The Campanellis: Costa Rica 2017

Bozeman Airport before our journey to Costa Rica

Both of the kids loved flying, contrary to Mark & me. We are nervous wrecks when we fly.

LAX airport

We took the red eye from LAX to San Jose, Costa Rica. 12:15 am departure

The 3 of them fell asleep, I was up for 38 hours in a row. I have a hard time sleeping anywhere but a bed.

On the red eye

We finally made it and our first stop was a fruit stand for a snack. I had a lot of fun speaking Spanish again. It did make me realize how my high school really dropped the ball with the language options. We had a decent sized Spanish speaking population and if they would have set up a mentor program between the Spanish & English speakers, we could have become fluent while uniting us and learning to appreciate each other's cultures...but the schools I attended dropped the ball in MANY ways. My kids probably learned more Spanish in 10 days in Costa Rica than I did in 4 years of high school Spanish.

Coconut milk

Our treehouse bungalow surrounded by windows with an ocean view

The monkeys & birds woke us up every morning

The path to our bungalow. We stayed at Tulemar Resort on 33 private acres. On the property is the Sloth Institute of Costa Rica, 4 pools, a restaurant, & a private beach. We saw 12 sloths, dozens of white headed capuchin monkeys, spider monkeys, & howler monkeys, lizards of many sizes-some as big as cats, agoutis, coatis, toucans, macaws, a 3 foot shark, lots of crabs, snakes, dolphins, crocodiles, lots of colorful fish, butterflies, flowers & birds.

The private beach on the resort property - there were many times that we were the only ones on the beach.

We watched monkeys in the trees on the beach.

The volcanic sand was the perfect mud mask.

We loved watching the crabs on the beach

Searching for crabs & lizards

The kids loved the "fancy" drinks

Our bungalow

View from our bungalow

Our first breakfast at Tulemar restaurant

View from the restaurant

She loved her fancy drinks

One of the Tulemar pools

Catamaran tour

Captain Gordon

Parts of Jurassic Park were filmed in the area we stayed near Manuel Antonio

Gordon's favorite part of the entire trip was snorkeling - he chased the colorful fish

The boat had a water slide

He took his captain position very seriously

Walking through the Tulemar Property

"W" for Workiva (Mark's work)

We ate a lot of our meals on the beach

Hiding from the sun

Rainmaker hike

It looks scarier than it is ; )

Hanging bridge

These bridges and tree stands were extremely high up. Mark and I were freaking out a bit.

The guy who took this photo grew up in Rochester, NY (Mark's birthplace). We met some people at Tulemar from Rochester & 2 people from Faribault, MN (Amber's birthplace). There was also a man staying at Tulemar that runs a non-profit called "Reel Recovery" that had a fundraiser at a fly shop here & Mark won a fly rod through that fundraiser. So many weird connections on this trip.

We were so glad that it was cloudy for one evening we were there - the sun was out in full force the rest of the trip. This is another Tulemar pool.

View of Tulemar beach from a hiking trail through Tulemar property

Alone on the beach

Thousands of hermit crabs scurried around the beach in the evening

They played "Rescue and Release" with the hermit crabs at night

Monkey peaking over the roof at us during our breakfast

Watching the monkeys play in the pool

The monkeys played with the pool jets

Gordon in one of the Tulemar pools

Watching a lizard

Lizards

We took this trip to celebrate our 10 year anniversary! We are so happy we decided to bring the kids. We all had a blast. If we would have gone alone we would have spent the week talking about how much the kids would have loved to see everything.

Pura Vida!

We did a photo shoot while we waited for our shuttle - the locals joked about Costa Rican time which meant they are always late.

Mangrove boat tour - we did some touristy stuff between chilling on the beach

Making a "stamp" with a fern leaf

Mangrove trees

Slicing up a cashew fruit for us to try

Tulemar office - ready for our sloth walk. Sloths are hard to find unless you know what you are looking for so a guide took us around Tulemar property to find some. We saw 12 of them, both two-toed and three-toed. After the walk we realized they had been around us the whole time but we couldn't find them.

There was a Chestnut Mandibled Toucan & a Scarlet Macaw in these trees

One of the many sloths we saw

This was the day I saw a 3 foot shark in the wave coming at us & I got a small jelly fish sting, still an awesome day!

My spot for the week

We had to bury Gordon

We listened to howler monkeys howl at white-headed capuchin monkeys as they passed through their territory while we played on the beach.

Some brownies showed up in our room.

El Avion Restaurant - it's an American built cargo plane that was shot down over Nicaragua during the Reagan administration & then turned into a restaurant

View from El Avion

In the cockpit at El Avion

Agoutis in the vegetation

Crocs

On our drive to Arenal Volcano

Ready to zip line

Gordon backed out at the last second when he arrived at the starting point and saw it went straight down for the first few seconds.

After 2 stops so Ella could puke we arrived at Arenal Volcano and hot springs resort. We drove for 5-6 hours on winding mountain roads so she got really car sick.