Mellor High Life - The Champagne of Blogs: Costa Rica Trip

I finally downloaded the pictures from our trip to Costa Rica at Christmas and New Year's. It involved a lot of traveling to get there from London: 17+ hours on planes and in airports, hours of traffic snarls from San Jose to Puntarenas, a ferry ride to transport the rental car to the Nicoya Peninsula and more driving to reach the remotely-located house. But it was well worth it! This trip was just what I needed. It was great to escape, relax and enjoy some much-needed sun.

Next weekend I will do a blog post with an update about the house. The beehive of activity has resumed and the target completion date is now set at March 20th.

December 26 - After driving for hours on no sleep, we had to wait in queue for 2-3 more hours before boarding the ferry from Puntarenas to Nicoya Peninsula.

Nicoya Peninsula in the distance - our SUV was parked on the right-side of the deck and we sat with everyone else at the top of the ferry.

Ryan melted in the hot weather - yes, that is a can of cerveza pressed against his forehead .

This is the house where we stayed for the week. Ryan and I were jet-lagged and we got up early to explore the property.

Most mornings we lounged in the pool before heading out for adventures in the afternoon. There was no Wi-Fi at the house - not a bad thing!

And here is the town of Montezuma. As you can see, it's not overly developed. The roads are appalling to reach it, but this is where we often ate out and took advantage of the free Wi-Fi at the gelato shop.

Ryan on a tree swing at the beach in Montezuma. This picture was taken shortly before he tried swinging with no hands and gravity brought him straight down!

We took a day trip to Isla Tortuga by boat. This is one of the beautiful spots where we snorkeled.

All of the kids are lined up and ready to snorkel!

Our wonderful friends, Greg and Molly

Snorkeling in a small cove - Ryan is in the foreground

The highlight of the trip for Ryan was seeing and touching a puffer fish caught by our boat guide. We saw lots of other colorful fish too.

Ryan hanging out in the shade at Isla Tortuga

A beautiful macaw - Isla Tortuga

Macy and Garett defending the net during a competitive game of beach volleyball

"Felipe" the iguana - he was huge! We saw Felipe on our way back from yoga one morning. We also watched some locals cut down coconuts from the top of a tall tree.

One of a series of waterfalls near Montezuma. We went swimming in the natural pool and jumped from the rocks.

Typical road. In this picture we are following Molly and Greg. The roads were completely rutted and all of the roadside plants were buried under a layer of dust.

Shelly, Garett and Ryan in our zip line gear. Do we look nervous? We sailed above the tree canopy on zip lines from platform-to-platform. It was really fun!

We saw several monkeys on the trip, including white-faced capuchin monkeys. This one was having breakfast in a banana tree.

Shelly outside of the bar in Santa Teresa that was broadcasting the Clemson-Oklahoma football game. Unfortunately, the bar closed at 4:00 p.m. because it was New Year's Eve, so we missed a good portion of the game (our poor timing was also due to navigating the treacherous roads in and out of town).