On Easter Sunday, we drove down to Atlanta to begin our week long trip to Costa Rica for Matt's sister Amanda's wedding! We woke up at 5am Eastern time the next morning to head to the airport. I think it took us over 4 hours to check in with all of our bags. The thing that took so long was we were traveling with 3 infants, so the paperwork was time consuming.
This was the best picture I could get of all of the luggage for 8 adults, 2 children, and 3 infants!
Katie Grace was a very happy baby for having to wait in the same place for so long.
The flight was about 4 hours and went smoothly. The fun began when we landed in Costa Rica :) First, as with any international trip, we went through customs. Then, we waited a while for our rental cars. Our group rented 4 cars. We all had walkie-talkies so we could communicate since our cell phones didn't work. There are no street signs and all directions are given by landmarks. On our first attempt to get out of San Jose and find the highway to Jaco, we made a wrong turn and lost one of the cars. The three of us that were together just pulled over and kept calling the 4th car on the radio hoping they would get in range. Luckily, they eventually drove past us. That's when Matt and I decided we would take the lead. First, we stopped at a KFC thinking they would speak English because their menu was in English. No luck! So, we luckily found our way back to our starting point, and then found our way to the highway! I never would have thought that my 2 semesters of Spanish in high school would ever come in handy, but I surprised myself at how much I remembered on this trip.
The beach is very different where we stayed. The sand was black and you couldn't walk on it barefoot because it was so hot. Our beach area is one of the places that the world surfing competitions are held. There would be tons of surfers each morning. It was neat to watch them ride the huge waves.
The locals said that while we were there they were having record heat! This was not fun for the little ones. Most places don't have air conditioning, so we really had to make sure Katie Grace was drinking enough water. I was so happy she had started using a sippy cup before this trip.
While we were there, we went on a zip line canopy tour through the rain forest (very fun!), took a boat tour and saw many native birds and crocodiles, and Matt went deep sea fishing.
Notice how red our faces are. I think they probably stayed this way the majority of the time there because it was so hot!
Zip line through rain forest
We went souvenir shopping, and all the merchants loved how chubby Katie Grace was. These two girls asked to hold her. We agreed because they were so sweet.
