Costa Rica 2023: 1438/2

This day was one of the most memorable on our trip.  Primarily because we all had a close and frightening call with a Rip Current.

We drove about an hour to a little hidden beach called Playita Linda.  It was a beautiful beach and we pulled our van literally right onto the beach.

This beach was spectacular.  Not only because of the pristine nature of the beach, but because it was so untouched and natural.  There is just something you cannot quantify about being on a beach with only a few people in sight.  What a place.

The Moms settled in to read and the kids and Dads headed out in to the waves.  We had a very clear discussion about Rip currents after seeing the posted signs all along the beach, but being in the water gave us all a very big taste of it.

The waves here were quite strong and Evie and Erienne decided quickly that the beach and sand playing was a much better option.

Bob, Lily, Jeff, and Nathan inched themselves further and further out into the surf, navigating the waves and body surfing one wave after the next.

In a very quick moment we saw Lily anxiously swim out of the waves yelling at her sister to get out!  It took us about 30 seconds to realize that something was wrong.  All 4 of them had found themselves swept up in a rip current.  Lily managed to swim herself out of it, but the 3 guys found themselves in it.  Melissa and I rushed to the ocean knowing if they were struggling there was literally nothing we could do.  I was able to sight all 3 heads and within 2 minutes all 3 of them made it out.  For us on the beach in was momentarily terrifying, but for the swimmers, it was awful.

The emotions, anger, fear, frustration, were mixed in with immense relief that the day did not end differently.  We all made a promise that out of the 1440 minutes we had in the day we were not going to let 2 awful minutes ruin it.  Life is too short and too long. Lessons learned, emotions felt, and experiences had.

We  took these family photos after the incident and honestly they are the favorites from our time together.  Love the ones in your life hard y'all.

 We stopped for lunch at this awesome little restaurant right off the road and found this tiny boutique shop run by this spectacular lady.  She makes custom clothing and is a phenomenal artist.  We each bought one of her pieces and enjoyed bridging the language barrier as she told us what she does.  

Although the beach had a scary moment, our day was wonderful filled with beautiful memories.

Costa Rica 2023: Rainmaker Park

Our first day in Manuel Antonio started with a trip to the Rainmaker Park full of spectacular hanging bridges, nature, jungle, and waterfalls!

Costa Rica is known for their export of Palm oil.  We spent several miles driving through Palm farms learning all about palm oil.  Palm dates grow on the palms, are harvested, and turned into oil for use in food or the beauty industry.

The Park is a 2 mile round trip hike that follows a beautiful path through the jungle.  It truly was magical and the trees were huge.  

We met this little poison dart frog on the way and learned all about his dangerous little self. Fascinating that they emit a poison toxin that they get when eating their main source of food, ants.

The hanging bridges were spectacular. and once we started we got to cross several bridges giving us beautiful views of the jungle.

Turns out you can drink the water right out of the mountain.  Pretty cool.

Our guide Elias was AMAZING. He could find any creature and all sorts of amazing jungle details to show us.

I think this bridge above was my favorite.  Such a gorgeous and fun bridge to cross. 

We found ourselves at a wonderful little waterfall and enjoyed an hour of swimming and exploring.

Once we finished at the Rainmaker Park we headed down to our local beach.  By local it was a super sketchy downhill drive to literally park right on the beach.  I have never experienced such wide open, clean, people free beaches in my life.  They were pristine and so fun!

We played for a few hours before heading home.  On our way back to the car a local kept pointing and telling us something was in the trees.  Us Americans thought he was selling us something and ignored, but he was persistent and finally we decided to see what all the fuss was....

A SLOTH, in the flesh and sound asleep.

SO CUTE!

Later that night it POURED jungle rain on us.  The adults decided it would be fun to walk to dinner in the rain so we set the kids up with chicken nuggets and headed down the hill to a little open air restaurant for dinner and drinks!

 Great ending to our day!