Veni, vidi, amavi! - 8/31/25

We had a busy day planned. We met up for breakfast which was included at our hotel. 

Fresh fruit and orange juice, then Matt and I shared overnight oats and an empanada. 

The empanadas were good and the overnight oats were not. The tasted like sour milk to me and I couldn’t handle it. Thankfully we still had some yogurt back in our room and we were fine. 

After breakfast - surf lessons for the boys! 

Chelsea and I talked about doing them too, but - a few things. Firstly, almost positive I’d have just as much fun bobbing in the waves.

Secondly, we didn’t want to take anything away from the boys and have them paying attention to us. 

Thirdly, $$$. 

So Chelsea and I swam and cheered and laughed at the guys. They did great, I was impressed. And also they wiped out a lot. Chelsea took pics of the lessons, but maybe I’ll figure that out later. 

This old guy was tired, a little sea sick, and chaffed. 

After the surfing we got cleaned up and headed to our zip line adventure. I was scared. I’m always scared. What made it a little better was that we had 2 guides and 1 of them always went first. So if they were doing it, it had to be safe, right?

It was scary but fun. We saw another poisonous dart frog, a toucan, and capuchin monkeys - including a mommy and baby monkey and a whole tree of them jumping around. No sloth, and we really, really wanted to see one, so that was a bummer. I also don’t have pictures of zip lining either. Maybe to come? Maybe not? We'll see how the 2 month catch up goes.

There were 12 lines and we would intermittently see the ocean. The guides were great and filmed and took tons of pictures and then shared them all for free. Just need to find them.

After our zip line adventure we headed out to the country for our chocolate tour.

It was at a home farm where our guides grandpa had planted the first cacao tree 50 years ago. We got to meet her mom, dad, and sister. She was great! 

She showed us cinnamon, turmeric, vanilla, ginger, and pepper, and then the boys got to pick bananas from the tree and we shared them. 

The freshest banana ever. 

She walked us through all the steps, we tasted it fresh from the pod, dried beans, and ground. 

We got to chat and open bowlfuls of pods, then grind them with a rolling pin then a wheat grinder looking thing. 

Then she made us bitter hot chocolate and then sweetened hot chocolate. It was cool to see. Then we shopped and got goodies for the girls to sample. 

We wanted to hike a waterfall but it gets dark at like 6, so the guide said it was too late. 

We talked about dinner, but ended up going back to the hotel where we swam and Matt and I ate our leftovers. Not sure if this is the right day or if I shared this before. But we pooled it.

Our hotel was very cute. Veni, vidi, amavi!

Out of order pictures because. The cute cacao farm kitchen.

One more of Cacao Santo.

We pretty much played all day and then went to bed early and that’s worked for us and our travel buddies too. 

Peak Autumn

Hello darkness my old friend. I really, really haven’t wanted to catch-up on alllll the things which is why I haven’t blogged in almost two months. It’s been an exceptionally busy season over here and I really wish I could still blog with my app. 🙁 

I do miss this sweet blog. There have been several times over the past week that I have shared stories and checked accuracy by looking up old posts, so it’s definitely something I want to keep up. Goal - 2 posts a day. Then maybe I’ll catch up by St. Patrick’s Day. 🙃 

For now, let’s head back to Costa Rica! Pura Vida!!! 🇨🇷