Jessica & Brandon

Bienvenidos from Atenas! This is turning out to be our favorite spot on the trip. Our villa sits atop one of the many steep rolling hills that cover the country. The sun comes up at 5:30am making the temperature rise high by 9, then a cool breeze hits us about 3pm, while moving the clouds and fog over our view of the different valleys below us. The sun sets at only 5:30pm and that's when the rain comes. It is so peaceful here with friendly people, fresh food, perfect weather, and breathtaking views. Do we really have to go home in 5 days???
Let me back up for a minute and talk about the rest of our stay in Puerto Viejo; we had so much fun there and it was nice to surround ourselves with another different experience for our trip. We spent every morning eating breakfast that Bill and Cathy, the owners of our bungalow, made for us. We already miss that! After breakfast, we sometimes would ride our bikes to the local internet cafe, but the internet never worked ha, and a few times we rode the bus into the town of Puerto Viejo where we spent time at a cool internet cafe/hostel/restaurant, where the owners were so kind and accommodating, even though their english was non existent. The town had a lot of fun stores and restaurants with a strong Caribbean/Jamaican influence. The souvenir shops were full of fun gypsy-type decor and the food everywhere was spicier and more flavorful than all the other places we've been. When we weren't on the internet or walking around town, we spent most of our time at the beaches. We are finally able to post those pictures now that we have a strong wifi connection...yes!...The beaches were fun because the water was warm, the sand was super fine, and the lining of trees and jungle that bordered the town from the beach was full of wildlife! We kept seeing signs posted to tall palm trees saying 'beware! danger beyond this beach'. At first we were a little confused by the signs because we were hearing the monkeys, which has been quite the norm on our trip, and we didn't think they were dangerous. But as the week went on, we realized how the howler monkeys seemed to behave around humans...whenever we would walk below a troop of howlers above us in the trees, they would literally knock and drop these hard green rock-like fruit to try to ward us off! We thought it was just them searching for food and things haphazardly falling because of that but we learned that they do it on purpose, and use this method to get food on the bottom of the jungle...by knocking out their pray by throwing things at them. It was funny but a little weird when we made this discovery. They would also howl really loud whenever big diesel trucks would go by the road, which happened very frequently, in order to try and ward them off too. The trucks and cars that went by on the road were so noisy because of the road conditions. People on bikes would go faster because the roads were very difficult maneuvering through the many potholes. It was 2 miles from our bungalow to town and anytime we took a taxi home for dinner time (because it gets dark so early), the 2 miles would take about 20 minutes. So slow! At least we got some good exercise with the bikes and walking a lot.
When Thursday rolled around and it was time to pack up, we were really sad to leave. We got into our shuttle van and the driver said it was going to be a 5 or 6 hour drive through the mountains so we braced ourselves for a long journey. When we were planning this trip, the last place we booked was at a place we thought was called Alejuela. We have since found out that we are staying in Atenas, not Alejuela. Alejuela is a county and a town within the county. The town of Alejuela is about 20 minutes away from here. When we finally arrived to our villa, we were totally blown away. The vacation rentals website we found the house on made the place look awesome but to see it in real life was so exciting. Homeaway.com is the best way to travel! We are staying in a huge place for VERY cheap. During the past 24 hours we have enjoyed the massage kitchen, the wifi throughout the house, the awesome bathrooms haha, the comfy and clean bedrooms, the hammock outside is a little small for 2 people but still cool, and the hot tub and pool we'll be using tomorrow first thing. We walked into the town this morning to take advantage of the Farmer's Market that is open every Friday and we took home a lot of stuff. We had a backpack and a beach bag but it wasn't enough haha it was really fun! After we dropped off our groceries at the house, we went back into town and ate at a place called Kay's Gringo Postre where we met the owners, Kay and Tom, who are from South Dakota and who are awesome! They talked with us for a long time and we got amazing late breakfast dishes for really cheap. They're postre is an eatry, bakery, internet cafe, and library all in one. I guess it's the best place for the Americans to hang out. We met some other couples from Texas who were kind too. They all treated us like their grandchildren, especially with marriage advice and stuff, we felt very comfortable and welcome there. It looks like that's where we will walk to breakfast every morning while we are here for sure. After we ate, we continued back to town and after walking through the whole thing we realized there weren't any souvenir or culture shops. This place is very much a hard-working, high-salary community but we were little disappointed there weren't places to shop. We might travel into Alejuela to check it out. We aren't too worried about it though, there are lots of mellow things we are looking forward to doing here at the house and on Monday we might go to the Britt Coffee Tour. The Britt Company is the main exporter of Costa Rican coffee so it should be fun! It looks like it's hot tub time so I better wrap this up! We just couldn't be happier staying here for our last stop. It's totally paradise. Tomorrow we will be posting our new pictures and will continue trying to upload the videos that have been accumulating, the internet connections here in CR, even with great wifi, is slower than back home but we'll keep working on it. It's been so fun sharing our experiences with you all! We love and miss you!
Jessica and Brandon

Time to catch up on the last week or so! Here in Puerto Viejo the internet works pretty well (just a 20 minute bus ride from our bungalow). I think we left off telling everybody about our first full day at Hotel Tilajari and it was a good one. On Wednesday, we woke up and ate a big breakfast, then got onto a little shuttle bus with 4 other Americans who were in the Navy on leave from Washington DC. They were fun to go with. We started off taking a horseback ride through the jungle up to the Volcano Arenal and then back down. During our horseback ride, it started downpouring on us and it was beautiful! We could see a lot of the volcano through the clouds and the trail took us to a hot springs lake that was green colored and beautiful. Good thing it is so hot here because it rains a lot but we don't mind The guide, David, thought it would be fun to make all the horses run super fast while we were riding them back down part of the trail and then he started singing Lone Ranger theme song while we flew down the mountain! It was funny but I was going so fast and was pretty scared but Brandon seemed to have a lot of fun When we got back to the stalls and off the horses, I wasn't nervous for the next part at all! We got fitted into our harnesses and climbed a huge 50-foot platform and got the demo on how to do the zipline. I had David push me off and it was such a rush! Brandon and I loved it! We went on 12 cables and especially the last one was long and beautiful! The view from so up high is breathtaking! We saw some toucans and lots of colonies of leaf cutter ants. So cool! Everybody should zipline if given the chance. I am terrified of heights...I can't even climb the ladder up to my parents' attic and I had such a wonderful time. It didn't seem scary at all! When we got back from our canopy tour, we ate lunch and watched a lot of Friends. We then had dinner and watched more Friends. It was a nice night. The next day we veged out on more Friends and food. It was a good day. I think we needed a day of nothing filled with laziness. So yesterday we got up and on the shuttle where we paid for a shared shuttle but nobody was on so we saved a lot of money and still got a private ride to Puerto Viejo. The ride over was so beautiful. To describe what Costa Rica is like is really difficult. It's not really like Hawaii and not really like Mexico. We are in the jungle, in the mountains, in farm countryside, and by the beach almost all at once. The whole country is very steep with hills and valleys everywhere. Deep gorges and 3 volcanoes are every where on the horizon. It's beautiful. On our ride yesterday, we saw fields and fields of pineapple, papaya, teak wood, palm trees with coconut, and banana trees. The banana trees were cool because they wrap the banana bundles in plastic bags while hanging from the trees themselves to protect them as they ripen. When we arrived in Puerto Viejo yesterday about 1ish it was hot, humid, and the beaches were calm and pretty! Our bungalow is pretty far away from town but there is a bus that will pick us up right by our place and everybody rides bikes around so it should be fun to get around. Our bungalow is owned and run by a super nice couple, Bill and Cathy. They made us breakfast this morning, they do laundry, make any kind of lunch or dinner we request, and they have told us where everything is around the area. We will be using snorkel gear and bikes provided by them and there are kayaks for the river if we feel like doing that later on in the week. It looks like it's going to be a fun 6 days! We have just been hanging around town today checking everything out. We found a cute internet cafe where Brandon has been able to check out the ducks game and is happy by how the game is turning out. So I'm happy too We will be getting online at least once a day if everything goes well so we hope to catch up with you guys a lot! Tomorrow check back for pictures (maybe)! Love and miss you all!
Jessica and Brandon

So, here's just a quick sum up of the last week or so...just because the internet barely works for more than a few minutes at a time...We arrived from Montezuma to Arenal Volcano safely yesterday late in the day. We LOVE hotel tilajari! We have a package of 3 nights with 3 tours and 3 free meals every day. It's pretty great. The restaurant seems pretty upscale with really great service, we have an awesome room, and the grounds are beautiful! Everybody here is super great. We just don't have good internet service prolly because it's in the middle of the deep mountainous rainforest. This morning we went on a 7-hour wildlife refuge tour where we saw lots of cool things via shuttle and boat along the river. It was really fun. There were only 3 other couples on the tour...2 old couples from Mexico I think and 1 couple was a little younger and from Toronto Canada so Brandon and I talked with them a lot. They were pretty cool. The whole tour was so fun and relaxing but super informative, too. The guide was a 24-year-old Costa Rican guy and we got to know him pretty well too. We should be able to post the pictures from this tour when we arrive at our next destination, Puerto Viejo. After we got back from the tour, we changed real quick and went on to our next tour which was to the hot springs at the foot of the volcano. Brandon and I were the only ones there the whole time it was so fun! We drank mango daquiris and soaked in the hot springs while it totally downpoured on us. It rained really hard the whole time we were there but the hot springs were over 100 degrees so it felt awesome. After that we were supposed to go see the lava flow but the volcano was completely covered with thick rain clouds so they took us back and gave us a free volcano tour tomorrow if the weather is a little clearer...but it prolly won't be. Anyways we had so much fun relaxing! We went to dinner after that and it was amazing. Now we are just hanging out and will prolly go to bed early because tomorrow morning we get up, go to breakfast, and then off to the canopy tour! Woohoo! We will get to the top via horseback and then the canopy tour has 12 cables. It sounds super fun and super scary. We will try to be online tomorrow after breakfast and then hopefully back online tomorrow night. We leave Tilajari at 6 am on Thursday and travel most of the day to Puerto Viejo where we might not be close to town therefore our blogs and emails might be here and there like it has been. We will try to update as much as possible though! We are having so much fun and really enjoying each other and soaking up all the relaxation and adventure. We hope everything is going well at home and would like to ask everybody to pray for us as we travel on Thursday. We love and miss you all!
Jessica and Brandon

We have several videos we want to attach but the internet connection is so slow it will have to wait until we move on to our third destination. We haven’t been up to much here…this morning we took a taxi to a neighboring town called Cabuya where we ate a yummy breakfast at a local bakery and then ventured to a small animal rescue shelter where we saw a capuchin monkey, ant eater, 2 different kinds of toucans, 2 baby howler monkeys that were absolutely adorable, and 2 giant tropical spiders that were pretty but horrific at the same time, a kinkajou, and 3 Costa Rican porcupines… I think that’s it…and then we headed back to grab laundry to have done in town. When we started the trek into Montezuma, we got picked up by a local who drove us the rest of the way. He was nice. It is over 90 today with lots of humidity so we were grateful. Yesterday we hitched a ride from 3 Israelis. They were super cool. It’s been fun talking to the locals and to fellow travelers. After our laundry is finished, we’ll head over to the Italian restaurant and get some dinner, then probably head back home to watch some Friends and play speed. I think we’re getting used to the slow pace of life down here. Hope all is going well at home! Love and miss you all!
Jessica and Brandon

We’ve been in Montezuma for about 3 full days now and it has been a true adventure for us. Our house is a little over 2 miles away from town and it’s a walk full of steep hills, rocks, big potholes, and lots of cars, ATVs , and motorcycles going back and forth. We’ve definitely been getting our exercise as we go into town about twice a day…and the heat makes it a good challenge. At our house, we have 2 little lizards and a few bats that live with us. They keep the bugs away so we don’t mind them much. The bats make really cute noises, they sound a little like birds. There have been tons of different birds here that make the most hilarious noises and even though you can hear them 24 hours a day it’s still really fun listening. Outside we have some chickens and roosters that hang around…those roosters are more annoying than all the other loud animals, maybe because it sounds too normal to be found in a rainforest. There is a big iguana that lives on one of the big rocks outside our house. This morning we saw it chase a howler monkey off a tree, it was pretty funny. We hear the howler monkeys every morning around 5 am and yes they are super loud. They sound really cool but you wouldn’t expect that big of a noise to come out of that small of a monkey. This morning they hung around our house until about 9:30 so we watched them go from tree to tree and hang out. We walked into town today to get some late lunch and across from our restaurant, where we ate outside, we saw a troop of capuchin monkeys hanging out in the trees. There were around 20 and we saw a momma monkey with her cute little baby. Brandon will post some video of the little mom and baby and the rest of them eating bananas. The locals thought it would be funny to put a bunch of bananas into a plastic bag and hang it from a branch…then everybody gathered around to watch all the monkeys try to get into it and run off with the bananas. It was really funny. We’ve seen some pretty butterflies during the day and cool fireflies at night. Lots of lizards and iguanas…and some spiders but Brandon has taken care of them for me  Here in Montezuma there are more ants on the beach then there are crabs which is a lot different from Manuel Antonio. Yesterday we were told there is a 20 minute hike to a waterfall so we checked it out and it took about 10 minutes to get there and it wasn’t too exciting but it was still cool. There isn’t a lot to do here so we have been catching up on our sleep, reading our books, Brandon has been playing with our pictures on LightRoom, and we’ve just been soaking up the slow pace of this little town. And as long as we have power (the storms here can be big!) we’ve been catching up on Friends and Alias. We do wish that we had internet a little closer so we can stay in touch and feel a little more connected to the outside world but once we head to Tilajari on Monday we should be back to civilization. We will try to post as many pictures here as we can but we pay for internet here and it takes a while to load everything so some might have to wait until further into our trip. Gotta go eat some banana split and drink our coffee while we watch the monkeys now! Thanks to everybody who has been praying for us during this leg of our trip, we really appreciate and love you all!
Brandon and Jessica

We woke up early this morning and got ready for our first big hike...after being slightly rushed we finally got a hold of a taxi and crammed a few Odwalla bars in the backpack and we were off to meet Jordan and Shelly (our photographer and his wife) at Hotel Parador where they were staying. We rode to the park (Manuel Antonio National Park) and at the entrance we met Daniel Garcia a self proclaimed 'Nature Interpreter' (who claimed to know some stuff but he said he definitely wasn't the best), but he did have a sweet telescope and an official Nature Interpreter badge, and it was cheap so we rolled with it. In the park he showed us monkeys, a stick bird (which looks like a camouflaged owl and is suppose to be really rare...only seen every 5-10 years). We also saw lots of lizards including a Jesus Christ Lizard which walks on water ironically enough. Other animals we saw were two and three-toed sloths...apparently the two-toed sloths are dangerous as our 'Nature Interpreter' showed us a scar on his leg from being slashed by an unhappy two-toed sloth nearly twenty years ago. At the end of the tour, we ended up at one of the most beautiful beaches we had ever seen. It was definitely postcard worthy. We hung out at the beach and snapped a few photos before continuing on a short 30 minute hike around the peninsula called "Cathedral Point". This was definitely the highlight of our trip to the park as it featured even more breathtaking views of the ocean and rock formations as well as lots of monkeys.

During the hike, we encountered a pack of Capuchin monkeys that entertained us for a good 45 minutes. We took hundreds of photos and took several videos. It was really AWESOME., In fact, at one point we were standing on the trail and two wrestling monkeys nearly carried their skirmish right onto Jessica's feet. We will post the video, you have to check it out it's unreal (many photos and more videos will follow in regards to monkey adventures). After our hike concluded we went into the small town of Manuel Antonio and ate at a small restaurant blasting reggae music and American hip hop (specifically Akon). Brandon had a casado which featured fresh mahi mahi, rice, beans, salad and fried plantains. Jessica had a house salad with a mango dressing yum yum!! Then our trip got interesting as it started to monsoon on us as we waited and then watched the hotel shuttle driver stop in front of us, and as I was opening the door he drove off without us...um, jerk...So we went back to the restaurant and Jordan asked the tall rasta guy with dreads to use the phone and the hotel hooked us up with a free taxi.

Tonight we went to Cafe Milagro for dinner and had sandwiches and yummy fruit and coffee drinks. Welp, We better get busy packing and doing laundry, the shuttle arrives at 7 am to take us onto our next destination...Montezuma! Pura Vida

P.S. As we are continuing on to Montezuma it is a little more remote as far as internet access is concerned so not sure how frequent we will be updating but we will keep notes of highlights throughout the day and update when we can...but pictures may have to wait until our next destination.

Thanks for checking in!

Today was a fun, exciting, but relaxing day to say the least. We woke up this morning and stepped out onto the veranda and saw a bunch of bustling throughout the trees. At first I was a little freaked out because I knew there were animals out there somewhere I just couldn't see them...then all of the sudden I saw a bunch of Marcels swinging from tree to tree. I was so excited I grabbed my camera and started snapping pictures if only I would have remembered the memory card was still in the computer...after I realized this I grabbed the card and snapped more pictures (I will attach them). After all the monkey excitement we decided to go eat breakfast so we walked down the street to a little breakfast place called cafe milagro. It was a fun little open air breakfast place and Jessica had banana pancakes with a MoraNada (fresh blackberries with lemonade) and I had french toast with an espresso shake and banana smoothie oh so good!!! After that we walked into town and discovered a few other restaurants and saw some amazing views of the ocean and surrounding landscape. After our walk we hung out around the house and caught up with family via facebook. After browsing our wedding pictures (you will see at the reception) and a few monkey pictures we took a break and walked around the grounds at our house and took more pictures of some of the really cool flowers and jungle foliage. By the time we got back the clouds had rolled in and it started sprinkling a little bit. At about the same time hunger set in and decided to take a short stroll down the road to a restaurant called Salsipuedes. It was a fun little family-owned restaurant perched on top of the hill above the ocean. Tonight's menu... Jessica: Vegetable Burrito with an awesome black bean dip (she said it was the best burrito she's ever had)...Brandon: Pinchot (a chicken kabob with veggies and tortillas to boot). Our dessert was especially good with grilled pineapple and ice cream (YUUUMMMMYYYY!). By the time we got done eating it was pouring down rain so we got to walk back to our casa in a Costa Rican downpour...luckily we had our umbrella! Check back later for pictures of today's activities!

Just catching everybody up! We've been trying to update the blog as often as possible but it does take quite a bit of time...but its fun to do and sharing our experiences. Today was our first trip down to the beach and it was exciting as we saw our first monkeys. It was so fun as we saw the brownish-red monkeys swinging from tree to tree. Down at the beach the sand had a lot of these little sand crabs that would hide in their shells to hide from the bigger red crabs that tried to attack them...it was quite comical and it could've entertained us for hours. Enough of the crabs...the water was awesome it felt even warmer than the beaches in Hawaii and we had a great time body surfing. After we got done in the ocean we kicked back in the lawn chairs and read our books for awhile. Jess was reading a CIA book that sounds pretty interesting and I am checking out Overdosed America...a book on the pharmaceutical companies fun huh!?! Part of this post was for fun to let you know what is going on and the other is out fun since to make fun of Jessica for her in-depth posts...you should see them before I tell her to stop they would be three times longer than this. Welp, they are replaying an Office episode and its in English.

Today was the celebration of our wedding yet again! Jessica has always dreamed of getting married on a warm tropical beach in her wedding dress...the morning was filled with the hustle and bustle of Jessica getting her hair done and the dress steamed and all that fun stuff girls do on their big day. I was rather impressed at how calm she was throughout the busyness of getting ready. In the meantime I took a stroll down to the beach and checked out where we were going to be having our ceremony and I knew it was going to just be an awesome day. When the time came I tried my best at speaking Spanish to get a taxi to come take us from our room to the beach...after three tries I finally succeeded. The ceremony was conducted by a short little happy Franciscan Friar (Jorge Chaves) and Jordan our photographer was on hand to shoot an insane amount of photos that are going to look super sweet! It was a blast the ceremony, the pictures, everything was perfect. After 15 minutes of ceremony and nearly 3 hours of pictures we headed back to our house to change because it was super hot in our wedding clothes.

Later that night Jordan and Shelly came back to the house and we all watched the sunset and then went to a really nice open-air restaurant in the jungle called La Hacienda that was amazing! After that we piled back into our taxi and went to the supermarket to buy some essentials that somehow didn't find their way into our suitcases (all 4 of them). We returned to our house and zonked out early, it was an awesome, awesome day!!
Here is a picture from our wedding day!

Come to our reception for the real wedding pictures!

Hi Everybody! Thanks for checking out our blog. We hope you all enjoy sharing in our adventures in Costa Rica. We are already having a blast!

Our trip started out leaving for the airport at 9:00 pm on Thursday night. We had been up since 7:30 that morning getting ready and packed so we were pretty tired by the time we got to the airport. We said our goodbyes to our families and met up with our Photographer and friend, Jordan, and his wife Shelly. Our flight left at midnight and we arrived in Houston Texas 3:30 am and hung out at the Houston airport for 4 hours until our connecting flight to Costa Rica. When we got to Costa Rica and walked through the terminal it was so humid and warm! It was a kind of tropical heat so different from Hawaii or even Mexico.
After going through customs, we met up with Luis, our private shuttle driver, who made us watch the movie Troy during our 3 hour journey which ended up taking about 5 hours instead. He was really nice and stopped to show us some cool things. We saw crocodiles, scarlet macaws, and yaks all before we got to our house! He also took us to an amazing restaurant called La Casita Del Cafe and took us to get groceries for our stay. The roads are so crazy and the drivers are even crazier so we are happy we didn't rent a car. For sure.
When we arrived at our house, we couldn't believe that our place was even better than the pictures we saw while booking it. It is amazing! By the time we got everything unpacked we were so exhausted that we went to bed early, especially because of the big wedding day #2 to follow the next day. Before we zonked out, we watched a storm come through with lots of thunder and lightening. We loved hearing the rain pour down all night. It was the perfect first day of our vacation.

Go to our photos to see more pictures with captions!