The longest post.

So...we got married!...and thought we'd make a blog to make it easier to catch everyone up on the happenings. We had a beautiful wedding (thanks to everyone that worked their tails off to make it happen) on June 4th and were so lucky that it was good weather, seeing as it rained all week before and everyone at home says it's been raining ever since. Josh and I stayed at Little America that night before we flew to Costa Rica the next day for our honeymoon and barely made it to the airport on time (it is a long story, but let's just say that we're learning a lot about the differences between men and women). Our flight was long and so was our layover (a bit of an oversight when booking on our part), so we were pretty excited to be in Costa Rica. We had booked a company called "A Safe Passage" to pick us up at the airport and as it turns out "A Safe Passage" is quite a misnomer because they never showed up to the airport! So after being incessantly harassed by a Costa Rican with a "nice van, lots of storage space, only $120 to La Fortuna," we decided to rent a car. And YES, in case you're all wondering, we are old enough to rent a car as it turns out (in Costa Rica, at least). See? We are grown ups. But that actually turned out to be the greatest thing that happened to our trip because the roads were really easy to navigate and we were free to go wherever we wanted. I should point out that although the roads were easy to navigate, most of them were not paved, full of potholes, narrow, windy (well they were all narrow and windy), and impossible to drive on in the rain without 4-wheel drive (it was rainy season and we were driving a Toyota Yaris). But all of that made for some really, really fun drives! We stayed in La Fortuna first--home of Volcan Arenal--and hiked to a 70m waterfall and swam in warm little water holes at the base of it, then we spent a day at The Tabacon hot springs resort (thanks Jared), which was the most beautiful place in the world! There were tons of natural hot springs--some of them really hot--animals, and beautiful plants everywhere. Everyone we'd talked to that had been there described it as the Garden of Eden and that is probably the best description of it there was. It was a really relaxing, fun day. Then we hiked to a lava flow overlook at Volcan Arenal and came across a huge snake that we were sure was poisonous and ready to jump out and bite us (it was Josh that convinced us of that, by the way) so we took the long way around the snake. I learned on this trip that Josh is really afraid of snakes and spiders and bugs, and not helpful at all if we see one that is scary. Our next stop, after a beautiful drive around Lake Arenal, was Monteverde, where there is the biggest biological reserve in Costa Rica. We were only there for a day, but we did a cloud forest walk on suspension bridges through the reserve which was way sweet and we saw some cool animals. The night we stayed there I stepped on a scorpion in our hotel room and it stung me! Well, we didn't actually know it was a scorpion at first, and I probably would have been fine not knowing what it was, but remember how Josh isn't helpful when it comes to scary bugs? Well he insisted that we drive down to the main office with the bug (it was the middle of the night) and find out what it was. They told us it was a scorpion so Josh proceeded to look up on the internet whether or not the sting was fatal and then we both got worried that I was going to die on our honeymoon, and then the people at the front office laughed at us and put some yellow stuff on the sting and we went back to our room. It was pretty exciting, but we forgot to get a picture of the scorpion. We left the next day for Montezuma, our last stop in Costa Rica before flying home. We had to drive a long way on bad roads and take a really ghetto ferry (thank goodness for Skip-Bo), but it was well worth it. We chose the perfect destination to end our trip. Montezuma was by far our favorite part. We got there and had to check in at a different hotel because ours was right on the beach and not accessible by car! So they drove us out to the resort in their cute little beach cruiser (he drove right on the beach!) and we were really glad at that point to be there. The beach was beautiful (the resort had its own private beach), and it was about a 30 second walk from our room. There were miles and miles of empty beach to choose from. We had a king-size bed facing a huge window where we had a view of the ocean and could hear the waves crashing all night long. We played at the beach all day and did a zip line canopy tour where we got to stop and swim at a waterfall. The resort fed us breakfast and dinner as part of our rate that was delicious and fancy. The next day we took a boat ride to Tortuga Island and went snorkeling. It was our first time snorkeling and we loved it! We saw tons of exotic-looking fish, an octopus, a shark, starfish, and puffer fish (the coolest animal I've ever seen). We spent some time on the island itself -- it had white sand beaches and the water was great. We left that night for San Jose, got lost trying to find our hotel, and were ready to be in America. We left Costa Rica straight for Florida where Josh is working for the summer. It was hard coming straight here because we barely have anything for our apartment, we miss our families, don't have a car, and we haven't even opened our wedding presents yet. But it is the best time of our lives we can remember so far, because we are together! Finally!

p.s. see more pictures on Rachel's facebook page or Picasa web album (http://picasaweb.google.com/tresverte)