Costa Rica: Part 3

Monday was definitely my favorite day in Costa Rica. We spent the entire day on a private catamaran and it was ah-mazing!!

That morning we got up, got ready and headed down to eat breakfast. We then went down to the beach where the catamaran was waiting for us! 

They used the little dingy boat you see in the picture above to take us from the beach to the catamaran. Once we were all settled in, the captain to us over to an island where we snorkeled and had a BBQ lunch on the beach. The ride there was so much fun and so relaxing! 

They had fishing equipment on the boat so a friend of ours fished and caught a Skipjack Tuna. They saved it for us and grilled it right up at the BBQ! It was very cool to watch him reel it in and eat such fresh caught fish! 

Once we got to the little private island, we got our snorkeling gear on and one of the crew mates took us snorkeling. Right as we were stopping, I saw a sea turtle pop his head above the water! Unfortunately, he went back under water before I could get a picture. I didn't get any pictures of us snorkeling, but it was very cool. We saw a lot of tropical, colorful fish. 

After snorkeling we had our BBQ, which was so good!!

The view from the private beach while having lunch!

There were tons of these cute little guys all over the beach!

After lunch, the captain took us back into the forest of the island to see if we could find some monkeys. He brought some fruit with us to feed them and sure enough we found some. It was the coolest thing ever! They ate right out of our hand. They were so cute!!!

On our way back to the boat, we spotted a lizard!

After our little hike into the woods to feed the monkeys we spent a little more time exploring the beach. It was so beautiful!

Next, we got back on the boat and headed to another island. This island had a little cave that we were able to go in.

On this same island, there was this trail that went up this pretty steep hill. Once you were up there it just dropped right off the side of a cliff. It was a beautiful view, but these pictures really don't do it justice just how high we were and how steep of a drop it was.

Once back down on the beach, we walked back to the catamaran to start heading back.

Once back on the boat, we had a few drinks and relaxed. It was a lovely ride back and the sunset was amazing!! We even saw a few dolphins, but they were too quick for me to get a picture of them. It was the perfect end to an amazing day!

A yummy mojito.

We got back to the resort right after sunset.

Next week, I'll finish up our Costa Rica posts! I hope you're enjoying them. :-)

Costa Rica: Part 2

We flew to Costa Rica early Friday morning (April 1st) and it took a majority of the day to get there after an unexpected stop in Miami to get a new crew for the plane. We were exhausted and didn't do much that evening other than check out the resort, eat and go to sleep. 

The next morning, after breakfast, we went to the lobby to hear the presentation from Swiss Travel about what different excursions they offered. We already had a private catamaran reserved for Monday, but planned to book a couple more excursions for while we were there. I knew I wanted to zip-line and see the rainforest and Jake knew he wanted to zip-line and go white water rafting. Everyone else in our group agreed that they wanted to do some of those things as well. So after the presentation, we booked our excursions and spent the rest of the day at the beach!

 Sunday morning, we got up bright and early to meet our private tour guide in the lobby. He and the driver were taking us to a resort that was about an hour and 45 minutes away from the resort we were staying on. It was called Rio Perdido. It was beautiful! This is where Jake and I zip-lined and it's where the rest of our group decided to go white water tubing.

The zip-lining was amazing. We went on this particular adventure and it was just that, an adventure. Essentially it was a hike that took you on 5 zip-lines, a pendulum swing, a Tarzan swing and several rock-climbs. It was intense, but so much fun! While we were zip-lining, our friends were river-tubing. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of either because we all left our cameras in our lockers for fear of them getting wet or damaged. 

Once we got back from our adventures, they had our lunch all prepared for us (which was part of the excursion fee). It was very tasty and very relaxing!

This area was covered, but all outdoors with a beautiful view.

Our lunch was delicious and so was the dessert!

After lunch, they took us for a hike down to the natural hot springs! It was a beautiful hike and the hot springs were amazing! They were so hot, they were like a hot tub. I wish I would have gotten more pictures of the spring, but I took one and then just enjoyed it. :-)

After spending some time in the hot springs, we headed back up to check out the pools at the resort and then get cleaned up to head back to our resort. On our way back up, we checked out this cool suspension bridge that went over the hot springs and spotted our first monkey(s)! They were so cute and it was amazing to see them in the wild!

On the drive back to our resort, I took a few pictures along the way of some of the homes and stores in Costa Rica. How people live around the world has always been intriguing to me. It's just so different than it is here. The tour guide said the 4 things every town in Costa Rica has to have is a school, a church, a bar and a soccer field. As long as they have those things, they are happy! All the towns we saw also had some sort of a medical building and a store of some sort. The bigger towns had hospitals and we even saw a McDonalds and a Papa Johns in Liberia. The houses were all small and very few had air-conditioning. All of the locals were very friendly and one of our tour guides said that the people of Costa Rica are some of the happiest people on earth. They seem to live simple, happy lives which is so cool to me. I did notice most people had cell phones though, and many had satellite television, so they weren't completely unplugged like you may think. Most households have a washing machine, but not usually a dryer. They just use clothes lines to dry their clothes. Most of the homes had a car parked outside, but usually just one. We saw many people on scooters or dirt-bikes. Many of the towns were small and everything was pretty much within walking distance. Many of the roads in the populated areas were paved, but there were several roads that we were on once you got further inland that were just gravel. It was all very fascinating to me and I loved learning about their culture.

A soccer field, or as they call it "futbol" field!

I think this was a little convenient store.

A bar! ;-)

I didn't even realize it when I took this picture but there are chickens running around on the street. Ha! That was not uncommon as we saw several dogs and even saw cows walking along a more rural road on more than one occasion.

I forget the name of this kind of tree, but I thought it was really cool. 

We stopped at Swiss Travel's headquarters for a pit stop and they had several very pretty flowers and vegetation growing on their property, so I had to get a few pictures. :-)

It was such a fun day, and I can't wait to share our day on a private catamaran with you tomorrow!! Monday on the catamaran was probably my favorite day while in Costa Rica!