I like writing down my lessons so I can refer back to them later. 😛

• 1 pair of shorts/5 days on vacation. That’s shorts to wear, not including swimwear. It’s ok to wear “dirty” shorts in the tropics, because even if you wear new ones every day, you’re sweating buckets as soon as you leave your place to stay. I brought 2 pairs, and thankfully had laundry in the middle.
• 1 pair of good synthetic t-shirt or tank per 5 days of vacation. Not including swimwear, again. I brought 2 t-shirts and 1 tank and I wanted just one more. Cotton is just to thick and brutal. Merino wool is surprisingly not bad, but wash it repeatedly before you go otherwise it is still scratchy, no matter what they claim.
• We traveled to 6 places over 17 days. That’s too much! We could have done with one less location, but ideally I think 1 location/5 days maximum. Even if you hate the place, you can go somewhere else. And that’s enough time to really get to know a place, as opposed to dine’n’dashing.
• My new sandals aren’t my old sandals. These ones started to rip apart at the foot bed after less than one year of use. My old ones lasted somewhat near 6 years of my kind of abuse. Tevas > Merrells? I don’t know, but I’m not impressed. (even less impressed that the underlayer is bright orange. Would it have killed anyone to make it somewhat brown?!)
• Driving around a country isn’t that hard. Time consuming. Occasionally difficult, scary or slow as hell, but definitely can be done.
• If you don’t like something, you can leave.
• I really love learning language (just Spanish so far), but holy hell is it exhausting! My pet theory is that this is why Expats and tourists have such great conversations – being able to speak English clearly, and know that the other person will understand you without problem is so reassuring. Every tourist we spoke with was so fun and friendly.
• You need more money than you think. >.> We accidentally took twice as much money out of the ATM (because our math was wrong, one tired day) as we thought we needed…and then we spent that too. We were terrified until we counted out where it had all gone.

And unless I think of something else in the next few minutes, I think that wraps up Costa Rica for this blog! I’m going to “best of” on Facebook and post a final link here so folks can find it, but I’m done here. Thanks for reading, Melissa! (…and my Dad :D)