Our Christmas Adventure in Costa Rica, Part III

The last part of our trip included a 4 hour bus ride through beautiful but very windy roads out to a town called Arenal. Nestled back in the middle of rain forest, Arenal also hosts an active volcano. Our hotel was remote to say the least, but the view offered a back porch look onto this famous volcano. It was cloudy most of the time we were there, but one night we could see tiny specks and trails of red lava coming down from the top. It was pretty cool. One of our biggest adventures of the trip was taking a canope zip line tour through the rain forest. I was thinking it'd be a fun, laid back way to see some animals....little did I know we'd be racing 660 feet above the treeline up to 35 MPH...yikes!!! It definitely got our adrenaline pumping! I think I actually let out a little Tarzan and Jane yell as I zipped across.

Ready to go wondering what we'd gotten ourselves into...the view was breathtaking!

Here I am leaning over the edge of the zip line before we went, you can't really get the proportion of how high we were. Felt like we were leaping out into the sky! I was so proud of Justin. Even though he's terrified of heights, he was the first one of our group to offer to go!!! He ended up loving every bit of it!

And then it was my turn. I was actually not scared, until I did my first zip! It was really high up there, my hands were shaking by the end. But way worth it, the view was incredible!!

Eight zip lines later we had survived our canope tour and patted ourselves on the back for our bravery!! We kept saying, "I can't believe we just did that!!" :)

After that, we were ready to relax a little. There are a couple of hot springs in Arenal, most of them overcrowded and touristy we had heard. So after asking around with out taxi drivers, we heard about this one local, family owned hot springs that was pretty inexpensive. So we decided to try it, and it was by far one of the nicest, most relaxing things we've ever done!! I love finding little places like this. The owner was so nice and explained to us basically how to slow roast ourselves in his 5 hot springs pools. It was wonderful. We spent three hours going from one pool to the next. Another little piece of paradise, and a great way to unwind from an exciting day!