Clark and I had the amazing opportunity to go to Costa Rica with our friends, Ted & Kristina, for their wedding. It was a real, legit, 100% VACATION! I've recently differentiated between a "trip", and a "vacation". A "trip" is usually accompanied by 3 little munchkins, you drive somewhere 3+ hours away, all loaded up in the mini-van. This trip will have multiple potty stops, movies, crying, and whining along the way. While you are away on this "trip", many wonderful memories will be made.. make sure not to forget to take your camera to capture these precious moments because believe me, they will be fleeting! And if not documented will be over-shadowed by the other moments of crying, whining, fighting... as previously mentioned. This "trip" will also most likely include dining out at family friendly restaurants that with any luck will have a play-land attached to get the kids wiggles out (and also contract whatever the nasty virus-of-the-day happens to be). During this "trip", kids will stay up too late, but still wake up ready to roll at (or before) the crack of dawn. However, despite all this, family "trip's" can and sometimes are fun and memorable.. again photograph these moments so you remember the fun times when you read back on the blog later!
This "vacation" to Costa Rica met and exceeded ALL the above mentioned criteria. We were gone for ten wonderful, relaxing, sunny, and beautiful days to Montezuma, Costa Rica! Getting there was somewhat of a project involving planes, boats, and shuttle busses. But we made it! Once we unloaded all our suitcases from the boat to the beach and hauled them a quarter mile up the mountain to our jungle-retreat, we were set! Our hotel (I use that word losely) was more of a hostel. It was BEAUTIFUL... but for $35/night you could imagine that the accomidations could have been more luxurious. But being in Costa Rica we just went with it. We had our own little cabin in the jungle (although we had to share the bathrooms and just had to walk up a few steps in the jungle to get there).
For the sake of documentation I will just write a little bit about what each day we did...
Friday- 1:00 am flight from SLC to Atlanta, land at 6:30 am (4 1/2 hour flight with time change) eat a DISGUSTING breakfast at TGIFriday's. gross. 8:30 flight from Atlanta to San Jose, Costa Rica. Arrive around noon, get through customs, and take taxi to Airport Marriot hotel (very nice!) Hang out, take nap, go to WalMart (I love going to WalMart in other countries). Ted and Kristina arrive late at night.
Saturday-7:15 am shuttle bus with entire wedding party from San Jose- Jaco with stop for breakfast at restaurant alongside the road. Our first "typical" Costa-Rican breakfast wit Guyo-Pinto (rice & beans), scrambled eggs, fried plantanes, and fresh fruit! So yummy! (yucky cheese) Once we made it to Jaco (about 1 1/2 hour drive) we loaded up all our luggage on the boat for an hour long boat ride to Montezuma. Unloaded all our stuff on the beach, hefted our suitcases up to hotel Luna Llena, check in get settled. Hang out at the beach, and have dinner and a movie at Sano Banano, watched "Life of PI".
Tuesday: The guys all went out on an all day fishing excursion/ bachelor party and caught 4 fish. All the girls took the 2 rental cars and drove back around the other side of the peninsula to Playa Hermosa. We hung out all afternoon in the shade, swam in the ocean, did tarot readaings, and had drinks and snacks. That night we had a fresh fish dinner at Simon's house down on the beach.
Wednesday: The whole wedding party took a boat trip out snorkeling, and to Tortuga Island. Fun day! Beautiful and sunny! After lunch on Tortuga Isl, we went to a private beach for a while. That night we rode in the Land Cruiser shuttle to Llang Llang resort for a yummy dinner! (note to self: if we ever return to Costa Rica... stay at THIS resort... so nice!)
Thursday: Zip-Line Canopy tour with Paul and Amanda. 9 lines total, we did 6 lines then played at the upper waterfalls (above where we hiked on Sunday), then hiked back up and finished tour with 3 longest lines. This was super awesome and was my FAVORITE adventure of the entire trip. I was scared to death at the beginning, and was even more afraid of the sketchy platforms we were all standing on 300 feet up in the air in the trees! But by the end I was a pro! It was such a thrill. The only bummer was that it was the dry season so the trees and everything were pretty brown... still picturesque and beautiful however. Next time, go late summer. After the zip line tour, we were so tired all we wanted to do was take a nap! Our efforts were thwarted by the hot, muggy air... as well as the howler monkeys that came twice a day to snack on the fruit trees above our cabin. They would take one bite of the fruit then chuck it down on the corrugated tin roof of our cabin, sounding like someone was throwing rocks at our roof. Not to mention the "howling" they are famous for any time a car drove by, they would howl (which sounds more like a dying animal growl) at the cars. It was pretty cute the first day, but those pesky monkeys know how to wear out their welcome!
Later that evening after our thwarted naps, we got ready for the big event we had come to Costa Rica for.. Ted & Kristina's wedding! In fact, we didn't just attend the wedding... Clark was the officiator! It was really sweet that they asked Clark to marry them. It was a really beautiful, sweet, intimate ceremony with all their closest family and friends on the beach at sundown. It couldn't possible have been more picturesque or beautiful. It was so special to be there with them on their special day. Everything about the wedding was so nice, after the ceremony when the sun had gone down, we all lit "wish lanterns" and let them off into the night sky. It was soooo cool! Then we walked a little ways down to the beach to the restaurant where we had like a 7 course (AMAZING) dinner. The food and the setting was unbelievable. They even had fire dancers who came about 1/2 way through dinner and performed on the beach for our party. It was probably the coolest wedding I've ever been to (with the exception of my own wedding, of course).
Friday... all good things must begin to come to an end. Friday was the beginning of our 3 day journey home. We got back on the boat at 9am and headed back the way we came to Jaco, then rode the shuttle bus back to San Jose to the Airport Marriot where we welcomed the king size bed, air conditioning, and warm shower! Because of our flight times, we stayed in San Jose for almost 24 hours. That night we took a taxi into town to get some dinner, then we just stayed in the hotel and watched movies all night. This part of the trip was the "vacation from our vacation". At first I was bummed it would take so long to get home, but we actually had a lot of fun just the two of us.
Saturday: We finally boarded our flight from San Jose back to Atlanta about 2:30 pm, arriving in Atlanta around 7pm-ish. We had to stay overnight because our flight wasn't until the next day around the same time, so we booked ourselves another night at a Marriot Hotel, checked in and walked down the street to a good American restaurant with REAL diet coke, and french fries! (As much as I love to travel and explore the world, there's nothing like a cold diet coke on ice that you can only get in the good ol US of A!)
Sunday: We didn't have to be to the airport until around 11am, so we had time to google "best breakfast in Atlanta", plug the address into our GPS and find ourselves at the "West Egg Cafe". It was so packed, it would have been about an hour wait for a table. So we ended up ordering to go and eating in the parking lot in our car. It was a yummy breakfast that's for sure. Google didn't lie! From there, it really was time to get back to life and make our way to the Atlanta airport for our final leg of the journey home. By this point we were ready for our own bed, and so see our cute little kiddos!
See what I mean... it was a REAL "vacation"! And as awesome as it always is to take a vacation from life, it's so so so nice to come home again and get hugs and kisses from our 3 little munchkins! We missed them! And a million thanks to Grandma's Kasteler, and Hymas, as well as Heidi and Kara who stepped up to the plate BIG time and helped out with the kids while we were away. It was a long trip and it was nice to not feel stressed about them being taken care of while we were away. I think they had so much fun, they hardly even had time to miss us!
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