Beautiful Costa Rica

Nate and I really wanted to take a fun trip abroad this Spring, but didn't know if it would be possible because of Nate's new clinic. Our target date was the week after memorial day, so we could get maximum play time for minimum vacation days used. About 5 weeks before this date, Nate finally got the green light. One might think this is not a lot of time to plan a vacation to a foreign county, but luckily I plan imaginary trips all the time and was well prepared for this one. It was really fun that the anticipated day seemed to come so quickly! We chose Costa Rica because it was highly recommended, inexpensive, looked really fun, and promised green scenery and rain. Plus, Nate speaks Spanish.

Here are some random pictures from our trip. I'll post more about our adventures in a second post - we had a great time rapelling down waterfalls, kayaking behind a volcano, ziplining through the rainforest,  and white water rafting.

See? Green. And those clouds have rain in them!

We discovered that hotels like to fold your towels into animals. This was the most beautiful/romantic one.

And this one looked like it was the most difficult to create. It's an elephant.

Nate liked to stand here with his arms folded and say "Welcome to Jurassic Park"

This was the walkway to our hotel room. It was a giant luscious garden. I went around and took pictures of all the flowers one day and counted over 24 different kinds just by my untrained non-gardener eye. 

Red bamboo! Cool!

LOTS of cool looking lizards and iguanas

White faced monkeys. We saw these guys playing near the road (with about 4 others) on our walk down to the beach.

All of the fruit was as big as Nate's head. Exhibit A: breadfruit

Exhibit B: Mangos (this picture doesn't do it justice, that thing really was huge

 One day we were at the beach and these guys chopped off the top of a chilled coconut for us (with his machete!), put a straw in it, and we sipped cold coconut water (didn't taste that great, but it was nice to have something cool to drink). When we were done drinking he chopped the entire coconut in half and we ate the meat out for a snack - which was really tasty.

Nate joking with the locals in Spanish. People love him so much.

Pretty Sunsets

Pretty beach. I took so many pictures of the beach....they all look the same, but I just couldn't help it. It was SO PRETTY.

 One thing I found so interesting (and loved) was that everything there is made out of wood. Costa Rica grows a ton of wood, and everyone has the most beautiful solid wood doors, even the most run down shack. I wish I had taken some pictures of all the beautiful doors. I also noticed that in places one might expect to find plastic tables and chairs, like cheap roadside eateries, tourist offices, gas stations, etc, instead you find gorgeous wood tables and chairs. Wood benches everywhere. I didn't see a single plastic table or chair anywhere the entire time, everything was beautiful solid wood.

YES. We saw a sloth. A SLOTH. Several actually. This one happens to be a mama sloth with her baby.