The CR

The Winn family summer of vacations continues! Jarom and Alixa spent the last week in lovely, tropical Costa Rica, adding stamps to their passports and giving Alixa a great opportunity to work on her Spanish. They had a wonderful time, and it was a great way to celebrate the end of the school year for Alixa. She was very sad to see her students for the last time, so I guess she enjoyed her experience. Time will tell if she does it again or not, but I think that she probably will.

Costa Rica (For complete photo album, click)

The trip began on a Saturday afternoon with Jarom and Lixi heading up to Bountiful to see Jason and Annie and their two kids, who don’t seem to hate Jarom anymore, although they still aren’t thrilled with Lix. They went to a park and sat around making fun of whatever was on TV. Jason then drove them to the airport and kept the car so that they could use it during the week they were in Utah (This will resurface later on). They took the red-eye to Atlanta, where they met Bruce, Nancy, and the twins for their flight to Liberia Costa Rica, arriving at about 1:00 Sunday afternoon.



No surprise, everyone was pretty tired, so after a wonderful shower and some dinner, they went to bed at about 7. What losers! Monday they took a tour around the peninsula where the house is located, swam in the pool and had a nice lunch at the clubhouse. They needed to get groceries for the week, so the entire crew (There were 10 people at the house all week) jumped in the cars and started driving around looking for a grocery store that would meet Nancy’s high standards (She wants meat that isn’t disease-ridden and shelves that aren’t falling over, very picky). The first two stops did not pass the test, but finally they found one. As an added bonus, it was next door to a Papa Johns, so it was pizza for dinner.



Tuesday they got to go on a zip line canopy tour, which means that you strap yourself into a climbing harness and ride cables for hundreds of feet from treetop to treetop. However cool it may sound in your head, it is much better than that in reality. After the first few lines, they even got brave enough to do things like ride the zip lines upside down and spin in circles and stuff. As an added bonus, Lixi got hit on by the guide, so if things don’t work out with Jarom…




On the peninsula there is also a beautiful golf course that Jarom got to play twice during the week. He did OK both times; shooting 100 and 103, but he had a great time. All along the course there were monkeys and iguanas and anteaters to go along with amazing views. Some of the tees were at the high point of the peninsula, so you could see 360 degrees of ocean and coastline. He also scored his first birdie, sticking his 9 iron shot within two feet of the pin on a par 5. The course was quite fancy, and the players were given water and cold towels every 4 holes to stave off the heat. It was marvelous.



The other fun thing that they did was take a catamaran around the peninsula and up the coast a little ways to do some snorkeling. The water was clear, but the fish and the reef were a little drab. There just weren’t the same vibrant colors that they saw a few weeks ago in the Caribbean. They saw a few fish and some eels, but the real treat was found on the beach afterwards. Jolene’s live-in boyfriend found a baby sea turtle skittering toward the ocean. They played with him for a little while and took some pictures with him. In all of the animal kingdom, sea turtles have to be in the top ten cutest babies. They finally let him go to face the terrible odds of surviving into adulthood. Best of luck, buddy.





Now back to Jason and that car. In the middle of the week Jarom decided to check his messages to see how many people don’t care that he exists (Very large number). He had one message, from his neighbor. The message said that Jarom’s brother had tried to break into the neighbor’s home, and that he should call him to talk about it. So he called Jason to see what was going on. Turns out that Jason had wanted to visit me since he loves snakes and had Jarom’s house key. But he didn’t know which apartment I lived in, so he tried the wrong one. The neighbors heard someone messing with the lock and panicked, calling the cops. The cops obviously had to search Jason and question him vigorously due to his scary nature. There were some holes in his story (“I am visiting my brother, but you can’t contact him, he’s in Costa Rica. The car is my parents’, but you can’t contact them, they’re in Costa Rica. My parents don’t love me, which is why I am not in Costa Rica, etc…), but eventually they let him go.

In the end, it is a good story, although I didn’t actually get the chance to meet Jason due to the shenanigans. Anyone interested in another funny story should ask Nancy about the time she wet her pants on the stairs in Costa Rica.