We left for San Jose, Costa Rica (the capital) on Sunday evening around 7:00. It was almost a 4 hour flight, but they're two hours behind us so we got there around 9:00. After a slight issue with our luggage (don't worry, we left the airport with all of it) we met up with our rental car guy who took us to go sign the papers so we could start our 2 hour(ish) road trip to La Fortuna that night. He gave us lovely tips and information about staying safe ("Don't worry, they won't kill you, they'll just rob you") and gave us our GPS and we were off. Trent was the only one that could drive because the car was a stick shift, and it was a good thing. I would not have been able to drive on some of those dirt mountainside roads. I was having a hard time just riding! He did wait until we were on one of their highways to tell me that one time he almost lost control of the car and sent us flying over the edge of a cliff. Thanks, Trent.
Anyway, we got to La Fortuna late at night and accidently didn't set our clocks behind two hours so when we woke up in the morning we thought we had missed breakfast and decided to just start our adventurous day. Little did we know it was like 7:30 in the morning and the town was still asleep. Oh well. We spent the day hiking the base of the Arenal Volcano, swimming a little to cool off from our hike, eating, sleeping and checking out the natural hot springs. Those were pretty cool because the ground was all pebbly and sandy, but it was like being in a hot tub.
The next day we took another road trip to our next destination, Manuel Anonio. This road trip was more like 5 hours. It was a really pretty drive though, so not bad. Manuel Antonio is on the Pacific Coast of the country and completely covered in rain forest, but also has nice beaches. We hadn't eaten lunch that day so we opted for an early-ish dinner once we finally made it to the hotel. Our hotel, by the way, was a cool little hotel on the top of a winding dirt mountain road with an amazing view. It was my birthday so we made ourselves look good and journied to a nice restaurant with another amazing view of the ocean. And then the storm came... it started out slow and kind of faded but then came back full force. The electricity was out for much of the second half of our dinner and never really came back fully. We were eating dinner by a candlelight that kept getting blown out by wind (did I mention it was a restaurant with no sides- very open?). When there was a break in the rain we headed back to the hotel for safety, and bed time. I had to sleep with headphones because the storm was SO LOUD and as most of you know I am TERRIFIED of storms.
So the next day we had planned on doing our zip line through the forest tour. When we woke up, however, we realized that damage that the storm had done. We decided we would make it a pool day instead. We took a nice walk down to the beach (complete with about a dozen monkees playing and finding berries to eat) and took some pictures. Unfortunately that's when we found out that we shouldn't swim in the ocean because the storm had churned everything up and it probably wasn't safe. Then we walked back up and found out that our winding dirt mountain road was closed because the storm and knocked down trees. Then we found out our pool was closed from storm damage. The phone lines were out. The internet was out. The cable was out. Hm... okay. So we hung out at the hotel for a couple hours and they finally opened the road. We ventured into the town and took tons of pictures of the damage that had been done. There were power lines and trees down EVERYWHERE. The National Park was closed until the week after we left because of all of the trees that had fallen so we didn't get to do that either. We made the most of our stay there though, I think. Hung out, relaxed a lot.
The next day we did our zip line tour which was really cool. Roads were closed again and power lines were still down so it caused some obstacles but we still go to do it! The rain forest is awesome and even though the only wildlife we saw on our tour were some toucans (too far away to get a picture of) you could still feel it all around you. The next day we had to pack our bags and drive away from our adventurous hotel. I was a little relieved to finally hit some highways again and be off the roads I was afraid were going to crumble beneath us. We spent our last day in the capital city of San Jose and found a cool market in the middle of town.
The trip was definitely an adventure. Not what I expected (with the big storm), but it was a great vacation and an amazing way to start our marriage. Someday we will go to Costa Rica again during the dry season (did I mention it rained every day?) and check out a beach or two. Definitely recommend going there. It's beautiful.
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