Up until this year I always said the best Valentine's Day I ever spent was the time I drug Aaron to a pottery you paint place and we painted coffee mugs for each other. It's something we still have to this day, the mugs as well as the memory. It was a lot of fun and I would highly suggest doing this for a date one of these days.
This year V-day fell on a Sunday. On Wednesday Aaron asked if I wanted to get away for one night and leave the kids with his parents! Of course I said yes and we decided to head up to the Arenal area where the weather is cooler, we needed an escape from this heat! We headed up without a hotel reservation, and without a plan, something we never do with kids in tow. We stopped for lunch at Mystica, a small cabina hotel/restaurant joint overlooking Lake Arenal. It's a gorgeous place with a nice walking trail which leads to their outdoor yoga studio built over the river, its amazing. Anyway, we had some of their delicious pizza for lunch and continued on our way.
Upon our arrival we found a hotel right in the center of town for $50. We were stoked considering everything online was at least $100. It was a simple hotel with beds and a shower, we didn't need anything more. After tossing our bags down we decided to walk around town and plan out our night. Right away we saw a place called "Lava Lounge" and knew we would head there for dinner. We continued walking and at the next block came across this truck with gorgeous planters and these really cool giant star hanging things. My description totally sucks but it doesn't really matter. What does matter, is Cynthia. Cynthia was browsing the items from this truck and we started chatting. It turns out she is the owner of Pure Trek Canyoning, an adventure tour which takes guests rappelling down waterfalls. She was one of those people you just can't help but have an hour conversation with. She invited us to be her guest the next day and check out the tour so we can bring our visitors and whatnot. As Aaron quickly ran through his list of reasons we could not go in his head, he soon realized he couldn't tell his lovely wife no to something so amazing on Valentines Day. So we quickly agreed!!
The only problem was, I hadn't brought any clothing that would work for such an adventure. I had skirts and flip flops, hardly the apparel needed for canyoning. To my surprise, Aaron had brought two pairs of sneakers along, (which is totally random in and of itself) but I still had shorts to worry about. I asked a man working in a souvenir shop where I might be able to buy a pair of shorts and he sent me a couple blocks away. Since I only understood about 1/2 of what he said I didn't exactly know what I was looking for. We came across a small shopping center and I saw a sports store, unfortunately they didn't have what I needed. Let me say here, Costa Rica is about the worst place for a 5'8" person to clothes shop. The people here are tiny and if they have a little junk in the trunk or over inflated tires, they still shove it into the tiny sized clothing. They don't make clothes for people my size and if I do manage to find something, I have to buy it in XXXXXXXL. And it's still tight. So with my spirits quickly deflating, I started to think I was never going to find anything, stores were about to close and nothing would be open on Sunday.
Out the store I went, turning right to head back to the street, then something made me turn and I spotted a small store tucked into the corner with regular looking clothes in the window. "Hey Aaron, hold up, let me run in here real quick." I walked in and whaddayaknow... clothes from... wait for it... can you guess... this is the amazing part... TARGET!!! I'm talking Merona and Mossimo, clearly Target and I have never been happier to see it. Clothes from home!!!! AND, I found a pair of shorts and tank top in record time!! AND they are cute! AND the prices weren't over inflated... it was truly a Valentine's Day miracle:)
So with bag in hand, we happily strolled back to the room and changed for the night. It was fun to wear jeans for a change:) We walked the 1/2 block to lava lounge and found a small table at the bar. The restaurant was really cute and the atmosphere just what we were looking for! After receiving our food, a man came up to our table to ask how everything was. Turns out he owns the place and we got to chatting with him, Aaron mentioned he is making hot sauce and Scott mentioned he is making chutney and a friendship was formed:):) It also turns out that Scott and aforementioned Cynthia are great friends who moved to CR together and opened Pure Trek.
So while chatting with Scott, Aaron ran to the car and grabbed him a few bottles of hot sauce. He opened one right up and tasted it, of course he loved it, who wouldn't?!!! About five seconds later he was called over to a table who was inquiring if they had any other...wait for it...another magical moment...any other hot sauce. "Why yes, we do actually," and he brought them the bottle he had just opened. It was really really hard watching this all unfold without making a scene, but I resisted. It was like watching a silent commercial... Pick up and look at bottle, put sauce on food, taste food, nod, pick up bottle and examine, show bottle to friend, talk talk talk talk about how fantastic the sauce is. Okay okay, it was a silent commercial so Aaron and I could only assume they were discussing the depths of deliciousness of the sauce and not their many adventures in Costa Rica. The point is, they loved it, at least we think so:) And the most important part, Scott wants to have the sauce for his restaurant! So it was a great night.
The next morning we got up and got ready for our waterfall adventure. Aaron went to find coffee for us and made a new friend...one of the street dogs we had seen the night before. Let me tell you, the street dogs in La Fortuna are the healthiest, cleanest, happiest street dogs you will ever see. They even have flee collars...it's a really cool thing to see the community taking care of their citizens:) Scott actually takes some street dogs in and adopts them out to tourist who want to bring home more than a t-shirt!
Aaron returned and off we went in search of some breakfast. We finally found a small cafe and enjoyed a sumptuous meal, which was much needed after the bucket of wine I had the night before! We arrived Pure Trek around 7:30 and checked in. There were two others there so we assumed it would be a small group for that mornings tour. WRONG! A bus arrived to pick us up which had a few other groups already inside. We drove about 20 minutes to the waiting 4x4's which would take us up the mountain. There we met up with the rest of our group, there were 40 of us in total. So five or six trucks were loaded with eager tourists and all of our equipment, and up, up, up we went! We arrived and everyone got on their gear. The gear included helmets, jackets, waterproof bags for cameras, and the most important, our harnesses. After a brief do and don't do speech, we were off! A short hike later, we were at the first of 5 rappels, 4 of which were in waterfalls, the other down a canyon wall.
Aaron and I were last in line, which was good and bad. Good, we got to meet and chat with some other couples vacationing and really enjoyed their company. Bad because the anxiety of the first 160 foot waterfall and the screams from the people in front of us really had our nerves going! Finally it was our turn! Aaron went first and I watched as they hooked him up, turned him around and sent him on his way. Imagine Ralphie on The Christmas Story as he is tossed onto the slide after seeing Santa only to grab onto the edge to get his last words out and having the elf's foot pressed onto his head and given the final heave down. It wasn't that bad, but there was no coddling, no "are you ready?"... just "GO!" Then it was my turn...oh no! The quickly strapped me in, turned me around and pushed a foot into my head. No no wait, that didn't really happen. I turned around knowing I had to lean back, couldn't quite make my body do it! Finally I gave it and just went with it. After a few (or maybe a lot) of baby jumps, I got the hang of it and went down down down to the bottom. After being unhooked and looking back at the waterfall we had just come down, we were hooked and ready to hit the next one!
The rest of the rappels were equally as exhilarating and we were sad when we realized we were on the last one. After the 5th and final, we had about a 20 minute hike to the pick up spot. We reluctantly got into the truck and headed back down the mountain to the Pure Trek offices where lunch was awaiting us.
We finished the tour with a traditional Costa Rican meal and the company of our new friends. After saying goodbye and a million thank you's to Cynthia, it was back home to reunite with our kiddos. Incidentally we did stop off at Cafe Macadamia for some macadamia pie and a cinnamon roll:)
Upon our arrival we were happy to hear that the boys behaved themselves for Judy and Giff, and Jax was able to put his Papi to sleep while reading a story...(Giff was reading lol). It's so nice to have such loving grandparents nearby, we are very lucky. A big thank you to them for making it possible for us to get some much needed time away!
Serendipitous is defined as "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way." That somewhat sums up our weekend, the stars were definitely aligned for us that's for sure. It couldn't have gone better and I wouldn't have wanted to spend it with anyone else. I love you my Valentine!
