Now that we've been married almost two months, I figure it was about time I share some of our honeymoon with you all. Only the PG bits, of course :)
Anyhoo, I've been meaning to get on this for a while, but our schedules have been absolutely insane since we got back from our honeymoon in Costa Rica. So crazy, that by the time we reached last weekend, our first weekend with nothing on the calendar, we spent the ENTIRE day Saturday on the couch, watching HGTV, movies, and eating Chinese take out.
Anyway, I'm finally sorting through our trip, and of course want to share it with you. I'll warn you now that this will be a picture heavy post (we took thousands), but in order to not completely overwhelm you all, I've decided to break up our trip into at least three parts: where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate. Our nights in San Jose and Miami might get their own posts, depending on how I feel after sorting through pictures.
Obviously, we decided to stay in the amazing Costa Rica, specifically in Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast:
As I discussed here, we picked Costa Rica because not only is the country absolutely beautiful, but it is well known for adventure. And since Brian and I are not typically couch potatoes (Saturday aside), we definitely wanted to pick a spot that catered to those who had a bit more in mind than a week on the beach.
We flew out of Chicago at 5:30 a.m. the Monday after our wedding, but of course didn't sleep the night before due to all the packing, cleaning, etc. Needless to say, we were a bit exhausted by the time our plane landed in San Jose at 11:30!
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| Photo by Brian Powers |
While we ate lunch at a local cafe as we waited for the shuttle driver that would be taking us to the Caribbean coast, we flipped through the local newspaper. I love how they forecast weather...
Hmm, we might have a thunderstorm or two on Friday, with a couple of thunderstorms Sunday- I wish weather in Chicago was so low key!
Unfortunately, they also had a couple of thunderstorms overnight from Sunday to Monday, which meant that by the time we arrived at our lodge at about 8 p.m. Monday night, the power was out. Not the best way to spend the first night on your honeymoon in the jungle after being awake for 32+ hours, especially after we found two pretty sizable spiders in our room by the beam of a flashlight. Yikes.
Fortunately, the sun was shining by the next morning and we were able to check out our home for the next week.
We stayed about two miles or so south of Puerto Viejo, at a small lodge with 14 separate bungalows and a beautiful outdoor restaurant.
Of course I'll talk about the food in another post, but I'll share a bit of our lodge with you now. We were amazed at how private this place was, not to mention it was in the middle of the jungle- this was the pathway to our room!
And here is our lovely little house, complete with a sofa and a hammock on the front porch:
Despite not spending too much time sitting on our butts, Brian got some decent use out of that hammock :)
We were definitely happy that the windows were screened, but other than that, everything was very open and airy so we could really experience a week in the jungle. Other than the birds right outside our room dropping nuts from the crazy tall trees, it was amazing!
The room itself was pretty basic- there was one room with a huge bed, a desk, and two small couches...
And a separate, but HUGE bathroom. We learned pretty quickly that showers in Costa Rica would be lukewarm at best, but after days spent hiking, biking, and climbing, anything was quite a relief.
On our first full day, we decided to walk to town. While the walk was exciting...
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| Photo by Brian Powers |
We definitely knew we didn't want to walk a half hour each way to town for the whole trip. So we rented bikes, which although they looked like they had been around a few years, were a welcome break from walking.
Puerto Viejo itself is a pretty awesome little town, with street vendors and street life everywhere you look.
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| Photo by Brian Powers |
Not to mention these views on the other side of the road...
We spent most of our first day exploring the town, taking pictures (of course). This is still one of my favorites that Brian snapped:
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| Photo by Brian Powers |
We spent our first night after dinner out on the beach, watching the sun set... perfection.
It really doesn't get better than this!
A few days into the trip, we found an amazing little path that led down to a nearly private beach that looked like something right out of a movie. Although the path was a bit sketchy...
The view that greeted us at the end was completely worth it!
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| Photo by Brian Powers |
We spend a lot of time on that beach just relaxing, looking for fish in the tide pools, and a few smooches here and there ;)
Whew, is anyone still with me? If I haven't worn you out yet with our new favorite place, stay tuned for a few more overly long posts on what we did (yay, adventure) and what we ate (because we love our food)! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off for more adventures... at least in my head, anyway :)
Labels: Bri, Costa Rica, Honeymoon, Puerto Viejo, Pura Vida
