Our honeymoon begins: Spending our honeymoon in Costa Rica was the best place we could have gone! It was the perfect mixture of adventure and relaxation you need after a wedding. After spending the best day of our lives getting married, we ventured off to this tiny country, Costa Rica. Costa Rica doesn’t really have a summer and winter season, they have wet and dry seasons. We went during the wet season, which meant it was hot, humid, and high chance of rain every single day we were there. Luckily even though it did rain almost every day, the rain in the tropics are really heavy for only about 30 minutes and it dies off allowing the warm sun to shine through. We got to the airport and we went to our resort in Puntarenas. It was a lovely resort with two swim up bars and all-inclusive food and drinks. We arrived with a decorated room and some fruits and wine since it was our Honeymoon! We spent a few days just eating, drinking and relaxing at the pools watching beautiful sunsets! Our plan was to do an activity outside the resort every 3 days. The rest of the days were spent enjoying our all you can eat food, drinks and relaxing at the pool. Zipping through the rainforest Our first excursion was zip lining through the rainforest about an hour and a half away from where we were staying. There were about 9 platforms, including one huge tarzan swing. On the final line, we were strapped in side by side on our stomachs to the finish. It was some of the most beautiful sights and sounds zipping through the rainforest fog and mist. We enjoyed lunch on top of the mountain. Volcanic dreams Our next destination was to the Hot Springs at the bottom of a volcano. The hot springs resort we went to had 9 pools that ascended the mountain. Starting at the bottom of the mountain, the resort added fresh water to make the pools cooler. As we worked our way up, the pools had a higher percentage of natural hot springs making it increasingly hotter. The water was purest and hottest at the top where it flowed from the volcano. It was a relaxing day spent in the spa, and it was surprising how hot the water actually got! We couldn’t stand under the water coming out from the very top due to the heat! Coffee plantation Our next activity was a tour to go to a coffee plantation and learn about how coffee is harvested and produced to send all over the world! Coffee grows best between 20 degrees north and south of the equator, therefore most of the coffee supplied to the world is grown and planted in only a small percentage of the world. Costa Rica is a huge exporter of coffee and heavily relies on the money from coffee to support their country. We learned that coffee is harvested as a berry and is sometimes hand picked off the coffee plants. Now, most places have machines that can pick the berries off rather than the hard-manual labor needed years ago. The bucket in the pictures below would earn our tour guide’s grandmother just $2 to fill it up with the berries. It was a lot of work as those beans are very small. They also provided us with some tastes of the best coffee I’ve ever had. He used a cloth pour over filter to serve said coffee. We had to leave the coffee tour a little early to make it to our water rafting experience! Rafting down the Balsa River We travelled a bit away to get to the river which was through some rough and winding roads. Since we were in a hurry to make it and we were running late, our driver was taking them pretty fast making both Brian and I feel a bit car sick. We ran out of the van, the crew threw our lifejackets at us, told us a couple of key things and we hopped into the raft! Our guide taught us a bit about the wildlife and the area around there. He pointed out a sloth on our way as well! It was an exciting couple of hours, and when we got to the end we thought that surely it had only been 20 minutes! Time flies when you’re having fun! After that we grabbed a really late lunch on the way back to our hotel. We ate lunch where we found a massive iguana in the tree. A surprise visit After a few days of relaxing, it was time for us to go to some surf lessons! On our way out, our drivers surprised us by making a special pit stop. We drove through various fruit orchards, passing bananas groves and papaya trees, arriving at what seemed like someone’s front yard. When we jumped out of the van, it didn’t take long before several wild capuchin monkeys began jumping down from the trees! The residents prepared bananas for us to feed to the monkeys. The monkeys jumped on us and crawled up our bodies to get their afternoon snack from our hands. We also noticed a large, raccoon-like animal hopping about. A coatimundi! We didn’t even know this animal existed. They were a little more aggressive than the monkeys but it was so cool to see them pretty much in someone’s backyard. Surfing at Jaco Beach After our monkey experience, we drove down and were dropped off to explore the little town of Jaco, where we had a delicious traditional lunch and practice our Spanish in the process. We had surfing lessons at Jaco Beach on an amazing evening in the tropics. Our instructor was a fun-loving local surfer who had extreme passion for the water and for the country. After a short run-through on the beach, it wasn’t long before we were catching real waves on the board! Our final day On our final day at the resort, we had a lovely hot stone massage from the spa to top off our stay. Overall our stay in Costa Rica was everything we could have wanted and more. Relaxing, beach, massage, spa, rainforest, everything you need all in one country. I hope you all enjoyed our journey, looking forward to hearing about yours!
The point of this blog is to savor these precious memories. Please share your stories your destined to wonder about, so we can all live and learn. Leave a comment if you have specific questions on where we stayed and how we booked. Enjoy life, keep travelling! -Brit
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