Costa Rica

Okay, so it's finally time to start catching up.  I'm so behind that I'm feeling overwhelmed with how to ever catch up, but I might as well get started!  And what's a better place to start than Lee and I's trip to Costa Rica! We went on Jan. 7-14, while my wonderful parents stayed at our house and watched the kids!  I just LOVE trips away with my hubby, it is so nice to have so much time to focus on each other and to just have fun and not stress about kids or work or life!  And Costa Rica was an amazing adventure to add to our list of places we have explored together!
  We stayed at a BEAUTIFUL house that we found online and it did not disappoint!  Although the drive to it when we first arrived, was a little bit eerie! It was pitch black and there were no street lights, no addresses, and hardly any signs to follow.  The address they gave us was just latitude and longitude coordinates that we thought would work on our GPS, but they did not.  So we just followed the instructions that I had printed off from the homeowner... luckily!  After only a couple wrong turns and corrections, we found the place!  The view was absolutely amazing, and the house was near the top of this big hill in the middle of a jungle area.  All around us we could hear the crazy roar of the Howler monkeys, and it was so peaceful listening to nothing but wildlife.  The house was huge and had a pool table, hammocks and nice sitting area outside. We were 15 min drive from a beach, and I wondered if we would regret that, but we actually loved it.  It was nice to be away from everything, and to get to drive around and explore on our own each day.

We saw lots of cool animals and also quite a few nasty creatures.... here's an ode to the nasty creatures we saw:

The snake crossed the road right in front of us, we couldn't believe it!

This big cool tree was at the gate that lead to the house we stayed in.  Pretty cool.
Each day we drove around and explored different beaches and we were just amazed at how undeveloped everything was!  A lot of the beaches had absolutely no buildings or houses on them at all.  And hardly any people were at them either!  Sometimes we had the whole beach to ourselves!  Some beaches had a restaurant and facilities, some were great for surfing, some had amazing snorkelling, some had great seashells, while others had beautiful and incredibly soft sand.  It was so much fun discovering a new beach, and we were always so proud of ourselves for following terrible signage and coming across a great new one!
We were amazed at how poor the country was though, everyone rode bikes or walked and the houses were tiny and didn't look too good.  But the people were so kind, and we totally felt safe the whole time.  We even picked up hitchhikers a few times, and one of them was a memorable experience for me.  There was a mother holding a new baby and a little son standing beside her.  We picked them up and tried to ask her where she was going.  We had a huge language barrier, but eventually understood that she was trying to take a bus to Nicaragua (an 11 hour bus ride!).  She had no money though, and needed $80 for tickets.  At first I thought, yeah right, I'm not giving them $80!  But as we kept driving, the spirit was so strong and I just felt like I really needed to give it to her.  So by the end, I did.  They were so hungry and thirsty too, so we gave them our big container of nuts and our water bottle which only had a tiny bit of warm water left in the bottom. The poor little boy gulped it up fast though and downed those nuts on the way.  Who knows, they could have been just really good scam artists, but at least I can feel like I did the right thing.  They were really sweet and really grateful.

This last photo was a pretty big "mountain" that Lee climbed and was quite proud of himself!

We found some cool things including this monkey crossing sign - (how many people have seen one of those?!) The whole trip I was hoping to see monkeys and we didn't end up seeing one until the very last day!!  We could hear them all around us in the trees, but never happened to spot one until then.  I was so happy to see them though, they crossed the road in front of our car and so I got out and took pictures of them.  This little guy was one of them!  He's a Howler monkey, and they are supposed to be mean!

The nearest town we stayed by was Tamarindo.  This is a picture of what it looked like driving in.  We did  a little shopping there and ate some of our dinners at restaurants in town.  They had the best Smoothie bar there too, so we got one almost every day!  Such unique fruits to choose from that we don't have! We also took surf lessons one day in Tamarindo.  We actually both did fairly well, got up lots, although our boards were massive and the waves were pretty small.  But hey, we still felt cool.  I did not like our instructor though, he was a really rough guy who swore constantly and didn't pay us much attention in the water.

We rented boards one day too, to try out our new skills, and definitely didn't have as much luck as in the lesson.  Not to mention that not very far into it, Lee's board went under a big wave and popped back up just as a wind gust came in.  The board flew back at his head, hitting his forehead squarely with the fin!  I watched the whole thing and it looked TERRIBLE!! He started gushing blood like crazy and some other surfers told him to get back to shore!!  We rushed out of the water and by this point, Lee had blood streaming down his whole face and down his chest and arms.  It was quite the sight as we walked by everyone on the beach, and saw all their looks of horror!  An instructor took him to a place he could shower the blood off, but that was all they could do for him!  He held a towel on it to help stop the bleeding but it was obvious that he needed stitches! The nearest Medi-Center was a half hour drive and I was scared to even go to a clinic in such a poverty stricken place!  Who knows how sanitary the tools and stuff are!  Plus with the language barrier, we didn't know how it would go!  Lee had to drive since our rental car was a standard, and I was so worried that he would pass out and I would not know what to do!  He was turning really pale and feeling dizzy, and I was just praying like crazy that we would make it!  Luckily we were watched over.  We made it there and the doctor was the sweetest Spanish woman ever, and spoke very good English, and made us feel peace.  She stitched him up and we went on our way.  We were still worried about infection though, so he kept his head out of the water after that.  Luckily it was our last full day anyway.  We were sad not to be able to snorkel again though!  But at least he was safe! It was an experience we will never forget though.

Another highlight was some of the great restaurants that we ate at.  The first one we went to was called "The Black Stallion", and it was a very cool experience.  When we first got there, there were no customers at all, and it was at this place that looked like a house.  We asked them if they were open, and they said, "Ya, we can cook for you, come on in!" So we sat in a beautiful garden by ourselves while they brought us all these different appetizers that were delicious!  Then they had this special BBQ expert (see picture below) come and slow cook / smoke all these different meats and vegetables.  It took like 2 hours, but was an amazing feast!! So good!

My very favorite restaurant though was called "Pangas".  It was out on a beach and was so beautiful.  A little more Americanized but really great Seafood!  We loved trying different kinds of fish, we had Tuna steaks, Parrotfish, Sting Ray, and lots of Ceviche. Yum!!

We also went to an animal preservation park and saw some cool birds and animals.  The monkeys were my favorite.  A little pricey for what it was, but it was still fun.  Lee got bit by a little bird since he just HAD to disobey all the rules and put his fingers in the cages.  Serves him right! Ha ha.

We were sad to leave Costa Rica, but missed our kiddos like crazy and talked about how much we would like to bring them back there one day!  It was so wonderful to see them again when we got home!  Nothing like a trip away to make you realize how much you love being a mother!!