Beach Baby Johnson: Wednesday-Costa Rica!

Doesn't Get Much Better!

The morning walks were gorgeous...the first photo below is on the hill above our room and overlooks the main pool area/restaurants and beach. You can barely see the pools in the photo but this is where we spent most of our time. The walks were always full of new birds and nature...cool temps and a great way to start our days.

The Hilton was great about having scheduled activities each day around the pool...spanish lessons, water aerobics, towel animal making, nature hikes, bingo, etc. Wesley's favorite was Water Aerobics! At 11am each day the music would blast at the pool and the instructors (male) would use their Costa Rican charm and lead guests (obviously usually female) in a water aerobics class. Wesley loved the music, loved watching the women dancing and would wave his hands in the air while sitting in his float observing (this was in the same pool as the swim up bar which worked to our advantage!)

We seemed to find a routine by the first day and stuck to it. As I mentioned, Wesley did get 2 naps a day which were necessary. The sun and heat was very powerful and hot. We are proud to say Wesley didn't have one ounce of burn on his delicate skin (I was peeling by the third day!) because I was so worried about him that I forgot about myself. Truth is, even leaving the room for breakfast was hot and bright and you couldn't be too careful with the sun. We would go for a morning swim or beach stroll. Wesley didn't LOVE the beach but it was very different from home. While we were on a very protected cove on the Pacific coast, there were little to no waves and the beach had very dark sand. We saw some stingrays in the water and fish milling around but we still spent most of our time in the pool-that was Wesley's preference! It didn't help that the sand was hot as hell and we didn't have great shoes for Wesley. He has good "stride rite" shoes that he has been fitted for but we thought we could pick up a pair of off-brand summer shoes for the trip. I even tried them on his little feet while we were in Target but by the time we got to Costa Rica a week later and his pudgy "fred flinstone" feet swelled with the heat, they didn't fit! (I think the Fred Flinstone feet are from his Daddy!) By Wednesday we felt bad and dorked him out by making him wear socks and his good "stride rite" brown shoes to dinner! I am sure it won't be the first time we are ill-prepared or that Wesley looks silly as a result of his parents' poor judgment!

One thing that was great about the resort is that not only were the staff overly pleasant but so were the guests. As I mentioned, Wesley had made a name for us by the end of the first day. We would see people randomly around the resort and they would say "Hello Wesley"! One night we were getting off of the tram and another couple was getting on and they also said hello to Wesley, remembering his name. While he was far from the only child at the resort, I guess he was memorable! We had two families that we spent a bit of extra time with. The family next to us had a son, Ryan, who was exactly Wesley's age. The couple was traveling with their parents and the dad's sister. We would see them often and hang out at the pool a lot. They were from Canada which was actually very common, we met more Canadians than Americans. The other nice couple was a family originally from Oss, Netherlands...of course we talked about Chris' brother in-law, Johan who is also from the Netherlands to gain some common ground. They were older than us, had grandchildren older than Wesley but were such a lovely couple. Jack was retired from Glaxo Smith Kline (I think) and was now "just on the board". His wife was absolutely adorable with her dutch accent and they adored Wesley. At the same time they were so understanding if he had a moment/tantrum and were overly supportive of our decision to bring him to Costa Rica. They currently live in northern CT and have for many years but were obvious world travelers. I honestly looked forward to seeing them each day and chatting with them. While they were easily in their 70's, they did many excursions and would come back to share their day with us. Since there was only one restaurant for breakfast we would typically run into the same folks each day. They would look out for us and vice versa...NICE, NICE people! The staff at the Hilton were no different...always accomodating, always pleasant and would very much go out of their way (especially for Wesley!)