Just some random favorite pictures from Costa Rica

His expression is priceless!

A shot taken during our horseback ride to the hot springs. It was quite the ride. The horses were not exactly tame, trail horses and we were riding with a group of girls from New York City who clearly had never been on horses before. It was quite impressive that we all survived. 

After coating ourselves with some volcanic mud before the hot springs.

There was an amazing fruit sculptor one night at dinner. The picture is not the best, but he was impressive!

There were staff photographers all over the resort who kept asking if they could take pictures of us (to sell us later). We found some ways to creatively tell them no, but on our last day we staged our own photo-shoot. I thought we did a decent job! :-)

This is Ryan participating in water aerobics. :-)

Thinking man.

The only picture of us together where we're dressed a little nicer than swimsuits!

The view from our room...

We got upgraded to an ocean-view room which was nice. Really the only complaint we had about the resort was the housekeeping (and an odd smell in our room.) Housekeeping had this totally odd tendency of taking all of our towels out of the room, but not replacing them with new ones. After two days of this, Ryan got smart and requested two sets of towels from the front desk and stashed one set in the dresser so we'd have them the next day. However, that day when we came in, we were given fresh towels (a first!), but housekeeping had removed our shower curtain and not replaced it. Very odd. The best was when Ryan went to the front desk to complain about the shower curtain they didn't believe him. Yup, we steal shower curtains from hotels - that's just how we roll. :-)

As you can kind of see in this picture, the landscape was actually a lot drier than I had thought it would be. I knew Guanacasta was the "dry region", but for some reason, I was still anticipating lush, tropics. That really wasn't the case. It was still pretty, but just not exactly what I expected. Next time we go to Costa Rica, hopefully we'll get to spend a little time closer to San Jose and the actual rain forest. 

Of course, the actual resort, was very well manicured and had plenty of green.

Zip-lining!

Before we went to Costa Rica we had many conversations about whether we would be doing zip-lining when we got there. Ryan definitely wanted to do it but I was a little less than sure. I am not a big fan of heights and was not sure I would be able to make myself leave the platform without a push. (Thankfully, Ryan agreed to push me if needed.) As it turned out, I didn't freak out and was able to get through all ten zip-lines. Actually being on the zip-lines was kind of fun, but standing on small platforms with ten other people waiting to get on them, not so much. I didn't really like looking down and not being able to see the ground and all the while being pushed forward by all the other people jumping on to the platform!

Here we are all geared up before jumping out of trees.

 By the last leg of our zip-lining adventure Ryan was feeling secure enough to go upside down. I declined this invitation. :-)

All in all, I actually did enjoy it, but I'm not sure it's something I'll be doing again soon!

Monkeys, lizards and crocodiles, oh my!

These are some of the creatures we saw on our Palo Verde boat trip. It was pretty cool to be in this little boat surrounded by crocodiles, monkeys and a variety of other wildlife!

Hatching black sea turtles

So cute!

There were about 75 of these little guys! They're protected in Costa Rica, but we were still allowed to be right there while the person dug them up and he let us hold a few. It was amazing!

Costa Rica Honeymoon!

Ryan and I just got back from our awesome honeymoon in Costa Rica. We have hundreds of pictures (not that this should be a surprise to anyone), so I won't post them all here, but I'll try to get some up. You can view them all here. 

Here are some of our favorite memories....

1. Dirty Monkeys (the drink, not the actual animal) at the swim-up bar.
2. Ziplining upside down (Ryan, not Ingrid)
3. Watching baby sea turtles hatch and run for the sea (and getting to hold a few!)
4. Feeding veggies from lunch to the resident iguanas pool-side.
5. Creating our own photo shoots in the pool.
6. Seeing lots and lots of monkeys (2 species), both at the resort and out on excursions.
7. Guacamole at every meal.
8. Getting up close and personal with some crocodiles.
9. Trying to boogie board on a VERY windy beach.
10. Spending 7 sun-filled days with no cell phones!