A Costa Rican Christmas

So as most of you know, Charlie and I had the opportunity to spend Christmas and the New Year in Costa Rica with my family. It was absolutely amazing!! We have a lot of pictures we want to share with everyone so a slide show is forthcoming. For now here is a little summary about what we saw and did. Let me start off with all of the wildlife we saw. I'm not talking about seeing animals in a zoo. We saw all of these animals out in the wild: sloths, monkeys, coati, marsh crab, toucans, iguanas, crocodiles, caymans (part of the croc family), howler monkeys, parrots, frogs, geckos, a boa constrictor!, bats and every giant insect created! Our first couple days were spent by the beach in a town called Manuel Antonio. This is where we had most of our beach time and saw a lot of animals. The hotel we stayed at had this amazing ocean front view and we would wake up early to hear howler monkeys outside our room! Christmas was very untraditional. We went zip lining through the jungle. One cable was over 2500 feet long and 200 feet above the ground! During our trip we saw three volcanoes, two which are still active. Arenal volcano is the most active volcano in Costa Rica. We were lucky enough at night to see lava flowing down the mountain! That trip was really cool because the volcano's geothermal heat warms a large area of hot springs which we were able to enjoy. We visited waterfalls, museums, a couple trips to San Jose and took a river ride down the Sarapiqui. As for New Years Eve, we went out to dinner and played games and resorted to the fact that Costa Ricans spend the night with there families and there wasn't much going on. Then midnight hit. We went outside and the entire valley, filled with millions of people, was exploding with fireworks!! Fireworks are not illegal in Costa Rica and you can shoot them off where ever you want. There were so many fireworks that off in the distance it looked like lightening! Unfortunately this description won't do it justice, however it was one of the coolest sights we have ever seen! However, once the fireworks died down, there was the deafening sound of ambulances. The day before we left Charlie and I went by ourselves to go white water rafting down the Pacuare river. It was so much fun and a lot more intense than we expected. Plus the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. All in all, it was a wonderful trip. We would recommend that everyone see this beautiful country. Plus the people there are so nice! Thanks Dad and Jan for a great trip!