Costa Rica

Costa Rica

 December 11th - 17th

San Jose

We arrived in San Jose after a long 18 hour bus ride from Panama City. We didn't have a thing planned but our taxi driver helped us find a nice place to stay. Then at our hostel they gave us maps and tons of ideas of what to do. We spent our days in San Jose doing a walking tour through the city. One of the most popular things are the outdoor markets. In the markets they also have people doing different things for money, like playing music, or painting faces, or some people were just dressed up to make all the children happy. We shopped a little bit and got a good feel for the way of life in San Jose. We really enjoyed it! We also lucked out because there is a parade once a year and we were there for it! We went with some friends that we made at the hostel. It was a blast!

Bus Ride! :)

Downtown Market, there are streets and streets of this!

Our Hostel

Parade

New friends for the night :)

Our 5 day tour through Costa Rica

We really were in the right place at the right time because we made friends with a fun couple from Canada that were backpacking from Panama to Honduras. We knew we would get along great because their names were ironically the same as my grandparents: Margaret and Ken. We hit it off and nicknamed them Skip and Peggy, the names my grandparents actually go by. Little did we know that we would be spending the next week with them. We split the price of a rental car with them and drove all over Costa Rica. We had a great time with these guys!

On the road 

We stopped and stayed in La Fortuna and went to the nearby Lake Arenal and also the Arenal Volcano.

Hostel, where we stayed, it was only a couple bucks :)

Scenes of La Fortuna

We were also lucky enough to go to the local high school's Christmas band concert! 

We also visited Monteverde and did the canopy tour with Xtremo tours. That was definitely one of the funnest things that we did our whole trip! Like a dream!

We went to so many beautiful beaches! We stayed at Samara beach for a couple days and just relaxed! We also stopped at some of the more popular beaches as we headed north namely Coco beach, and Panama beach.

SAMARA BEACH

Relaxin on the beach

We saw a bunch of baby sea turtles at Samara! We saw the first at night and me and this local boy made sure it got to the ocean. And then the next day there were like 5 baby sea turtles that hatched and were making their way to the water. We made sure they were safe from all the stray dogs and other animals that could have snatched them up. They are soooo cute! I just wanted to take one home :)

COCO BEACH

PANAMA BEACH

We Also saw a bunch of wildlife as we were driving. One day there was a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere. We pulled over and noticed that there was some sort of animal crawling soo slow across the road. Of course! A sloth!!! We have never seen a animal move so slow! We were able to see him up close and take tons of pictures. SWEET!!! It was great to have a car because we would see wild life on the side of the road or in the trees and we stopped to take a look. 

 We saw over 100 monkeys, about 5 Coatis (the Central American version of our Raccoon), Humming Birds, Iguanas, Lizards...etc. It was amazing.

Plus we got to stop and take pictures of some cool plants and the beautiful sunsets!

Costa Rica is one of THE most BEAUTIFUL places in the world! Talk about blessed to have had no plans and then to have gotten to go, do and see all that we did! At this point we're thinking "what a life!" :) And our trip isn't even over yet! Next stop...NICARAGUA.