Pura Vida - Part 3 May 8-12

So, the last few days we were in Costa Rica we spent on Tamarindo Beach in this totally awesome hotel (http://tamarindodiria.com/). In fact, I don't think I've ever stayed in a hotel that nice before...a huge breakfast buffet, right on the ocean with 2 huge pools. It was lots of fun. We got to Tamarindo Thursday night after a LONG drive in the car....it's really a good thing I don't get motion sickness. We decided to pay the obscene amount of money they charged to go snorkeling, which neither of us had ever done before, and booked it for the next morning at 6 am! I don't even get up that early when I'm not on vacation :)

The cost to go included the taxi drive there, snorkeling and lunch which means crazy Costa Rican man driving hideously fast on bumpy rodes, snorkeling and pineapple. However, what they don't tell you is how you get to the actual place that you snorkel at....see picture below. Yep, we paddled ourselves out about 30 minutes from this beach to get to the cove. My sister would have been so excited to do this....it's just her thing to workout while on vacation, but me...not so much. It was awesome though, because when we got out off the beach there were a couple of sea turtles swimming close by. Adam was so excited :)
We did the snorkeling thing, which by the way was a lot funner than I expected. We saw and got to hold: jellyfish, puffer fishes, sea cucumbers, a crab and tons of fish. It was so fun to just lay there on the water with our heads staring down at all the life below. I really enjoyed it and so did Adam. After our pineapple lunch, they took us on a quick tour of the jungle right off the beach we were at. I think I would have enjoyed that A LOT more had I, again, known that would be part of it beforehand. All I had to walk around the dry forest in was my swimsuit and flip flops...not the most conducive for hiking and lots of bugs. Needless to say, I pretty much got eaten alive on that hike, but we did get to see a howler monkey. It was just sitting up in the tree making it's really scary noise. Yea, I was scared when I heard it the first time. Again, Adam was excited and probably would have opted to stay in the jungle rather than come home with me.

After we got back from snorkeling and Danny and Lindi got back from scuba diving, (where Lindi almost died. She cut herself on the coral and there were some sharks close by, sand sharks, but still sharks. She was pretty shaken up about it :) we decided to do some laundry at "Backwash." We thought it was so funny that 1) we would pay a ridiculous amount of money to have our clothes cleaned and 2) we would do it at a place called "Backwash." They must not really know what that means.
After we ate at a really yummy resturaunt we came back to our hotel and just vegged....it was awesome. Adam got fried during the day, he forgot to put sunscreen on his back. Or rather, I forgot to tell him and actually rub the sunscreen on his back :) Below are just a few pictures of the native wildlife we saw scampering around our hotel.

Below is a picture looking at our hotel from the beach...it was fun. So, on Saturday we thought it would be fun to rent a surfboard and some boogie boards. I was so excited because I hadn't been boogie boarding since I lived in San Diego...a long time ago. Adam wasn't super excited...we got out in the water and he couldn't catch any waves for a while. But once he did he had fun.

Here is Danny, Lindi and I all on the same wave! I felt like a little kid, we stayed out till late Saturday night doing it and then woke up and did it on Sunday morning. I loved it and it made me miss my family. We are such beach people, we just love it and I knew that my mom and sisters would appreciate seeing it.

Sunday afternoon we packed up our stuff and drove up to Liberia (2 hrs) and stayed in a hotel that was close to the airport. We called our moms and then just waited. That was the day that I really started to miss Cambria and be anxious to see her and hold her. We were so busy during the week that eventhough I missed her, I didn't really have a chance to just stop and think about her and look at some of the pictures that we had of her. Adam and I had to drive Danny and Lindi to the airport at 5 am on Monday and our flight didn't leave until 1 pm. On the way to the airport, Danny remembered that they had left their coats in Tamarindo and were bummed about it. After we dropped them off, Adam and I decided to pack up and drive back to get their coats...rather than sit around the nasty hotel room. (It really was the nastiest one we stayed in. My coverlet smelled like someone had horrendous BO and just rolled around on the bed. I know...sick!)

It was an amazing trip, we had so many good laughs with Danny and Lindi and I loved being able to spend so much time with Adam. Thanks to both of our families who helped watch Cambria...she had lots of fun. It's got me thinking that this traveling stuff isn't so bad and I'm already scoping out where our next trip will be.....any ideas!

Pura Vida - Part 2 May 6-8

After we packed up all our stuff in Monte Verde we decided to head back down the crazy road and go to Arenal, where we had heard there was an active volcano and hot springs right on the mountain. Well, I guess those were true....just not how we expected :) This is the view of the volcano from our hotel room...not to shabby!

Since the tour of the volcano was going to cost us an arm and a leg, we asked the receptionist if there was anything in town that we could do for cheap and she told us that about 15 minutes away there was a really cool waterfall that was free. We were so excited! We stopped at the grocery store and bought some questionable lunch meat and extremely dry bread, made some quick "sandwiches" and started down the road. We got there and saw that it was $7 a person. That receptionist's family must own the land the waterfall was on....definately not free. Don't think that Adam didn't put up a fight about it though.....alright, so did I. However, we were not dissappointed when we saw it. It was amazing. Adam and I have this thing for waterfalls...we love them. It's where we went on our first date and where Adam proposed. This one was so beautiful. The water was cold, but it was nearly 90 degrees with about 46 percent humidity...so we weren't really complaining!

It's a ridiculously steep climb down and I'm not even gonna talk about the hike back out!

After we got back from the volcano, we got ready for the guided tour of Mt. Arenal. We were stoked to see lava and get up close to it. As soon as you pay your money and start on the tour, the guide quickly informed us that although this volcano is active, it doesn't produce flowing lava like some volcanos in Hawaii, it just spews out rocks and steam. We were pretty sure it was going to be lame, but it actually ended up being really cool. We walked through the area where the volcano had erupted and killed hundreds of people, and then it turned into dense forest and then it turned into volcanic rock. It was really pretty, we even got to see a Toucan. You could feel the eruptions and see the rocks come out. When it got dark you could see the red lava on the rocks...all in all it was very cool. However, there are not hot springs even in the vicinity of the volcano! There are some hot springs in a neighboring community, but nothing like what we thought. We were expecting to sit in hot springs that overlooked a gurgling bowl of lava. We are dramatic :)

We were starving that night so we ate LOTS at the resturaunt in the hotel....Lindi ordered a pizza and a huge bowl of Chicken Fettucinni. There was not one crumb left on anyones plate! I think that the waiters were a bit surprised at how much we ate :)

Pura Vida - Part 1 May 2-6

Welcome to Costa Rica! We flew out of Salt Lake on Friday at midnight and didn't actually get to the airport in Costa Rica until 1 pm on Saturday. Airport really is such a relative term, more like wooden posts holding up a shabby roof with no exterior walls. Danny and Lindi, the couple that we went with, didn't get in until about 2:30 pm on Saturday so we waited, on the floor, for them. We were so worried about making sure that we met up with eachother that we decided Adam and I would wait at the baggage claim for them. Not necessary. You get off the plane. You walk in to the "airport" and they put your bags on the floor. We couldn't have missed eachother if we tried.

Once we all got our bags and got our rental car we were on our way. I felt so adventerous since we didn't have a guide, just a couple maps and Adam and Danny's spanish. We stopped at a shack on the side of the road about an hour from the rental place to eat some lunch. It was called El Cebolla, or the Onion. Should have known! First of all, there aren't many places that we went that even had menus....they just served whatever they made. We finally figured out that it was rice, beans, chicken and salad. Sounds good, right? Oh my....we should be glad that I didn't get a picture of the chicken, I couldn't even tell you what part of the chicken it was. Besides that and the nasty fried plantains that they served at nearly every meal, it wasn't too bad. Infact, I didn't get sick one time on our whole trip.

I digress.....so we get back on the road and head up this CRAZY dirt road. It was so beautiful...the countryside, the color of everything, the basics of life. We drove by tiny towns with tiny shacks put together from scraps of other peoples homes. It was a humbling experiance to be there and to see that alot of people live with dirt floors, no electricity, no gas stations, etc. In fact, I think we went 3 hours without seeing a store or gas station. At about 7 pm we finally get to our cute little eco-friendly hotel in Monte Verde. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep as soon as I laid on the bed.
The next morning we ate a yummy breakfast of rice and beans, toast and lots of fresh fruit. That is one thing about Costa Rica that inspired me - they eat so much fresh fruit and vegetables, it was awesome. We were in the heart of the Cloud Forest and so we decided to go hike around for a few hours.....it was amazing. It's like something you can't even describe to be in the middle of so much life.

That picture above marks the Continental Divide, which means that water on one side runs to the Pacific and water on the other runs towards the Atlantic or Carribbean. I think that's what it means...

Yep, that was pretty much one of the scariest bridges I've ever crossed...in my life. It said it could hold a maximum capacity of ten people. What kind of people though, little midget people or normal people or little kiddies? I sure didn't stay on that long, especially when Adam was moving it all around. After we finished playing in the jungle we got on our way back to the hotel. On our way we saw a sign for a waterfall and thought it'd be fun to check it out. When we got to the little "toll booth" it said it was $8....but there was no one there. There was a note that said if the owner wasn't there than to leave the money on the table. If there had been someone there I would have felt bad trying to sneak in but there wasn't. What was so awesome is that this waterfall was right off the main road, just like a few hundred feet. We saw a few monkeys on our way back out and actually got a really good picture of it!








We felt like we were on the set of "Lotst" with all the trees looking like that!



When we had checked into the hotel on Saturday night Adam had heard that one of the best things to do around Monte Verde was a canopy tour so they booked it for Monday morning. After a quick run into town for some snacks we were on our way to "Extreme Canopy Tours" and pretty excited about it. It was even better though that I could have imagined it. Besides the fact that we got to wear those cool helmets and harnesses while hiking up intensely steep trails, we were seriously flying through the jungles and across huge valleys. I was expecting it to be small ziplines, but these were like four and five hundred feet long way up above the ground. I felt slightly bad because there was a couple in our group who were from California and just like us didn't really have an idea of what it really was. They were probably in their mid 50's and I think one of them was afraid of heights. The walks up to the zip lines were brutal for us and you could tell it was hard for them, plus the lady had a pretty bad heart condition. She kept on braking and then didn't have enough momentum to make it to the other side so the tour guides kept having to come pull her in. I guess they were sick of that so for the last 1/2 of them they just had her ride on the back of one of the guides. Anyways, it was fun. I loved it and wished that it could have lasted longer.

I'm not sure how far 750 meters is, but in the picture below Adam is stading at the beginning of the line and taking a picture of the other side and that little spec of white flying through the Costa Rican air is me!

Later that night we just hung out in the non-thriving town of Monte Verde and ate a little local cuisine, which wasn't too bad. In the morning we got up and decided that there must be trails all over this place, why should we pay to walk on them. So we found our own "trail", although I don't think you can call it that. We pretty much just bushwacked it through the jungle until we found some cool trees and waterfalls, which we did. Not only did we find those, but we also found some cool trees that give nasty rashes and have super huge thorns that like to stay in your skin. Yep, Adam and I pretty much got our trash kicked on that hike. It was fun, Danny is quite the trail blazer!

It's totally true that everything in the jungle is bigger, look at that ginormous caterpillar that Adam found! I couldn't even believe it!

Adam thought that this sign posted in our bathroom at the hotel was funny. It says "Tropical septic systems cannot handle paper or plastic.....Please do not flush toilet paper or similar. Thank you." I don't think he liked the idea of throwing away used toilet paper.

On our last night in Monte Verde we went on a night walk through some forest. It was crazy....we saw huge tarantulas, a sloth, lots of creepy crawlies and some birds. We had fun, even if I was slightly paranoid about huge things crawling on me :)

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention what Pura Vida means: Pure Life. It's like the Costa Rican motto and people say it always. Like if you pay someone at the cash register, instead of Thank You, it's Pura Vida. You accidentally run into someone, you just say Pura Vida. It really was so fun to be there!

Introducing Raquel Rigby!

This beautiful baby is my newest neice, the daughter of my brother in law Brandon and his wife Marci. She was actually born on the 29th of April, so we got to see her before we left on our trip to Costa Rica. She is so sweet and has a ton of hair. More like a mullet of hair...not much on the top but a ton in the back. We are so glad that she is part of our family and that Cambria now has a cousin on the Rigby side.
It was so fun to hold her....hard to believe that my baby was that small just 10 months ago. In the picture below, make sure you look at her feet....they are SUPER long!

Welcome to the craziness that is known as the Rigby Family...we are so excited to have you. We'll have to make some extra trips up to Layton between now and September because Bran and Marci are moving their little fam up to Oregon where he is gonna go to Graduate school.

Just the Girls

Conference weekend my two sisters and beautiful niece came down and it was so fun! Kristin bought tickets for her, Hannah and I to go to the Colbie Caillat concert at Tuacahn...which was awesome! We are lucky she bought them so early, because they were sold out the day that they went on sale to the public. It was fun to be just the three of us, Adam bravely stayed home with the girls. He had more fun than he let on. He said that he had put them down to sleep when Kristin's in-laws who were in town stopped by 5 minutes later. Maci woke up at the noise and so Adam brought her out to see them and tried to get Cambria to go back to sleep. That threw her into a fit of rage which sent her soon after rolling off the bed. My sweet Adam felt so bad!

Maci and Cambria are so funny together, they both get so easily flustered by eachother. They times are far and few between where they are both happy and smiling and getting along (hope that isn't a foreshadow of what is to come.) Clearly Maci doesn't like Cambria hovering over her :)

Pretty much all weekend the two of them were kissing, or should I say slobbering on eachother. It was so so cute....they actually would reach out their arms towards eachother and hug and just suck on each other's foreheads. Then we took the girls swimming in the not so warm swimming pool and it was a blast! Maci was ecstatic...I can't remember seeing her so excited in a long time. Plus she hadn't even gone into the water yet and she was super excited. Plus she had the cutest swimsuit ever, unlike Cambrias scary Strawberry Shortcake swimsuit.


If you look close, you can see the tattoo that I put on Cambi's "muscle". I bought them at Target a while ago and thought it would be fun to put one on her...she didn't mind but a lot of random strangers thought it was mean. Not really sure how it's mean to put something sticky on your childs arm that she doesn't seem to even notice...but whatever.

All in all it was so fun to have them down....I miss living closer to my family. It's so nice to live on our own and be independant but it's also so nice to be surrounded by family and people that really know you.