Costa Rica...October 14-21

This is VERY detailed for my own journal keeping. It's super long just to warn you & NONE of these pictures do Costa Rica justice. It has the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen. FYI: beautiful, amazing & awesome are used often in this post.

FIRST DAY It was a 6 hour flight to San Jose, Costa Rica. It was crazy coming in - a million people were holding signs up to a window waiting for other people. Everyone was so nice & helpful trying to make sure we had transportation. Then we spotted Lige & Shelli. We were so excited to see them. LOVE the Carr's. We ate at some spanish restaurant & then headed to the hotel. Lige had to tell me that the road from the airport to the hotel is pretty dangerous from 10pm to midnight & it happened to be 10:30pm. I was just sick in my stomach driving there the whole way. It didn't help that the hotel, atlthough extremely nice & safe, was in the middle of the ghetto Casa Conde, our hotel:

DAY 2: We ate a very yummy breakfast by Casa Conde's pool. Then we left for our first destination, Jaco. Such a beautiful 2.5 hour drive. We stopped at lots of scenic overlooks to get views of the country. a bus stop just off the road Stopped at San Mateo at a fruit stand. Lots of fruit stands along the way. A guy had a BYU women's gymanstics shirt on but he didn't know what it was. Our sweet little dude on the GPS told us as we were crossing a bridge that crocodiles were under so we pulled over & got out to check it out. This was just outside San Mateo. These cows, or whatever they are, were so close to the crocodiles. We saw these all over the country. We finally made it to our hotel, Hotel 9. It treated us well. In Costa Rica, May to November is their wet season so it is called winter & the other is the summer season where it's not quite so rainy. We really lucked out because we were told by Steve, hotel 9's owner from LA, that this winter has been a dry winter & we choose a good time to come. We were the only occupants at the hotel. It was awesome - right on the beach. Plus - we didn't have a million tourists by going in the winter season. We played in the ocean for awhile. We all surfed. Shelli was the best one. But that's not really fair because she has had surfing lessons in Australia. We walked down Jaco's little street with shops. Lots of cute beach shops & restaurants. We ate at an outdoor restaurant. Back to the ocean. That night, we ate at Los Amigos. It was very Americanized but probably the best restaurant we ate at the whole trip. Best smoothies for sure there.

DAY 3: Ate breakfast at this really yummy cafe. Kel was telling us he was starting to feel achy. A bus picked us up & when I mean bus - I mean some little van. The driver told us it would be a 5 minute drive what to us would have taken 20 or 30 minutes. He was CRAZY! All the drivers there are crazy. Almost running all the bikers over (everyone rides bikes there) & driving super close to the car in front of them until they can pass them. We get on a boat that took us out to Tortuga Island, which was an hour long boat ride. On the way there, I got sea sick, then Kelly got sea sick & threw up (i'll be nice & not show the pic of him). We spotted a humpback whale & a dolphin that hung out with us for a sec. Alexis & Marcos stopped the boat to do a little fishing so we could take it to the island & eat it there. Shelli reeled in a Mahi-Mahi. Super Strong Shelli: The island was beautiful. Seriously beautiful. We were practically the only people on the island the first few hours there. We explored it right as we got there while Kelly laid down to get rid of his seasickness. We decided to explore the island for $5 per person. Stupid. Shelli decided to take us on the Adventure Trail that none of us were prepared to do. We were ready to be done. But there were some pretty amazing view from the top of the island. We got back down & swam until lunch was ready. Alexis & Marcos (the dudes who brought us out) cooked us a delicious chicken & rice lunch with lots of yummy pineapple & a salad. Alexis made a ceviche with the Mahi-Mahi Shelli caught. I DO NOT like raw fish - but we couldn't get enough of it. So good. The put lemon juice on the fish to cook it & add garlic & salt & pepper. Very yummy. There were turkeys, chickens, peacocks & little wild pigs on the island. Kelly stepped on a cat's tail & the cat was trying to escape but Kelly had a good grip on his tail. Who would expect to see a cat on an island though? Alexis & Marcos took us snorkeling to a rock that was sticking out of the water. It was very murkey & not good snorkeling water. When you could see there were way too many fish that it was almost gross. Lige started getting sick. We headed back for land which was an hour of an awful boat ride. Kelly likes to call it the boatride from hell. It seriously was. Lige was sick. Kelly was sick & we were all getting thrown around like a rag doll because the water was EXTREMELY choppy. Right as we got back, we jumped in the pool & got in the hot tub that did not work. We ate at the hotel's fancy restaurant, Nine. It had a beautiful view but that was about all the good that came from it. The food was GROSS. We hung outside, just talking - it was the first time it actually rained while there.

DAY 4: Woke up super early. Costa Rica is the same time as Utah so you think we would sleep but it gets light around 5am. We ate at the same cute cafe/bakery as the morning before. Headed to La Fortuna which was a very long 4 hour drive. The roads are not straight & there's no big freeway to drive through the country. You drive in a 2 lane road that swerves back & forth & I got really car sick. We made lots of stops along the way to check out the country & all the beautiful sites. We saw lots of cocunuts, bananas, waterfalls & farmland. Once we arrived in La Fortuna, we went straight to our hotel, Tabacon. Umm...let's just say beautiful. It is below the volcano Arenol - so we had a perfect view of it. As we were checking in, a guy brought us hot towels & yummy fruit drinks. Kelly was totally sick at this point & we for sure knew it was not from being seasick by now. We weren't able to check in our rooms yet so we headed to the thermal springs. At first, we just saw pools in different layers & I was thinking that was it. Then we read a sign showed the way to the thermal rivers. All of this is heated by the volcano. Pretty awesome. We saw lots of lizards & not the kind you see in St. George - bright green, actually pretty. Right as we got there we saw a HUGE, bright green iguana on the bridge but he jumped off right when we tried to get a picture of him. We decided to eat at a restaurant we saw as we were driving to our hotel. Most of the restaurants we went to were outdoors & the waiter comes to you & goes inside or to a window to place your order. Kelly couldn't stand the smell of my garlic chicken & threw up in the restaurant's bathroom. Good thing they were clean & hardly anyone was around. As we were driving to the restaurant, Lige spotted monkeys up in the tree & we were all excited & like yea we get to see monkeys finally. Nope, never saw any again. We were able to check into our awesome hotel. 5 minutes sitting in our beautiful room, we got a knock at the door with a mini cake. Then we see a typed letter on our desk saying happy birthday, mr. west. hope your stay is grand here. Sure. We'll take a free cake even though it's wasn't Kelly's birthday. Lige, Shelli & I went back to the thermal springs & to let Kelly rest. Wouldn't have enjoyed the trip with a sick kid if we didn't have friends that let me tag along. We had yummy shakes at the bar in the pool. Delicious That night, we ordered room service & got nachos & popcorn & watched a movie. It was nice relaxing.

DAY 5: when we woke up, Kelly was still feeling really sick. We decided to run to Mega Christian (a grocery store - it was awesome - pretty sure everything had been sitting on the shelves for years). We bought Kelly some crackers & sprite so he could keep something down. Kelly snacked on them all day - you knew when he was feeling nautious again because the crackers came out. We went to the zip lines in the rain forest. Drove on a very bumpy, dirty road to get there. Louise & Santon were our tour guides for the zip lines. 12 people in our group - about 8 people too many. You could see the Arenal volcano perfect. We rode a tram up about 600 ft. high. We heard monkeys right as we got off the tram but never saw them. They served us yummy fruit drinks - LOVE all the fruit drinks. First 2 were trial runs. The rest were AWESOME. SO freaken fast & SO freaken high with a beautiful view of lake & volcano. On one - we went 50-60mph thru a tunnel of trees. Coolest experience for me. Some were 1/2 mile long going about 30mph. It really didn't seem that high because a couple hundred feet down - you could see all the huge, tall trees - but then there was another couple hundred feet for how tall the trees were. We never saw any monkeys but we did see some sort of racoon looking thing. Kelly started to feel sick again on the last 2 lines. I was just glad he came. We ate PB&J in our hotel room from the food we bought at the store. So sick of eating out by this point & this hotel was WAY too expensive. We went to the Grand Spa for our lovely appointments. The boys got 1 hour massages but Shelli & I received the Tabacon pkg. which included a volcano mud wrap/facial & back rub. Yes, I enjoyed it very much. We each had our own private cabana with the rainforest as our walls. The thermal springs were right next to us so you could hear the sound of trickling water. Pretty relaxing. After I got my mud wrap, my lady walked me to my own private mineral-water pool where I was able to rinse off. As I was walking back, I got to see Shelli in all her glory of mud. It was hilarious. That night, we ate at a Texan-like steak house. EVERY waiter there was SO nice. We ordered yummy steaks except Kelly nibbled at some tortillas & beans - finally able to eat some food though. We went back to the thermal springs for a late night swim. Kelly was finally able to get a good nights sleep but still sick.

DAY 6: This morning, we ate our yummy cereal in our hotel room. We just chilled in our room for a couple hours, looking out our hotel window & enjoyed the awesome scenery with a little drizzle. There were toucans up in some trees - they were awesome to see. We went & got our souvenirs & checked out of Tabacon. We were still able to go to the hot springs so we spent a few hours just hanging around there, going from spring to spring. We went to the same place for lunch as we did a few days ago. Pretty sure all these places just butcher the cows that are right next to their restaurant. Oh well - it was all good. We drove the 3 hour drive back to San Jose to stay in Casa Conde again for our last 2 nights of the trip. Once again, I got really car sick. What is with all the very windy roads? We didn't make any stops this time & it began raining about the last hour. We stopped & picked up Papa John's & watched Lige do an amazing parking job. Pretty excited for pizza & no tortillas with beans & rice.




DAY 7: A shuttle picked us up at 6:30am as part of our river tour guide. We stopped at a restaurant that had amazing views all around to eat a yummy, traditional Costa Rican breakfast.



Drove another hour & 20 minutes to get to the river. Pepe was our tour guide & he was a little on the crazy side. He told us all (mostly Kelly & I) what to do & then we were off.




It was lots of fun river rafting & the most beautiful sites of Costa Rica - huge green mountains surrounded us with beautiful birds & butterflies constantly flying around us. Of course I fell in & Kelly fell in trying to save me. I couldn't believe how fast they grabbed us & put us back in the raft. Petiko was on with us trying to relearn the river to be a tour guide again & he was way more chilled than Pepe. Pepe was always trying to get us to want to flip or push us in or provoking the other rafters so that they would splash us like crazy & making us do lots of unnessary paddling.





We stopped half way & had a yummy lunch in the mountains. We had chicken, salad, rice & fruit & we found out Lige really likes lemon iced tea:) Our group included about 5 or 6 rafts & the other rafts was a group from England. They were interesting.
Last hour & half of rafting was beautiful!! We went thru the canyon where Congo was filmed (& maybe jurassic park - can't remember if that was the same) We were able to float down the river thru this canyon. I've never seen anything like it before.









On the drive home, it was pouring rain. Our driver was driving extremely close to other cars, talking on his cell phone & talking Pepe all at the same time. Thought I might die.

We drove thru San Jose's down town part & people were EVERYWHERE - we hadn't seen the downtown part yet. We ate at our hotel's restaurant as soon as we got back. Just so excited to be a dry & in warm place - we all went to bed by 9!!

DAY 8: Kel & I woke up at 3:15am to catch 6:30am flight. Taxi driver was CRAZY & talked about America & how he lived in San Diego & wants to move back as soon as he gets his visa - the entire way. We LOVED Costa Rica & couldn't pick our favorite thing because it was all so different. But by the time I hopped on that plane, I was so ready to get home & squeeze my little nuggets, who happened to be at Wal-Mart with my parents when we pulled up. I was so bummed - had to wait another hour to see them. They loved their surprises we brought home for them. Adde asked when we were going to leave again so I would bring her back more presents.

When we got home, Kelly found out he had the flu. Just glad no one else got it.

A few things we noticed about Costa Rica:

***A million dogs everywhere. With no collars. Where are your stupid owners? I HATE dogs.

***Everyone SUPER friendly

***Couldn't have made it without Kelly translating everything for the rest of us. Atleast Lige tried to pick up on stuff. Shelli & I couldn't even figure the money. ***Smoothies AMAZING

***Fruit with every meal. Tortillas & rice & beans with every meal ***Waiters took FOREVER to give you check. They think you want to sit & talk for 2 hours before leaving. Every restaurant we ate at was the same. But every waiter was EXTREMELY friendly.