Put On Your Adventure Hat! - Brady

Here's what it's like to visit Costa Rica:

Wake up before your alarm to exotic birds chirping and sun streaming in your window. Fail to fall back asleep because you begin to think about your plans for the day. In your hazy state of mind, start envisioning the worst. Taking a hairpin turn too fast, causing a terrible car accident. Getting a flat tire in the middle of the jungle. Falling to your death from a zip line cable. Breaking an ankle on a hike. Being pulled out to sea by a rip current during a surf lesson. 

Get up. 

Have a delicious breakfast on somebody's porch or balcony - chat with the hotel owner. Have some Costa Rican coffee. Feel a little braver. 

Dress for the adventure of the day. Slather on sunscreen. Pack your camera.

Arrive wherever you're going. Feel a little less brave. Try to take pictures anyway. 

Do whatever it is you're doing. This might take an hour or two, all morning, maybe even all day. Live through it. Get that adrenaline pumping. Maybe get a little bit hurt - a bruise, a bump on the head, some injured pride, even. But, overall, feel psyched. Eat rice and beans, maybe some fried plantains if you're lucky, at some point.

Arrive home. Take a shower. Feel relaxed for the first time since you woke up. 

Dress for dinner. Eat more rice and beans, maybe some plantains. Do something nice - normal vacation stuff - like get ice cream, stroll through the town square, drink a Guaro Sour (like a margarita, but meaner), or soak in some natural hot springs. 

Go to bed. 

Repeat eight times. 

I'm not sure what I expected, but this trip was crazy. Not a vacation, an adventure. Every single part of every single day was hard. Getting from one place to another was hard, even. Roads looked like this:

Also, there were very, very few signs. We had to ask multiple people for directions each time we went somewhere new. We drove through three streams on one three mile drive (which took 45 minutes, mind you).

Almost every day we did some sort of difficult activity. We surfed.

We zip lined. (That tiny orange dot is me! Remind me to tell you sometime about how I got stuck and my friend Luis rescued me.)

We swam in natural pools made by waterfalls. 

I'm in this picture! Can you find me?

We spoke Spanish. Lots and lots of it. We ordered food in Spanish and got directions in Spanish, chatted with our hosts in Spanish and even consulted a bit with a lovely Costa Rican doctor in Spanish (don't worry, nothing major, I just needed a little medicina).

We hiked to deserted beaches.

We went down a waterslide that would never, ever pass code in the United States (that almost landed Kevin his own doctor's visit). We sweat through our clothes, let them dry on rocks, then sweat through them again. At one point, Kevin had to coach me through a particularly difficult moment in a hike. I looked down, got kind of paralyzed, and started to panic. And on and on.

All of this was wonderful and exciting. But it was also hard. Every day I had to put on my adventure hat. There was no phoning it in - I just had to suck it up and be brave.

But there were really nice, non-scary parts, too. We ate breakfasts here, that looked like this.

We did yoga here.

We saw natural beauty everywhere.

This is an active volcano, and those black rocks are what's left of a lava flow from the 90s.

We soaked in natural hot tubs, the water heated underground by the volcano.

We drank milk right out of the coconut.

We had lots of good coffee.

We even got some reading in.

Oh, and we celebrated New Year's Eve with a giant street party in a tiny town on the Nicoya Peninsula. New Year's in Costa Rica means bonfires on the beach, firecrackers, spraying beer at midnight (yuck), and a song that involves a good woman, a good donkey, and a good mother-in-law. 

And, of course, we met wonderful people. The hosts at our bed and breakfasts. People in town. The many individuals we stopped to ask for directions. Even the dogs are friendly in Costa Rica.

I have to stop or I'll actually upload all 800 of the pictures we took. But let me leave you with this. The first monkey we saw, and Kevin imitating it. 

Happy New Year from two very happy, very lucky travelers.