Final Entry of: Best Honeymoon Ever - Costa Rica!

Man alive (barely), it's so freezing cold outside I feel like my face is going to fall off. We finally got the snow that I was hoping would just not come this year... Is that realistic? It downpoured (or flaked) on Sunday and Monday, and Tuesday. So now there's snow everywhere. Luckily it's more dry today than it has been, so we're not trudging through slush to get onto campus like before, and the roads are generally safe again. Well, relative to Utah anyway.

Today is my last day of classes, finals are next week, and then we're outta here! I can't wait for this semester to be over. Being the first semester as a married couple, let's just say America and I didn't get a lot of schoolwork done, and so I'm ready for a fresh start. I've been so distracted, that it's taken me going on 4 months just to finish writing about our honeymoon, granted it was more than a month long, but still...

Costa Rica was our last country, and we had our airfare purchased to take us out of San Jose. So we had our end goal, and a couple things we wanted to do before leaving. Our first stop was at the coast. We thought a couple more days on the beach would do us some good, so we spent two night on the Northern Pacific side of Costa Rica at a beach called Playa del Coco (Beach of the Coconut). It was another black sand beach, which I think are way cooler than white sand.

We decided to go snorkeling and ended up going out with this french guy and his two kids, they were really cute and funny. They thought it was pretty nifty when I said that the sand dollar they found in the reef (they were scuba diving) was "chouette." Haha. Man, I really want to improve my French.

Anyway, the water was beautiful


And we saw some good stuff even just snorkeling. This grouchy old man turtle swam around with us for a while, I got pretty close, within two feet or so I'd say, it was pretty cool. Unfortunately my flippers were just a tad too big for me, so they kept rubbing against my feet, and the end result were giant craters in the sides of my feet, even now that they've healed there are giant scars there.

This picture doesn't even do them justice.

Anyway, we spent time there relaxing, had some amazing smoothies on the beach, and got massages literally on the beach. It was a really nice break from the running around we had done the majority of our time in Central America. But we enjoyed the running around too, just for different reasons I guess.

We then headed towards the capital, San Jose, where we figured we spend the last two nights before hopping our flight home. It happened to be our one month anniversary that day, kind of funny that we'd been on our honeymoon that long that we'd already been married a month. For our wonderful anniversary meal we got some awesome grub at the pit stop between the beach and the city.

Looking good.

Somewhere earlier on in the trip I stumbled across some info in our Lonely Planet Guide (definitely recommend if you want to travel around like we did), that mentioned there was Bungee Jumping in San Jose. I'd always wanted to bungee jump, and got really excited, and terrified at the same time. So we got there and I was all excited to do it the next day, our last full day of our honeymoon. Since it was still our one month...iversary thing, we went to the local mall and saw a movie and got some real food (well, "real" meaning American fast food, blah).

So here's how the next day went down. America will still claim that I pressured her into jumping, but that is definitely not the case. I wasn't even thinking she was going to do it, and knew that she didn't want to and was more scared than I was, plus I'd already had her doing crazy stuff all month. So my intention was to sign myself up. Here's how the conversation went, I swear!

America: Well I'm not doing that, you can, but I'm not.
Tyler: Yeah I figured you'd not want to, no worries.
America: ...
Tyler: (silent while I was registering myself for the jump)
America: ...
America: ...well what if I wanted to!
Tyler: Oh really? Well you can if you want to, I didn't think you would though.
America: Well kind of...but I'm scared!
Tyler: It's not a big deal, you don't have to.
America: ...ok.
America: ...FINE! I'LL DO IT!
Tyler: Really? Are you sure?
America: Yeah.
Tyler: Okay, our reservations are at 1 pm.
America: Wait, oh man, now I have to do it!

And so on... But either way, we were totally freaked out once we finally got to the top of the bridge we'd be jumping off.

It looked higher than it actually was I'm convinced. Not to mention that it happened to start pouring once we got up there and then lightning and thunder rolled in the background. It made for a pretty intense moment.

America: THIS IS SO STUPID!

I was so proud of her, and she says she'll never do it again, but if the opportunity came up like it did then I think she would. It was so awesome!

I don't know why this picture is coming up so big. I didn't do it on purpose I promise.

So we ended on an extreme high after that. It was literally an experience of a lifetime. Actually, the whole wedding/honeymoon was, as one would expect, but ours especially. The next day we had to pack up and go home, we had our taxi take us past the San Jose temple first, we didn't want to miss the opportunity to see it since we were there.


And then we were off. I was sad to be leaving, America was happy to be heading to warm showers, clean floors, and "real" food. I guess I can't hold it against her.

Our flight took us into Portland, where the car was, and all our wedding presents and stuff. It had been there since we left Provo after finals, two months before. We only had a few hours in Portland before we had to be on the road to Provo in order to have the weekend to move in together finally before classes started the next Monday. What a whirlwind, but it was worth it!

Now that I've finally finished the honeymoon maybe sometime soon I'll drop in some wedding pictures and write about our first few months of married life. We leave for Christmas in Illinois pretty soon!