Gary and I took a much-anticipated trip to Costa Rica to celebrate our 10-year anniversary. It was such a great trip! Since we had just sold our house, we contemplated calling to have the kids sent down and just moving to Costa Rica. Pura vida!
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| Got the rental car and we're ready to go! |
Our first stop was the Arenal Volcano region. The volcano was active, but we couldn't see any lava. We stayed at
Nayara and it was amazing. The hotel is made up of private bungalos. Great start to the vacation!
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| This macaw joined us for breakfast at the hotel every morning. He could say "hola"! |
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| I always love the fun pillow animals |
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| View from the restaurant at the bottom of the mountain where we ziplined |
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| Ready to zip line |
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| This is our "famous" person of the trip. I don't remember his name, but he writes a travel blog and Gary had watched several of his videos before our trip. |
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| If you can see a little yellow speck, it's me (Kathryn) coming down the zip line |
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| These are Coati Mundis that we saw at lunch after zip lining |
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| Another view from our hotel room |
From Arenal, our next stay was Papagayo Bay, but we stopped on the way to hike
Rio Celeste
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| Hiking Rio Celeste |
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| Beautiful river views |
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| Waterfall at Rio Celeste |
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| The water was so pretty! |
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| Soaking our feet in the natural hot springs |
The
Hilton Papagayo exceeded our expectations.
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| View from our room |
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| Relaxing by the bay |
We went into Tamarindo one day for surfing lessons.
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| Ready for surfing lessons |
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| Getting the hang of it |
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| Tandem surfing - ha! |
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| We LOVED our instructor |
That night, we went to our favorite dinner spot. It's called Mario's, but it's just Mario and his wife, Ericka, cooking at their home. They usually have 3 couples each night, but since Ericka was pregnant with her fourth child, it was just us that night. The food was amazing, and Mario actually talked to us about the local culture and the food that he was cooking through the kitchen window while we ate. Such a fun experience!
One of the few things that was on my "must-see" list while we were there were monkeys. And I was beginning to realize that we weren't going to just happen upon any monkeys, so we decided to take a river cruise along Palo Verde to see some wildlife. Our guide got the monkeys to come down to the boat so that we could see them up-close and personal. We also saw some howler monkeys up in the trees, but all of those pictures came out blurry.
We got to go kayaking around Papagayo Bay (and Gary went snorkling later that day). I have a bad history with jellyfish, which we saw alot of on our kayaking trip, so I opted out of the snorkling.
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We saw a "Jesus Christ" lizard by the pool - there were actually two there that day and they got into a fight!
(They got that name because they walk on water) |
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| Infinity pool |
So much fun. If we ever fall off the map, chances are we've probably up and moved to Costa Rica!
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