Costa Rica: The Overview

It's going to take me a few separate posts to tell you about our adventure in Costa Rica. It was a lot different than I expected. I had heard people compare it to Hawaii, and it was not like that at all. It actually reminded me a lot of Argentina. I had also heard that it was really cheap, and that was not the case. I thought we would be fine getting around since I speak Spanish, but they made it very hard for you to do that. It seemed like in order to do anything cool, you had to go on a tour. And there was not a lot of access to information on stuff to do and see.

Anyway, we spent a couple of days stumbling around trying to figure things out. It was kind of frustrating at first, to be honest, because it seemed like we were hitting tons of roadblocks in trying to do anything. But that aside, it was a lot of fun, and it was definately an adventure!

Here's a brief rundown of what we did:

Sunday: Flew into San Jose. Drove around trying to find the temple. Drove on the craziest road to the beach town where we were staying (about 2 hours from San Jose).
Monday: Went to the beach. Explored Jaco. Tried to find information about stuff to do.
Tuesday: Went to Manuel Antonio National Park, the beach, and drove around trying to find this turtle farm and got to see some amazing country.
Wednesday: Drove about 2 hours north to the town of Puntarenas. Went to Carara National Park and Tarcoles River.
Thursday: Took a boat to Tortuga Island. Relaxed on the beach. Rented some kayaks. Went snorkeling. Rung in the New Year watching fireworks on the beach.
Friday: Went ziplining through the jungle and went to the beach.
Saturday: Went back to Carara National Park. Drove back to San Jose and flew home.

It really was a beautiful place. I loved the jungley mountains.

And I always love the beach!

Probably one of the biggest adventures of the trip was renting the car. The car we got was the biggest piece of crap ever! It was absolutely gutless, which made it interesting to drive up the mountainous hills. The roads were terrible...potholes everywhere, plus they were crazy windy and steep. It was quite the adventure driving around in this thing.

The tires were all donuts, so it wasn't too unexpected that we got a flat tire.

Good thing Matt was there! I never would have survived driving that thing. But the good thing was that since it was such a junker, no one ever stole our stuff!

We also got a GPS, which turned out to be a really good thing. We didn't get lost at all.

Anyway, it was a really fun and different trip. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, but I had a good time once I got used to a few things. And the best part...80 degrees and sunshine!!!!!! More to come in future posts!