Honeymoon part deux!!

I know I promised, like a month ago, that I would post the second half of our honeymoon 'tomorrow', but obvs I lied. Not on purpose though! Obviously Christmas happened and then New Years and obviously we and everyone else was busy. By the way, I hope everyone had a MARVELOUS Christmas and New Years! The man had a nasty cold, but our five Christmases were successful.

I tried to throw a New Years Eve partay but no one likes me, so no one could come. Sounds pathetic, right? Seriously, no one could come (I kind of take that back, but only one person could come, so we hung out with him but ended up at someone else's house party... someone who had enough friends to throw a party). I wasn't even upset per se that no one could come, I was mostly upset at the vast majority of our guest list that never even responded to me... Shame on you, you know who you are!! Yeah, I think even my parents had a New Years Eve party at their house... really makes me feel like a loser. Thanks 'friends.'

ANYWHOZIT!! On to what was promised, like a month ago. Where we left off, we had a wonderful first half of a honeymoon; relaxation, sun, warmth, fantastic food. I forgot to mention that during our first relaxation day, we got a couples massage in our villa. That was quite an experience. But you pretty much fall asleep during, so it doesn't much matter if your significant other is there or not :) What I loved most is that literally every part of me was massaged, including my stomach, which was so weird but so nice, and I later read in a Cosmo or somewhere or other that tummy massages are the bees knees! I concur.

The next day (we're still talking about honeymoon part one, when we walked along the beaches all day), we took evening showers 'cause we were gross and sticky, and we found a little scorpion above our headboard!! Now, when I say little, it was still bigger than any scorpion I'd ever seen at my uncle's house in Tennessee... maybe 2 inches of body and 1.5 inches of tail. That's not small... but I'm sure at least someone reading this right now is like 'Pshaw! That's nothing!' So I say little. My hero came to my rescue and very deftly killed it. Please, no outrages or rantings from bugs' rights activists. I don't know how to deal with scorpions, and we didn't want to take the risk of getting stung way out in the jungle. I can't carry Kyle up those steps (I am not naive enough to think that a smallish scorpion would really take him down, it's called comedic over-exaggeration, people!)

ANYway, so I was pretty freaked out but I wasn't going to let it ruin the rest of our honeymoon, one scorpion is no big deal, right?? On to the next day! We went on a snorkeling trip to Tortuga Island! Not the one from Pirates of the Caribbean... The one from Costa Rica:

This was our fantastic and gorgeous boat ride to the island. Oh, and our guide liked to showboat:

We snorkeled (I'll come back to that) and then come to the island for lunch:

 Our guide, Juan (I think, his English was great but with a very heavy accent), he was awesome! Drove a boat like a pro, found starfish and puffer fish to point out to us in the water, and made us lunch on the beach!

 The only other couple on our trip with us, they were Swedish I believe, very nice, and it was great having such a small group.

Birdies!

Of course, we also snorkeled! This was another first for me. I had an awesome time, but also got my first jellyfish sting! (It was such a fantastic vacation of firsts)

Ewww... It didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would (I have always been terrified of jellyfish just because I've never been stung before, so I hyped it up in my head as the scariest experience imaginable... not so), it tingled a bit, stung a little like... you know when you burn yourself? Not during the burn, but afterwards when if you don't stick it under cold water the burn lingers? Does that make sense?? How about when you handle jalapeno peppers without gloves? I did that once, had to bathe my hands in milk... anyWAY, it stings like that, and I didn't know what was wrong so I got out of the boat and explained to Juan that I thought I got bit or stung to which he immediately replied "Oh, yeah, you got stung" like it was no big deal and whipped out this bottle of vinegar out of nowhere and spritzed my leg and voila!! No more sting.

That was a very long interlude, sorry, but the point is, I decided to stay in the boat and get some footage of Kyle snorkeling and some fish!

The loved us! I guess they get fed by tourists a lot. They followed us around and hung out by the boat looking for scraps. Several times while I was snorkeling, I turned around and they were right on my heels!

Anywho, I had an awesome time for my first snorkeling experience. Saw tons of fish, and even though I got stung by a jelly, even that part was exciting, and I'll no longer be deathly afraid of jellyfish! Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking forward to my next jellyfish sting, but I'm not terrified of it anymore either. It was fantastic though, going to the jungle and then taking a day trip to an even more wild jungle complete with islands and lots of gorgeous, tropical fish!

That night, we went back to our villa, got bombarded with bats (we were IN in the jungle, so the bats were everywhere, and I'm totally cool with that, because the alternative is jungle mosquitoes, but if you let them, they'll fly right into your villa... Not totally cool with that) and checked for scorpions again before passing out. We heard these little clicking noises, which is normal, the lizards make those noises, and they're very very good at eating bugs. But this clicking noise was louder and closer, so just for fun, I decided to go investigate. I turned the light on in the kitchen and immediately started laughing before going to grab the camera:

Needless to say, it's easier to go to sleep knowing this little guy's got your back. Everything was cool until the next morning when I went to grab my bathing suit off the dresser:

OK, still not huge, but I had to use the word "big" here. I mean, come on. I lifted up my shorts and there he was, chillin' on Kyle's pants, as proud as he pleased, ready to eat me. He was about 3 inches long in the body and 2 to 2.5 inches of tail. It's safe to say I freaked out, because I was very close to touching him, and I was not happy. Once again, my hero came to my rescue, although he was not happy about ruining his pants (I cleaned the spot, no worries). So major kudos to Kyle for saving my life, twice! Good to know that this is the guy I'm stuck with for the rest of my life ;)

So, not a great start to the morning but still a very wonderful relaxing day. Our last full day in beautiful, sunny, warm Costa Rica. We had breakfast the next morning:

 This is how awesome our breakfasts were, in this awesome little cabana with only four tables (the resort consists of FOUR villas, that's it, so at any given time, there's only a max of 8 people there). Fresh flowers every day, ridiculously fresh fruit, coffee, and OJ, pancakes or traditional Costa Rican breakfast of rice, beans, and eggs (drool!!) in this beautiful location.

 Every morning was wonderful, every day was wonderful, every night was magical. Relaxing or exploring, it was the best time of my life. Oh, say hi to Oscar, he cooked our breakfast every day and was awesome!

*Sigh* Then we had to pack up and leave (haha, I almost forgot, this was one of the most comical parts because Kyle went through every single piece of clothing and luggage to make sure we didn't have any stowaways... Let's just say I wish I had gotten video of my sexy husband beating clothes with wooden spoons!). Lastly I got some footage of our little biplane trip back to the main airport:

It was so much fun! I thought these little plane trips were going to be terrifying but not so at all! So the above video is our takeoff and this last one is our descent into San Jose and our landing. I thought it was so cool how this major city is made up of a bunch of huts and tin roof buildings. Definitely no sky scrapers or masses of telephone pole wires. The whole experience was so pure and old world. I don't think I could call it squalid and I certainly mean no disrespect. The locals didn't seem to need fancy suits or tall buildings or shingled roofs. The live off the land and the ocean and everything's so much slower and calmer there.

Kyle already wants to move there. He is not joking... Have I told you about the fish???