Costa Rica

The view from the back of the house. Needless to say this is where most of our time was spent in this house.

 After a lot of planning (mostly on my mother-in-law (Pam's) part) and organizing kiddos with our family and two great friends, who took great care of our kids while we were gone. (Thank you, Mom, Dad and Laura, Courtney and John, and Zach and Maria) We made it to beautiful Costa Rica! We stayed in a gorgeous home at the Flamingo Beach area in the Gaunacanaste area of the country. We spent the first day doing absolutely nothing which is what we all needed. We all sat outside for the day and napped on and off throughout the entire day and had a few beverages of course too.

Colette zip lining!

  The second day we had a very busy and adventurous day.  We did a Canopy Tour about two hours away from the house we are staying at in a place called Rincon De La Vieja National Park.  There we did an amazing tour all in one day (I think when all was said and done there were 8-9 things we did on that one tour!)...We had our driver (Jonas-who was our guide the first two days and also participated in the entire day tour with us too) picked us up at 6:30 AM and then drove us there.

    Once we got there we got hooked up an went zip lining through the canopy of the rainforest.  There were 10 different platforms that we went across and one of the last ones was so cool because the trees above were full of Howler monkeys.  As we each took a turn going across the zip line the guides would bounce our zip lines up and down and the more we made noise the more those monkeys would "Howl." It sounded more like LARGE dogs barking but it was so cool to see and hear. Not the best video but you get the idea of how loud they were and you see my father-in-law (Larry) coming in on the zip line and then Jake next. The monkeys were jumping in the trees but there was only about maybe 5 of them.

   Then we did hanging bridges which was a backtrack of the zip line tour which was great to learn about plants and animals in the rainforest.  After that, we went on a water slide that was long and through the forest too.  A little to crazy for me, one time was plenty.  You got jetted out by freezing cold water and then tossed around in a concrete slide with a tube and was dumped out into a cold pool of water.  It was more fun to watch everyone come out at the end of the ride into that pool was where I got some laughs.  Then from here we had a buffet lunch which was really good.  They had a variety of food and some wonderful fish called Corvina which is also Sea Bass.

The clan horse back riding.  The horses stayed close together in the beginning. Mine wanted to be the leader and was a bit of a stinker too

    For the second half of our day we rode horses for a while down a trail that led to a waterfall. We did a small hike to the waterfall and back and then rode the horses to a mud bath location.

 At the mud bath we got down to this beautiful area where we got into our suits and went into a sauna for about 5 minutes to open our pores, then from here we went and covered ourselves in volcanic mud and let the sun dry us off. (these would have been some great pics had we had our cameras with us here-So funny!) Then once the mud was dried we took freezing cold showers to close our pores back up and remove the mud.  Then, the best part were the geothermal pools.  There were several pools that we went in. The first was 98 degrees and then another was 106  and then others, but they were great and so relaxing!  The day was almost over, we took a tractor ride back to our van and then were driven back to the house.

   Not only was this a full day but we did not have to drive out there and back. Our tour guide Jonas was great, very nice, and informative of all the questions we asked him about Costa Rica.

One of the sunsets at Flamigo Beach. Not AZ sunsets but sure pretty

     We did some exploring the next few days to other beaches and little towns, but still managed to keep things very low key.  On Wednesday we took out WaveRunners for  a few hours and rode them around, again with more guides but this was also fun.  We left and rode around the coast line and even went by the house we were staying in.  Then we stopped at a beach with the Waverunners and had some drinks and pineapple. So good!  We then took the WaveRunners for a long ride back to were we had started.  I enjoyed this, this was my first time on the Jetski type boat and it was pretty mild, thank goodness, if we had gone too fast I might not have enjoyed it as much. (these pictures are on water cameras so they can not be posted right now )

 This trip was very nice and relaxing.  I enjoyed all the laughs, great meals we had, and fun memories with my family.  I did miss the kids, but spending an entire week with Jake made up for it.  I can not even begin to express what a great tradition these trips are with our family.  Each trip has it's own special memories with it, and they are all very special to us. There are so many pictures from this trip it is really hard to share just a few and there are more great pictures from the rest of the group that went along as well. Jake and I would like thank Pam amd Larry for making this wonderful vacation possible! Thank you both so much and we love you!

The group before we left. Travis, Heather, Klaus, Kelly, Larry, Pam, Colette and Jake