Our honeymoon trip was divine. No email, no interwebs, no phone. Just trees, birds, mineral pools and the pulse of rainforest nights.

The drive to our rainforest bungalow was eventful. We hit up roadside fruit stands for local fruit offerings and queso palmito (heart of palm cheese, a string cheese made around the dairy farms in Costa Rica), roadside waterfalls, like you do…

We met a friend, gave him/her a strawberry. He/she wanted more.

In the spirit of this blog (and my real life), we honeymooned with budget in mind. We found our very affordable accommodations via AirBnB. Kathy and Bernie were our lovely hosts at Bio Thermales. We stayed in the tree house.

The loft inside, our pet elephants

The view from our kitchen/porch table, howdy ginger flowers

There were sunsets

There were sunrises

There was a lot of wildlife, like this sloth (furry ball in upper right-hand corner) sleeping in one of our surrounding trees.

We planned to cook for ourselves for both thrift and out of necessity (no restaurants or stores in walking distance). Cooking three meals per day (including two dinners ordered from a local caterer, a local dairy farmer’s wife) cost the same amount as our final, fancy supper in Escazu (suburb of San Jose), a whopping $64.

Every day we brought our host, Bernie, a full compost bucket for his chickens. He gave us eggs in return.

Our fruit (and delicious Cuban rum/leftover wedding wine stash)

Breakfasts were gallo pinto, Costa Rica’s traditional breakfast of beans and rice, plantains, eggs and sometimes meat.

Snacks were many; yes, that’s my partytime fave, radishes with butter and salt

And queso palmito with roadside strawberries (gluten-free crackers brought from home)

We did a few other things besides eat.

We swam in 10,000+ year-old mineral waters (8 amazing, different temperature mineral pools on the property). Despite all the time we spent in the pools, we never once pruned up. Maybe all those ancient minerals had something to do with that?