Costa Rica, I love you.  I love your beaches, wildlife, rice and beans, people and everything in between. I’ll be back! Here are some photos and stories to describe some of my trip!

Check out the Wedding photos and Trash the Dress photos too!!

I think this is my favourite shot outside of the wedding photos I took. It was kinda cool because I didn’t speak Spanish and I just kind of mimed if I could take his picture and he calmly nodded and look straight at the camera. : ) I love the pop of colour of the hammocks in the background.

My friend Danielle (one of the talented owners of the wedding decore/planning business Stage Right, etc) came with me. Such a great travel buddy.

Here is a shot of Danielle waving at some random person. haha.

Danielle embarrassed at waving so exuberantly at some random person. hahahaha

Gotta love colourful hammocks! Regretting not lugging one home even though I have no where to hang one.

This town that we spent the afternoon in is called  Playa Del Cocoa. Really cute little town with lot’s of character. It was just a 25 minute taxi ride from the Riu resort. Most of the roads are just dirt roads and super bumpy. I loved how the driver tried to make it sound like a good thing by calling it a “Costa Rican massage.” haha.

So many cool backdrops in Cocoa. Would have loved to have done some of the trash the dress shots here too if time had allowed. We went to a sweet location for that too though!

Playa Del Cocoa beach. There were pelicans all over the water feeding that you can’t see in this shot.

Snow cone man! I love that tree too. There was such a variety of trees in Costa Rica. So cool!  The beach at Riu Guanacaste where we stayed, had some many different kinda on their beach.

Cocoa Beach at sunset.

The circle of life. I saw a dead puffer fish on the sand and then 10 meters down the beach, leatherback turtle eggs were hatching to these little guys! There were like 20 or 30 of them. So cute. This was right when we were doing wedding photos on the beach at  Riu Guanacaste resort so I just took a few quick shots.

We saw a huge leatherback turtle lay eggs night before (too dark for photos and the flash disturbs them). She dug a big hole, laid her eggs, and then burried them before returning to the ocean, exhausted, to swim away.

One of the days, we did a full day excursion that included zip-lining treetop to treetop, sliding down a 400 metre water slide through a forest, and then a horseback ride down to hot springs (much needed after the horseback ride), complete with a mudbath! Crazy day.

Our alarm didn’t go off but I woke up 5 minutes before the bus left. It was 5:30 am Kelowna time so you can imagine how out of it we were. In her sleepy state, Danielle grabbed 3 bathing suit tops and no extra bottoms for the day trip. Hilarious. We were absolutely starving by the time lunch time arrived (no time for breakfast!) and were were welcomed with an amazing buffet after zip-lining and water slides. Yum yum!

Great, jam-packed day. I sucked at riding my horse though. I thought I’d like riding horses but was fairly terrified the whole ride. In my defense, it was super steep downhill almost the whole way! I can do straight but not so good down mountains! haha.

Amanda and Garret took us to The Congo Trail Canopy Tour before their Trash the Dress session and we got to interact with some monkeys! Highlight of my trip. Danielle was in heaven too. The spider monkeys were my favourite. So cuddly!

There were also two capuchins monkeys that were so crazy! They pulled out one of my bobby pins, hair elastic, and not to mention some hair that he chewed up and then threw on the ground. lol. He pounced on my head multiple times as well. I forgave him since he was so cute.

Cool pineapple statue at Riu Guanacaste Resort. Danielle being her pretty self.

ker-SPLASH!