First day and Hanging Bridges

Rachel and I just got back from Costa Rica. We've been meaning to post pictures, and a light travelogue, but haven't had a chance until now. Work has been SUPER busy for both of us, and we've been putting in long hours to get caught up. So without further ado, I present Arenal, and the Hanging Bridges tour.

We had been looking forward to our trip for the last two months. I had spent almost all of my free time looking for information about Costa Rica, and we were glad to finally get to spend so much time together.

We left on Friday May 2nd, at around 7 at night, and got into San Jose at 5:00 AM. Neither of us have ever been on a flight with so many babies. They were at least 10-12 babies on a flight of around 80 people. Normally, I wouldn't mind but this was a total red eye. Needless to say I didn't get a wink of sleep.

When we finally landed our rental car company was supposed to be waiting for us. After a half hour of twiddling our thumbs, we just got a cab and went to the rental car office. People are just slow moving in Costa Rica, and we were pretty anxious to get started, it wasn't until about 8:00 AM that we finally got going on the road.

We were blown away by how green the whole country is, and how nauseous the roads make you. There are hills and mountains everywhere in Costa Rica, and so most of the roads are really, really windy.

After getting to La Fortuna (the main tourist town near the Arenal Volcano) we just wanted to sleep. However, the hotel wouldn't check us in until 2:00 P.M...bummer. We went to grab a bite to eat at a really good wood fired pizza shop. It was every bit as good as CPK. After eating, we both felt like zombies, and when we finally checked in we laid on the bed and just crashed. We were asleep until the next morning.

We decided to do the Hanging Bridges tour our first day. There are somewhere around 15 suspension bridges in the middle of rain forest preserve. I have never seen anything like it. We didn't see too many animals, but the scenery more than made up for it. Towards the end we got lucky and saw a couple of spider monkeys (which people don't see a whole lot of in Costa Rica, because they're hard to spot). Those things jumped all over the place, it was incredible.

I hope you enjoy our pictures below, and I'll continue our travelogue tomorrow.

This is the view from the top of one of the largest bridges in the tour...Amazing

Rachel looking cute, with a nice waterfall in the background.

This tree was HUGE. I could fit inside of it's roots.

This was one of the first bridges in the tour.