Best Trip Ever?

So as an early celebration of Zach's graduation from law school, we went on a trip to Costa Rica.  Henry is fortunate to have the world's most amazing grandparents who came out and watched him while his parents had the time of their lives.

We met up with our good friends Reza and Christy and drove from lovely (sarcastic) San Jose to the national park of Manuel Antonio.  We spent day 1 on the beach

The next day we went hiking in the park, we saw sloths, deer and some funky bugs.  Here's Alicia climbing up a vine.

The rest of the day we were at the beach, the water was 80 degrees and a beautiful clear blue/green.  

We were getting sunburned in the beautiful water, all of a sudden we saw Reza chasing something with a stick and yelling.  A monkey had tried to steal our lunch and Reza had a showdown to fight for our food.  Reza yelled, the monkey yelled back, Reza shook his stick, the monkey punched the air.  Reza won, but the monkey got a banana.

We had dinner at a restaurant with a terrific view of the sunset and a bar inside of this old airplane.

The next day we did a zip-line canopy tour.  Zach hadn't had that much fun since Weblos camp.  They had swings, ziplines and repels and we enjoyed it all from the rainforrest canopy.  Zach was worried that Alicia would run away with one of the local guides named Rambo.

We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast called the Blue Banyan.  

We then left on our two-day rafting trip down the Pacuare River.  This was definitely the highlight of the trip.

We stayed at the Pacuare Lodge overnight during the rafting trip.  This is the bed in our bungalow.  The windows all had views of the jungle and there was no electricity, so everything was lit by candles at night . . . very romantic.

The lodge looked out on the river and was the sound of the birds and the rushing water would be enough to make some of our high-stress Washingtonian neighbors relax.

We enjoyed some great gourmet meals at the lodge.

We finished the trip near Arenal, an active volcano.  This was the view from our hotel (the view and free internet were about the only things that hotel had going for it).

We finished the trip at Tabacon hot springs, these springs are volcanically heated and it was unbelievable.

We generally aren't excited about ordering overpriced non-alcoholic drinks, but we couldn't pass up this swim-up bar.  The pina coladas were the best we'd ever had.