Costa Rica: The Adventures

The absolute coolest thing we did in Costa Rica was go on a canopy tour. We did this on New Years Day, and it was so amazing. Basically what it entails is you go up to the top of a mountain and zipline down it through the jungle. There were 15 different ziplines and in between them were these platforms that were way up in the tops of the trees. So you had to jump off the tree and swing down to the next one. Most of the time you couldn't see where the next one was so you just had to jump off into the trees. It was SO FUN!

Seriously, this was probably one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life. Jumping off the first one was kinda scary, but after that it was so much fun. The scariest part was standing on those wooden platforms that were so high up.

I would definately do this again.

Here we are on the platform. Don't worry, it was completely safe. We had three backup harnessess and we were always hooked up to something.

Here's a video of me jumping off one of the platforms and sailing down through the trees.

That was definately the highlight of the trip. Here is Matt overlooking some cool jungley mountains.

For those of you who know me, I LOVE hammocks. And a hammock on the beach is even better. So of course I had to try them all out. This one was on Tortuga Island. Matt really wanted to go there because of the Pirates of the Carribean movie. It was pretty cool.

We also rented a couple of kayaks on Tortuga Island and paddled around for awhile. I love kayaking! The waves were kinda big though so it made it a little hard.

We also went on a little snorkeling excursion on Tortuga Island. That was the main thing that Matt wanted to do on our trip. We saw lots of fish, and I even saw an eel.

We went on three different hikes (sort of) through the jungle. That was really fun.

This tree was huge! There were tons of cool plants.

And lots of fun vines that the monkeys were swinging on. So of course I had to try too!

This beach is where I got stung by a jellyfish (or something of the sort). One minute I felt a sharp sting and the next minute my arm was covered in hives. I never did see what it was that stung me though. This beach was really nice. It was sandy (a lot of the others were fairly rocky) and there was a nice view of the jungle from the water.

Here we are on our boat out to Tortuga Island. I love being out on the water!

This is the place we were going to stay at if we would have gone in October. It's one of the nicest Marriott's in the world. My aunt works for Marriott so she got us a pretty sweet discount. However, when we had to change our plans to go in December, there wasn't any availability there so we had to find another place to stay. Which turned out fine. We snuck into the Marriott one day and all the rich people were just talking about their yachts. We totally would not have fit in!

When we snuck in, we saw these really cool fireflies and a helicopter pad and an endless swimming pool and hammocks on the beach.

I'm actually glad we didn't end up staying there. I think we got a bit more of an authentic experience instead of just hanging around the rich Americans. Anyway, the whole trip was quite the adventure!