Montezuma, Costa Rica

The next country we visited (also my favorite) was Costa Rica! We flew into San Jose first, before continuing to our destination of Montezuma on the Nicoya Peninsula. Everyone had told us beforehand to stay away from San Jose, that it was horrible. I really didn't see what was so bad about it. It's not a city you'd want to travel all the way to Central America to see, but if you're going to Costa Rica, you'll end up flying in or out of San Jose, and it's just fine to spend one day in. It seemed just like any city to me. We walked around the downtown plaza area and it was farely pleasant. I did get quite a few stares, though. I had been warned that I might. For one: I'm white, and two: I'm very tall compared to most people there. Mari said they're really not shy about staring...I noticed. Anyway, here is a picture of the plaza. There were a ton of people out. Getting to Montezuma was a little adventure. There wasn't an airport in Montezuma, so we flew into Tambor (about 20 miles from Montezuma). The flight itself was actually very short, only 25 minutes! The plane was very small, though, and the airport (shown below) even smaller. Then we took a taxi the rest of the way on a very bumpy dirt road.

But once we got to Montezuma, it was well worth it. It was gorgeous and such a cute little town!

I had really hoped to spend more days in Costa Rica, but things didn't work out like I hoped and we only had 4 days. So we packed a bunch of activities in while we were there. In one day we did a horseback riding trip to some waterfalls in the morning...

...then we did a canopy tour in the afternoon. There were 11 zip lines total in the tour! It was so much fun!

The views were unbeatable!
Then part-way through the tour, we stopped at this waterfall that had a large swimming pool. I wasn't as brave as some people who jumped off the waterfall, but I did swing from the rope swing.

Oh, and I saw monkeys here too!
On another day, I took surf lessons. I've wanted to try surfing for a long time now, and I'm so glad I did. It was so much fun!
The instructor had us practice on the sand first. I was a little worried about being able to get up...I've never been good at push-ups...

But I was actually able to do it. Maybe someday I'll try a little bit bigger waves. :)

This was our view walking back from the beach after I surfed all afternoon.

This was our hotel, "La Cascada."