It's been my desire to head to Costa Rica the last four years; I don't know why but it kept pulling at me until finally Dave agreed that it could be our 2014 destination. I planned our trip for 5 months; pulling info from many different sources, thinking it would make us better prepared. Not really! I finally chose the coastal area/town of Montezuma and found a wonderful VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) for us to rent, which ended up being WONDERFUL!!!! With that region typically being a rain forest (and the house surrounded by rain forest), I planned our trip specifically when they had the LEAST amount of rain (so we wouldn't be rained out from getting to go on outdoor excursions). What I didn't realize, was that by us going at the end of their "dry season", many things we saw were pretty brown/dusty/dirty-looking, with lots of dry creek beds, etc. That also equated with seeing very little real "rain forest wild life", including seeing wildlife in the rain forest surrounding our VRBO. Add on top of that my getting sick mid-day on our first full day IN Montezuma and staying sick for the next 5.5 days until the end of Day #7, with Day #8 our last full day there before travelling all day on Day #9 to get back to Texas. Due to the length of my illness, we only got to do a few of the smaller things on my "To See/Do" list, not getting to do any of the major excursions I'd planned on doing (i.e., zip-lining, horseback riding, taking a 4-hour round-trip hike at Cabo Blanco Nature Preserve, etc.) So, I say all that to get my complaining out of the way, but also had we gone on all the things I'd planned on us going on, this gallery would have been at least twice-tripled in size from what you're seeing. I have grouped my photos by subject, to make it easier for someone to avoid looking through subjects that don't interest them. (i.e. if you don't like looking through a bunch of sunrise pictures, just skip my "Sunrise" sub-gallery.) As I look through these photos of our vacation, I still see so MUCH BEAUTY, just not near the beauty I'd anticipated seeing. We were on vacation for 9 days/nights; the first two were primarily travelling and getting to our VRBO just before sunset on Day #2. We stayed there 7 nights and ended our trip with a 20-hr travelling day on Day #9. As they say in Costa Rica though "Pura Vida", which translates to "Everything's fine!" Hope you enjoy!