Costa Rica -- the long awaited honeymoon

The first week we were in Costa Rica we stayed at an all-inclusive resort and loved it! The resort overlooked a pretty ocean inlet on the Guanacaste coast, it had dark volcanic sand beaches.



Nice swimming pools with questionably upbeat "activity" people who were constantly looking for the next partiers to play in the volleyball competition in 20 minutes. :)



We stayed up late every night and played SkipBo -- it was a fierce competition! And had virgin strawberry daquiri's to our heart's content.



John could not get enough of the strawberry daquiri's... even at breakfast.



Lots of iguanas, huge ones, that would come out and sun themselves during the day!



During the day we would explore in our rented jeep. The roads were NUTS and the main highway would have potholes 3 feet deep and 3 feet around. Mud and ruts, and boulders in the middle of the road. Driving there made both of us crazy. John especially.



We left after a week and spent the next two weeks exploring. We stayed right at the base of Arenal volcano, the volcano in the picture below. It was so amazing to see hot, red lava explode and pour down the side of this mountain. We exhausted ourselves because we couldn't make ourselves go to sleep!



We went up to the rain-- no, "cloud" forest of Monteverde and saw amazing animals everywhere!

Coatamundis!



Beautiful butterflies!



This was a find... John spotted a rare "Glass Butterfly"! Hard to find because it's wings are transluscent!



Cool frogs!



We also saw trails of these green things and as we got closer we could see that they were moving, and as we got closer still, we saw that they were leaf-cutter ants! They are complete work-aholics!



We also went over this bridge that had at least 15 gigantasoris crocodiles! People would stop on the bridge and some people even brought dead chickens to throw over and watch get torn into pieces. As John and went over the scariest, holiest, creakiest bridges we prayed we wouldn't fall through and end up as lunch.




In Monteverde we also went careening through the forest 300 feet above the ground on a zip-line tour! We would sail over the jungle, catching glimpses through the mist and hear different calls of birds, monkeys and hear waterfalls.



It took me a little while to get the hang of it... SCARY!! But it was a fabulous adventure! There were 15 different zip lines, various heights, lengths and distances from the ground.



We also celebrated our 6 month wedding anniversary there :)



There were also a series of suspension bridges that you could walk across and view the jungle from up above.



After the cloud forest, we headed to the beach! We stayed at Manuel Antonio beach and splurged for a gorgeous room with a gorgeous view. The slogan here was "still more monkeys than people". We would listen to monkeys howl in the trees in the mornings and huge (4 feet long) iguanas fall through the trees as they jumped from one branch to the next. You can click on this picture to make it bigger.



Yes, life was good in Costa Rica. Hammocks, virgin Strawberry daquiri's, wild toucans and monkeys. Blue water and sandy beaches. How come vacations seem so brief and regular weeks seem soooooooo long?







At the beach, we saw... a three toed sloth that slowly made its way through the tree above us..



And spider monkeys ran around behind us. This one is a mom that had a baby on her back.



As a side note... while we were taking pictures of the spider monkeys behind us, a raccoon was sneakily breaking into John's backpack and stealing cookies out from it. John caught it and chased it for a while before he realized he what he was doing... all for the cookies. :)

A very fun trip!