Costa Rica - Day 1

Theresa, Carrie and I had an incredible time in Costa Rica! The weather was perfect and we had a lot of memorable experiences. As always I took way too many pictures, so I'm splitting up my blog posts by days. 

So without further ado...

Saturday (April 16th): Jeff, Lacey, Maki, Carrie, and I took a bus with some short term volunteers to Tegus to catch our flight. The flight was only an hour so it went by very quickly. After I got off the plane all I could think about was seeing Theresa. I was so excited that I ran outside to find her as soon as we got through customs. It was so great to be able to give her a big hug :). I was so proud of her for traveling outside of the country by herself for the first time and sitting in the airport for twelve hours to wait for me. What a trooper!

After we got all of our bags together Jeff's parents, Rob and Patty, took us out to a nice Italian dinner. The food was incredible and the company was even better. Jeff's parents are both wonderful people so we really enjoyed talking to them. Patty was telling us stories about Jeff when he was little (which were hysterical) and we talked a lot about our work in Juticalpa. Vacation was off to a great start!

The next morning we went to the bus station to buy tickets for Monteverde - Santa Elena, to go on a Canopy Tour (Ziplining). We found out very quickly that people can buy tickets ahead of time -- something you can't do in Juticalpa. So there was only standing room left for a five hour bus ride. We weren't overly thrilled but happy we were at least able to get on a bus. 

There's a saying that says "If it's good it's good, if it's bad it's experience". That's exactly what this bus ride was...an experience!

When we first got onto the bus there were some empty seats so we tested our luck and tried to share two seats between the three of us...

Attempting to get all three of us in the picture.

Within a few minutes the bus was fully loaded and we found ourselves standing in the back sandwiched between a lot of other standing people...

Let's see if these smiles last for another five hours

Just excited to be on the bus

Luckily Theresa and Carrie are great sports and we all got off the bus with smiles on our faces! 

After arriving in Santa Elena we decided we were too tired to truly enjoy ziplining so we canceled our reservations and rescheduled bright and early for the following day. Instead we had a lesuirely lunch, talked about the awful but funny bus ride, and checked into our quant little hotel - The Rustic Lodge...

Then we decided we should do some sort of tour since we had the whole night free. After reviewing a few things we went with a sunset horseback ride. I was thrilled to say the least.

Here's Carrie and I before saddling up...

They had to give me a child's size helmet because of my small noggin

Theres on Freckles...

The tour guides posed us a few times for pictures, but instead of just sitting there we did something a little more fun...

Whoo hoo - rope and ride!

This is my favorite picture from the day...I love all of the colors in it! It's that time of day when the sun is first starting to set and everything has a golden hugh. The world always seems perfect during that time and being on a horse in Costa Rica made it that much better...

Day 2 - Selvatura Canopy Tour...coming soon to a computer near you!

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy” –Anne Frank