Costa Rica, the Miniseries, vol. 3

After 9 months without seeing a single member of my family, the reunion in Liberia was sweet. In all sincerity, living so far from my family for this long has made me value my family more than I ever thought I would. After a brief reunion with family, we went to the rental car agency to have our first encounter with our Volkswagen-esque minibus, which we quickly dubbed “The Rattler” for its vociferous performance on Costa Rican gravel roads.

Arriving at the house that had been rented by my brother and a number of the wedding guests was a surreal experience. Various samples of the weeks quotes regarding the house: “This feels like a Real World house”; “This is probably where Brad Pitt stays when he comes to Costa Rica”; and my favorite, by Sam Bell, who performed the wedding ceremony, “I don’t think I’m cool enough to be staying in a house like this”. The house was really amazing, and while I only have one photo of it to post for now, you’ll just have to trust my word on it. Or you could take a guess based on the fact that it’s on sale for over $4,000,000 in Costa Rica.

The week of the wedding started incident-free for about the first three days, other than the minor incident of an argument over whether or not it was dangerous for drunk people to jump from the second floor into a 4-foot-deep pool. Seems like an obvious answer, but you’d be surprised how convincing drunken physics lessons and buoyancy experiments can be. A few days into our time there, a group of us went to a zip-line tour through the jungle. The gist of the concept of a zip-line tour is that on platforms high above the ground you hook a harness into a steel cable and are pushed from tree to tree at frightening speeds. Knowing how dangerous pulley systems are from my climbing days all I could picture the whole time was someone getting a finger snagged in the pulley. Thankfully, no fingers were severed in the tour and adrenaline was pumped through the veins of all.

I know I haven't gotten there yet in the written miniseries, but here are a couple pictures from the wedding. I know present Mr. and Mrs. Aaron and Bianca Moore.

The groomsmen in front of the aforementioned house.

The wedding pictures turned out really, really beautiful.

The wedding party, there were about 30 of us total.

The car for the week, "The Rattler."

My dad and I at a black sand beach we visited.

A giant iguana we saw on the way back from the black sand beach. My dad tried to grab it and it tail-whipped him.

The much celebrated house we stayed in...really amazing.

Groomsmen Sean and TJ with my dad at the black sand beach