/c you can't see the ground here....we climbed up the inside of the tree first and then at the top of that went out onto a little platform (that's what you see at the bottom of this pic) so we were actually really high up on this sketchy ladder thing...

Some more familiar road congestion...this man on a horse with dogs...we also encountered many cattle drives and people carrying their tiny infants while they ride bikes and scooters....quite terrifying --- but I guess it's their only way to get around --- so I guess they do what they have to do --- but I seriously feared for the childrens lives each time I saw one (which was about every 3 minutes).

Bumpin up and down in my little silver x-trail...bumpin up and down - one wheels off and the axels broken....

The sunsets were amazing!

The poolside band :)

After 8 days without the girls I could NOT wait to see them. The last 3 days were torture for me...I missed my sweet sweet girls SOOOO MUCH! We made it back home safely and turned around the next day and flew to Orlando to visit Mr. and Mrs. Mouse with the girls --- will post pics from that trip soon!