Costa Rica . . . 6 & 7

Day 6 

I was so sad it was our last day of adventure.... as I told our guide, "estoy triste...." but he reminded me how great it would be to see "mi hija" and I agreed! I was excited to see my little princess, for sure!

Anyway, we started out the day going to Rincon de la Vieja (translates= Corner of the Old Lady .... I forget why??) national park. It was about an hour and a half drive to get there and we hiked for about 2 hours on a loop through the forest. It wasn't a super highlight for me, as I was telling Collin as we hiked along--besides some of the tropical looking plants it seemed like we could have been hiking in any forest in Idaho. Which is nice that we have that luxury, really. It was a hard hike for the group from Indiana--but it was no problem for us Idahoans! 

Before we left, at our hotel Nacazcol....still in Guanacaste

One thing that was definitely NOT like Idaho was the wildlife though!! We didn't see tons but we did see 2 different kinds of monkeys! I hadn't seen monkeys on the trip yet so that was awesome for me! We first came across a couple of spider monkeys like 10 minutes into the hike. This was the best shot we got, my stupid camera would only focus on the leaves in front of the monkey. Oh well. Then on our way back around the loop we came across some howler monkeys! I hadn't ever heard them before.... they sound so creepy! Whoever named them "howlers" was mistaken! It is a creepy loud grunt/moan that echoes through the forest! I would have thought it was a giant gorilla somewhere out there if I hadn't been told what they were! It was so cool to see them though. No pictures of them.

Not sure why how this picture got in here.... it's from later that day on our way to the beach but honestly at this point I'm too lazy to move it to the correct spot!


The next few pictures are from our guide who does wildlife photography on the side. They are pretty awesome. We saw monkeys and lizards like this so it was nice of him to get these to us. I don't know if they're from our particular trip or not.

aaaand the best looking wildlife of all.

Here we are with our beloved guide, Jose. What a great guy to make the trip so fun.

The park was close to a big "steam" volcano which meant there were some natural boiling pools and mud and stuff. Can you tell that I really loved the rotten egg smell?

More of the houses along the side of the road...these were nicer ones.

And the climax of the day was this:

Just kidding. But really Sunday (that last day) I all of a sudden hit a big wall. After the hike I was exhausted! It was super taxing, I think just all the business of the week and less sleep than usual caught up to me! I was reeeally dragging by lunch! So what better to perk me up than a legit Mexicano Coca Cola, right! They serve all their soft drinks in a glass bottle down there which was so legit. I wish they did that here. Anyway, it's funny because due to Collin ordering me one of these and the fact that (like usual) we ended up sitting with Jose (guide) again, it sparked the conversation about us being LDS (he had deduced....:) and drinking caffeine. So Collin had a missionary moment to share some things about the word of wisdom with him, which was fun. I wish I understood any of it since they were talking a million miles a second in Espanol, but oh well. All I could say to Collin later was you're welcome since it all came about due to my Coke. ha ha.

After wishy-washing back and forth about which beach we were going to go to and how to get there, we finally decided to just go back to Playa Panama for the afternoon. Everyone was pretty exhuasted at the point--so maybe the hike tired us all out more than we thought. I was glad we did because all I wanted to do was take a nap, which I did.... on the beach... in my swimsuit. It was great! I felt so much better when I woke up. And I like to think I got a little sun anyway! It was the only day of my life I've been at the beach when it was actually sunny and warm!


So.... I had woken up and was laying on my towel next to a couple of the girls and they said, "Tonya, your husband made some friends." So I looked out in the water and Collin was chillin with this group of Ticos! Like I should be surprised. I wish the picture better showed him, Whitey McWhite next to all the natives . . . he's the one waving. It was a group of guys about his age and he ended up showing them some wrestling moves... no joke! Super-friendly Collin comes out in Costa Rica, I guess! :)

That night we basically just packed up and went to bed, knowing the awful hour in the morning we had to get up!

Day 7 (going home)

Much worse day of traveling than the way down! (of course!) does anyone LIKE the day you have to travel home? I doubt it. Luckily Costa Rica is in our time zone so in the end we didn't have to deal with any jet lag, which was nice. But did I mention what time we had to leave for the airport? 3:00am. Which means I got up at 2:30. How can a day when you get up at that time ever turn out to be good?!?! ha ha.

Actually, our tour guide was just following what the Liberia airport suggested, which was get to the airport 3 hours before your flight leaves. Well, we got there at 3:30 and the airport was just OPENING. We sat there for 20 minutes and watched the security guards roll out all the little dividers to make the maze you have to walk through to get to the ticket desk... and then they seriously made us each walk all the way through it! And we were the only 7 people in the entire airport. There were actually some complications with our boarding passes so in the end it wasn't horrible that we were there so early, but really the day seemed sooooo long.

Total considering when we got up and left it was a day of 20 hours of traveling. I didn't get much sleep on the flights and I really did all that I could to keep myself amused--reading (Matched... see my goodreads review), watching movies (Journey 2--uck, ick and eye roll), watching TV (The Event.... eh), and listening to music..... but you can only do that for soo long! Finally the last flight from San Fran to Boise I completely zonked out. The first time in my life I have slept an entire flight. I was out the minute we took off and woke up about 10 minutes before we landed. It was like a time warp! Thankfully when we got home everything was fine and we were able to pick Lucy up that night, thanks again to our good buds Mary and Jon for taking such good care of her! Ashlyn came home the following night which that is a different story for another post! Peace out, Costa Rica! And thanks to my best friend, Collin, for working it out for me to come and being the best person I could ever go on a trip with! Love you!