Costa Rica Baby!

This is Noah

Well, we had a boy howdy wicked awesome week in Costa Rica! It was one of the best trips I have ever been on. It was crazy and relaxing and adventurous and cool and dude. Costa Rica is so unique because it has SO much variety.

Since the company had booked us a luxury hotel form Tuesday to Saturday, we decided to take advantage of the airfare and get down there a few days early and stay at cheap hotels and just have an adventure. So we met up with my cousin Ben and his wife Ashley at the Houston airport, no kids in tow (McKay and Lyla stayed with the Monsons) and we were off! There is a unique excitement that I get when I think of just being off on an adventure with Kristi. She is just SO much fun to be around and she shares a similar excitement for the unknown and the spontaneity of it all.

We had decided that we could do better negotiating in person on hotel rates so we just reserved a rental car and figured we’d figure things out along the way.

So we landed in Costa Rica on Friday evening, and the pilot gets on the loud speaker and says “ok, when you step off the stairway onto the ground, be careful because it is really windy and there are trees and power lines flying around out there.” YES!! With that as our Costa Rica welcoming statement, adventure at its best was most certain to follow.

Here is me and Ben dodging the trees and power wires:

We got our sweet Montero and hit the road. As we drove along the small road, we happened to pass a little hometown rodeo and couldn’t resist stopping in. we were certainly the only foreigners there and it was SO cool. We paid two bucks each to get in. At the rodeo, they just release this bull into the pin and when it bucks the guy off, there are a bunch of people form the stands down there just taunting the bull and he goes after them. It was totally crazy. One dude almost got jarred. Ben and I were going to join them but opted out.

The guys on the fence are getting ready to jump down and taunt the bull:

We arrived in a little town called Canas and found a restaurant where the waiter spoke both Chinese and Spanish so Ben and I had a good time each speaking “our” languages with him at the same time. We asked him about a place to stay and he said his cousin would hook us up with a place in town called “Hotel Central” and that he may have rooms for $9.00 per person. Ben asked him if they were clean and he said yes like yes of course.

Dude, we got to the hotel and it was one of the funniest experiences ever. We walked back through this dark hallway to a room that they were going to have Ben and ashlee stay but it was especially nasty with this weird blue neon light then they took us out the back to this little tin roofed room for me and Kristi. We asked if we could all stay in that room for less (since there were two little beds) and they said ok for $7.50 per person. So we went for it and it was crazy. That was the dirtiest room I’ve ever been in and Kristi and Ashley were totally amazing for even considering staying there. The wind in the night made it sound like the place was going to fall over with the thin walls and tin roof. We were all laughing so hard about the whole situation and we all wore long sleeves and levis to bed so that our skin wouldn’t touch anything. So much for a good sleep with no kids waking us up! The next morning, the shower which was just a PVC pipe hanging out from the wall, stopped while my head was all soaped up and no more water so I got to rinse off with our water bottles…. Yikes.







The next day we headed up to La Fortuna (the volcano town) and had a great drive. Costa Rica is SO beautiful. We stopped at this awesome little restaurant overlooking a huge lake and rolling hills and the food was SO good!

This was the view from the restaurant... I know we're distracting but the view behind us was spectacularly pretty:

Once we got to La Fortuna, we asked some local people if we could get to the hot springs without paying and they told us right where to go. We found the spot where you could see the steam rising up thought the trees and pulled the car to the side of the road. This was one of the coolest parts of the whole trip. A beautiful river in the middle of the jungle flowing with hot water…. The whole river was just one big hot spring. We met a sweet little costa Rican family there who told us how the resorts had tried to wall off that area to hog the springs but the local high school kids came and smashed the wall down because it is public property so thanks to them we got to enjoy this beautiful spot for free. We climbed up the river for a bit and just chilled. There was also a spot where you could kind of ride the water under a bridge and then a mini waterfall that we swam under.

It was raining and it was so nice to lay there in the warm water as cool rain drops fell on our faces.





After that we found an awesome little cabina hotel for $50 total which is when we realized how we had been ripped off the night before when we paid $30 total. This place was so well kept and totally clean. After that first place, Ben and I came up with this system when finding a place to stay where we'd ask to see the room and i would check the sheets (and give them a little sniff) while Ben checked out the bathroom.

OK, getting too long so i'll tell the rest with pictures and brief explanations

The next day we went on this amazing hike to the Fortuna Waterfall. this succor was huge! Check out the size of Ben next to it. It was several hundred feet tall and so lush and green all around.

That night we drove up on a crazy bumpy road to stay right at the base of the volcano. we found this splendid little hotel on the hill and this was our view out of the window when we woke up the next morning:

Straight out the other window was the volcano which they say you can see red lava running down every night... even though the fog kept us from seeing it, we got to see the steam raising off the lava streams in the morning that you can see below:

The next day we headed on the 3 hour, crazy bumpy road to Monteverde. Each of the long drives we had added up to be one of the best parts of the trip becasue the place is beautiful but even more so because Ben and Ashley rock. We have so much fun hanging with them and we had non stop GREAT conversations, a lot of laughter, and we learned a lot too. They are a good mix of crazy, kind, adventurous, and righteous (both in the 80s sense of the word and the actual definition of the word)



Monteverde was sweet. We did this amazing zip line tour that I'll have to post some videos on later because it was crazy. they gave us gardner glovs for breaks and we just went cruizing between trees in the forest and then across revines including a 30foot free fall repel and this crazy tarzan swing.

Check out Kristi, this is one of my favorite pictures of the whole trip:

This is the platform for the Tarzan swing which is just this massive rope swing where you drop about 30 feet or so and then just go flying out on a massive swing ride:

After our zipline adventure we ate at an awesome treehouse restaurant and then found a really nice little hotel for $10 per person with a personalized breakfast included.

The next day we headed down to the resort at the beach and met up with the rest of the Imagine Learning people. this resort was so nice and it was great to be out on the beaches and at the pool.

One day we went out to local beaches and rented some surf boards and had so much fun surfing. 

Ok crikie i'm getting tired so gotta go. But look forward to the last segment of Costa Rica which will include pictures of our sweetness white water rafting trip. The guides took pictures that they are sending to us so we don't have them yet but alls i'm saying is that it was CRAZY stuff including a 12 foot waterfall. and a huge spider got on Ashley's leg at one point and Ben fell out in some rapids once.