Kashley's BACK!!

Get it? Kyle and Ashley became Kashley?? No? Too much Ashley, not enough Kyle, our names don't go together well. If anyone can think of a better way to combine our names, let me know!
ANYWAY! We are back and settled. We even had a chance to go to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy out some of our remaining registry items. More on that later... maybe, I don't know if it's at all interesting to post about registry stuff. We'll see if I'm having a dull day in the near future.

You wanna' hear about our honeymoon?? I've been staring at these pictures for months! I mean, I've only been talking about it forever, right? Casa Chameleon looked too good to be true:

No way, right? Too good to be true, right? WRONG! It. was. awesome!!! Let's see, we relaxed, we swam in our own personal pool, we took a bath in the hand-sculpted tub for two, we listened to monkeys in the morning, we watched hummingbirds. We also tasted local fare, walked around the beaches and the town, went zip-lining, snorkeling, aaaaannndd we drank and ate... a... lot!!

Our personal chefs were fantastic, sweet, good at cooking! The managers were wonderfully helpful in planning our activities, and the locals were all really friendly. So, a quick run through with OUR pictures:

We arrived, Wednesday afternoon, plenty of time to settle in and take a swim in the pool:

Hello view!

Hello sexy! ;)

Hello jungle!!

Hello fabulous glass doors and spacious living room!!!

*Sigh* We had a very fabulous welcome dinner. It was fresh fish (sorry, I don't remember which kind of fish). Our chef Rob was phenomenal, a real professional. The meals at Casa Chameleon were pricey but admittedly the best food we had during our entire trip.

The next day we visited Santa Teresa, the closest town to our venue; a bustling surfing community. We had lunch, visited the beach, and bought some groceries.

Yes, by the way, the beaches were all this secluded, all the time! We couldn't believe it, we almost always had the whole place to ourselves, which, believe me, felt very exclusive and glamorous.

The next day we took a taxi to a nearby town called Montezuma; another little surfing area that's very hippie, very organic. Quaint:

 Hahaha, look at the man's silly face!!

 It was very sunny, I don't think we have a single picture of us without scrunchy faces. Oh well!

We were there to explore but also to go zip lining!

We don't have many pictures of the zip lining because we were wearing big gloves the whole time. I got a video though!

It was my first time zip lining and it was pretty awesome. No skill required, very tight regulations keep you from falling to your doom. Zipping millions of miles an hour through the jungle. Whoo whooooo whooo WHOOOOO!! Safe! Millions might be an exaggeration.

We also stopped halfway through to see some waterfalls:

I jumped in... it was fun:

The next day was a relax day. I think we did this just right; I don't think I would have enjoyed doing all our activities in the beginning or the end and then having all our relaxing days in the end or the beginning. We tried to intersperse them so that we looked forward to relaxing and then after a day or so of relaxing, we were ready to do some more stuff!

We woke up the next day to the melodious sound of the howler monkeys... Melodious? or Terrifying? You be the judge (turn up your speakers!!):

And in this next video, if you wanna' hear how they react to us, go ahead and skip to 1:35. Sorry I talked so much. I'm putting so many in because the sounds of the jungle in general were just too cool. All the videos are long and kind of annoying, but if you like listening to birds and monkeys and all that crazy stuff, we had so much great jungle all around us; give it a listen!

And if you feel like watching when I finally actually captured some, you can just watch this next video:

OK, sorry, like I said, you don't have to watch any, but I enjoyed listening to them, I like playing these videos and just listening to all the birds and monkeys outside our villa. It was a treat every morning.

We had a fantastic dinner that night of fillet mignon and seared tuna that just fell apart in your mouth. It was one of the best dinners I've ever had, I've never had tuna prepared that well. But, I've also never had tuna that fresh. It was a highlight I have to say. I just have to talk up our personal chefs again. Like I said, the dinners were not cheap, but this particular one was definitely worth every penny.

The next day, we went exploring again, just to the towns along the beach. We walked a few miles on the beach actually, which was also phenomenal; hermit crabs, fiddler crabs, little fish, tidal pools, fantastic rock formations. All around just a neat place (I usually hate the word neat, but in this case, it fits perfectly in my vocabulary as describing a place where you said 'wow' a lot):

Mal Pais, where the fishermen come and sell their catches of the day.

Neat!

Note the miles and miles of secluded beach again!

They don't like people (obvs) so we didn't get pictures of said crabs because every time you got close they ran away or huddled in their shells :) but also :(

I was, and am still surprised at the relatively small number of pictures and videos we did get. We spent so much time just experiencing it. I am happy we weren't over-encumbered by our camera/bloggie, but I also still feel that we came no where near capturing how awesome it all was.

So that was the first half of the honeymoon. Lots of large videos + pictures = slow computer. So I will dedicate another post to the second half tomorrow. For now, I hope this is sufficient since I've been away for so long. More tomorrow!!