This That And The Other
This That And The Other
45. Monkeys, Mimosas, and Memories in Costa Rica: Amanda's Red Aspen Adventure
Amanda recounts her all-expenses-paid trip to Costa Rica earned through her work with Red Aspen nail products, sharing the challenges and joys of her tropical adventure.
• Earned the trip by accumulating points through sales commissions from December to March
• Faced difficult decision to travel after father passed away two days before departure
• Encountered power outages from storms while packing the night before leaving
• Experienced bumpy two-hour drives from the airport to the resort on roads "worse than Walker County"
• Stayed at a resort with multiple pools, restaurants, and direct beach access
• Encountered mischievous monkeys that would visit balconies looking for food and shiny objects
• Participated in an excursion to natural hot springs near a volcano where Jurassic Park was filmed
• Enjoyed complimentary 80-minute massages arranged by her team director
• Attended special events including a white-dress beach dinner and "Under the Sea" prom-themed dance
• Found herself naturally waking up early at 5:30 AM each day despite normally not being a morning person
• Struggled with over-packed carry-on luggage and had to leave some clothes behind
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Welcome back to this episode. It's a man who takes a popover for a drink. It's a water, but it's flavored. Yes, okay, and you just finished your snack slash lunch that I've been waiting on you to finish so we can get started, which is some kind of little tuna pack deal, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I had to have a bite of something because I didn't get toast in Sunday school this morning.
Speaker 1:Those little tuna packs are pretty good, but there's not enough there.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you want a little quick protein or something like that, yeah, for a woman, a young child would be fine, but a grown adult. Here I am.
Speaker 1:A grown adult can't live off that unless you eat five packs at a time.
Speaker 2:I eat that for lunch and that's all I'll eat for lunch. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:If you could do it just right, you can slide it out of the pack.
Speaker 2:I would like it on some bread, but I just don't take the time to do it for lunch. But it's a good little snack.
Speaker 1:I know when, uh, I went to honduras. I think I took several of those maybe maybe I don't know, but, speaking of honduras, a place similar to that that you just got back from is costa rica.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about your trip to costa rica it's been a while two weeks so we gotta lead up to costa rica, you basically well, you won or I earned you earned. I earned it because I worked my bootay off yeah, you earn it from your nail business.
Speaker 1:You sell nails for red aspen yes is that how you would say it you sold it for for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I make a commission.
Speaker 1:You make a commission off of what you sell.
Speaker 2:I earn free stuff.
Speaker 1:And so from everything that you sold whatever like of a past year, From December last, december 2024, through the end of March.
Speaker 2:So you got four months to earn so many points and at the beginning of March I earned my points about the second week of March, so I was sitting there, so that one you all expense paid. All expense paid. I ain't never been nowhere. Yeah, you know where that's from. I guess everybody else won't, will they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they do, they know.
Speaker 2:So we got to lead up to the Costa Rica thing.
Speaker 1:If you want to.
Speaker 2:Like packing in the dark. Yeah, I'm a procrastinator, had to pack in the dark.
Speaker 1:So let's start with your flight. You needed to be at the airport on a Sunday morning. At what time? 4?
Speaker 2:3.50? 3.30. We was trying for 3.30. Because my flight I had my flight started boarding at 4.30. So we tried to get that, but my flight didn't leave until 5.01 or whatever. So we got up at 2 o'clock 2.15?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so leading up to that.
Speaker 2:Leading up to that a pack in the dark. We get storms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our power went off.
Speaker 2:Before that. This is why I may not have had a best of trip that I could have had. That don't make sense, does it?
Speaker 1:yeah, it does okay so you couldn't enjoy yourself, I could, yeah that's it.
Speaker 2:I couldn't enjoy myself. I like I felt like I couldn't let go and enjoy because my dad passed away two days before I was supposed to leave for Costa Rica.
Speaker 1:So this was on a Friday.
Speaker 2:So he passed on a Friday and I played with whether I was going or not, actually for the next day or so. I didn't have time. I had to decide yes or no. So I decided that well, with talking with Jody, we decided that it would be fine for me to go, that my dad would want me to go. He wouldn't not want me to go. I earned that. He was excited for me. So I was going. But in the meantime we have to go on Saturday to do some planning and we're in the funeral home and the storms start rolling in Just out of nowhere. The power okay. Now you're in the funeral home and the power goes off. That's a little creepy.
Speaker 1:And just right before it went off. I think that's when Nicholas called me while I was in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And he was at home.
Speaker 1:And he said, hey, power just went off. Is it a bad storm that came through? I said, well, we can hear it outside. You know it's getting strong. Got on the phone with him and it wasn't a minute or so and then the power went off at the funeral.
Speaker 2:That was weird. It went off and on it came back on. It went off and on it came back on.
Speaker 1:It went off and on, did it a couple, three times, but then it came on and stayed on.
Speaker 2:It stayed on, so we finished up there, whatever, and we head home.
Speaker 1:Well, we went to your dad's house to check on some stuff anyway.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, because we needed to go down there and make sure the storm didn't come through. Well, actually it did.
Speaker 1:Well, we just needed to finish some stuff. But when through well, actually it did. Well, we just need to finish some stuff. But when we left there, we just found out that trees everywhere I mean random you'd go a mile down the road and there's like, everywhere we went, we was yeah, there's chasing the storm yeah.
Speaker 1:So then when we headed back home, when we got down our road, just a few houses down before we got to our houses, then we saw well, there's your problem right there, with power lines down and a big old tree on it.
Speaker 2:A big old tree on it, yeah.
Speaker 1:So this is now we're talking say 3, 4 o'clock on a Saturday evening. Amanda's got to be at the airport by say 3.30,. Just say 4 o'clock at the very latest.
Speaker 2:At the very latest Because I had to go through customs and all that. No, no, no, no I the very latest, the next morning, because I had to go through customs and all that. No, no, no, no. I didn't go through customs at Birmingham. Yeah, I went through customs at Dallas, right.
Speaker 1:Anyway, we can get to that, is that right, okay?
Speaker 2:I get confused on security and customs.
Speaker 1:Well, you're getting me confused because you're jumping back and forth. So that's just with our time.
Speaker 2:That's just me I ADD. Yeah, so we Four o'clock at the latest.
Speaker 1:Anyway. So we had, Then we had some people bring some food. Right.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:So we didn't have power, so we we had to eat outside. So yeah, we had the people that came over. We told them say we can eat in the house if you want to.
Speaker 2:But it's extremely hot.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be hot, it's gonna gonna be cooler outside and that ain't saying much because it I mean it's not it was comfortable, though, to me it was comfortable.
Speaker 2:To you. It was hot, yeah, but yeah, so it got late.
Speaker 1:And then long story short. I didn't want to pay, didn't get, I went to bed I needed to wash, and so I probably got four hours of sleep, maybe, and you probably got four hours of sleep maybe, and you probably got two hours of sleep.
Speaker 2:I think it was 12.30 when I finally laid down.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I had to get up at 2.15. Had no clue what I really packed. I threw things in there. Yeah, note to self, I won't take a carry-on when I go for a long trip like that anymore. I was shoving and pushing Because you couldn't get it in the load pushing because you couldn't get it in.
Speaker 1:Because I couldn't get it in there, was it under your seat or in the? No? No, no, I mean my stuff in the in the carry-on.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I'm just gonna suck it up and pay for a bag. No, yes, I am no, I do a carry-on nope if you were a girl you wouldn't, and I learned my lesson because I had to leave stuff there, because I couldn't get it back in my bag.
Speaker 1:But so we got up that morning and it was raining and it rained the whole way there, lightning. All that got you there I was really nervous to fly but you gotta remember that we didn't have power all night long so I didn't even get ready. So yeah, so we're using flashlights and lights on the phone and all that, and they had said that sometime Sunday, like Sunday afternoon is when it was going to come on, so this is very unusual for us. We don't ever lose power. If we do, it's not very long.
Speaker 2:And I had just bought groceries because I knew I was going.
Speaker 1:So, I bought the boys you know all their freezer stuff. So our refrigerator is semi-full and so get you to the airport. I leave Now. You're checking in, you're doing your thing, right.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Well, you can take it from there, because all I did was drive back and wish I was in the bed and knew.
Speaker 2:I had to teach Sunday school and work, do some work. I was just afraid that we weren't going gonna be able to take off because it was still storming and all, but the flight was actually fine. I guess it had went.
Speaker 1:It's strange to take off in rain, though, it feels to me like how can you get airplane to, to go and even to stop, like landing in the rain. You know when we came back from tampa, that time you know it was raining when we came back yeah and it was like how are they gonna stop this plane with this rain?
Speaker 2:it feels like you just figure out another way to stop a plane. Why? Why are we not slowing down a little bit more before we hit that ground?
Speaker 1:because you'd crash. That's why because you have to be a certain speed, but you're still going fast, you don't want to stall out and then try and land. No, but daggum when you land and you're like and then when you yeah, it's called brakes and there's not a better thing than brakes. So I'm sorry. I mean you can throw that parachute behind you, but you're still going to need some brakes, Sorry.
Speaker 2:Well, these landings probably weren't as bad as the first time I flew by myself last year, that landing when we got to oh where'd I go?
Speaker 1:Indianapolis.
Speaker 2:Indianapolis. That landing was bad. It scared me. These were smoother.
Speaker 1:All right. So you're on the plane You're taking off. You've got to go where.
Speaker 2:Got to go to Dallas. All right, you go to dallas, you've got a layover a couple of hours, but by the time you get to where you're going, it's like you're glad you got that much time in between, because I had to ride the train to get to another terminal you don't want to be in a rush when you don't know where, and I'm like I got no clue.
Speaker 2:I'm texting people. I'm like, am I supposed to do this? Am I supposed to get on this train? It's called skyline. At dallas it was called the skyline. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that's what it was called. I'm like I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know if it meant I was supposed to get on there and go. I'm like, well, I got time, so if I'm not at the right place, so then we get. I get to the. What's that called the terminal? Is that? No, what's your different places? I guess that is the terminal.
Speaker 1:I guess so.
Speaker 2:There's where we're labeled like A, b, c, d, and. Well, I went to A and then they changed us to D. No, I went to D, and. And then if you don't have these notices on your phone and you're not like watching the computer, or whatever up there there was. I was sitting there with a couple other girls and they're like oh, they just changed our terminal look, this is.
Speaker 1:This is what gripes me about the world today. It's like so I can't just be a simple man and say I don't want to be involved with a cell phone and I want to carry cash. The world is doing away with what makes my life simple.
Speaker 2:Yep Right.
Speaker 1:Yep Cash should be taken everywhere, but now, everywhere you go, it's like they don't accept it. They want debit or credit all that jazz. And then when it comes to, like you're saying, with the phone, well, guess what? A lot of people use their phone to show what's on their phone to the ticket agent, or the boarding pass. But I actually had my boarding passes printed out, but also like what you're talking about with the changes and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:The phone is right, so if maybe she hadn't noticed it, we'd have probably still been sitting there you know yeah so we had changed terminals right there, but that we walked there, that it wasn't too far, but getting on that skyline thing I felt like I rode for 20 minutes. That's a big airport.
Speaker 1:Dallas is huge all right, so you get on the airplane so we get on at dallas what? How long a flight are we talking?
Speaker 2:dallas to costa rica was my american flag socks. By the way, I see your american flag socks. Dallas to costa rica was three and a half hours. It's not. It wasn't too bad. That flight was good. I think I slept a little bit on it.
Speaker 1:So you get there, you get off, but you rode with somebody. You had somebody on the plane or several people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had several. Okay, there were several people on the same plane from Dallas, so it's not like you land and like right now, what do I do? Yeah you got other people so we landed this little bitty airport, little bitty airport, and that's where you got to go through customs, right and all of that, and they're bringing you in through customs. So passport, all that yeah, you had to get the passport out, the other one, but you had to answer all these questions when you got there why are you here?
Speaker 1:do you have any fruit, did they ask you?
Speaker 2:that? No, that's on the way back. Okay, that was on the way back. What are you going for? How long are you staying? Where are you going to? Well, dummy me didn't know the place where we're going, so I'm glad the girl that I was walking with she's like you're gonna need this address, so she texted to me because so you just can't say, I don't know, but I'm staying at a hotel because I'm on vacation, yeah, and they're gonna be like what are they gonna do?
Speaker 1:like sorry if you don't know where you're going.
Speaker 2:yeah, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. When we got off and we got in there, I thought we're gonna be here for hours because the line was so long to get through customs but probably about 45 minutes and we were through there and then, um, we had buses waiting on us, um had the people with the little red Aspen sign waiting on us and from there it was a two-hour drive on roads that were worse than Walker County, where we live, and that's pretty bad. At some places it was a bumpy.
Speaker 1:A lot worse, a lot worse it was a bumpy, a windy. Were, they all paved.
Speaker 2:Bumpy, a windy Were, they all paved.
Speaker 1:They might have been paved, but they weren't good.
Speaker 2:Because when I went to Honduras.
Speaker 1:You went to regular roads, roads with potholes, and then you went to roads with just holes everywhere, and then you went to no asphalt. Asphalt, it's just nothing but mud. No, I think we got what. They all stayed at different place, of course, and we had different, but we were close to honduras.
Speaker 2:That's close to honduras, so you're a country over yeah. So we go there and of course, like we're all ready to get there, and of course they're like, oh, we're going to take y'all this shortcut way and we're going to let you drop by the gift shop. I don't want to go to no gift shop right now.
Speaker 1:But they do. They want you to Take me to the resort, they want your money. They see American, I didn't buy nothing. I didn't buy nothing. They didn't buy anything, I didn't buy nothing.
Speaker 2:I just got off and stretched my legs and got back on and said let's go.
Speaker 1:Alright, so two hour trip. So scenery on the way, nothing spectacular.
Speaker 2:Oh, there was some good scenery. You seen some volcanoes and it was just a lot of land.
Speaker 1:Flat Hilly, mountainous, the ocean.
Speaker 2:It was just a lot of land, flat hilly both mountainous, yeah, both the ocean no, I didn't say the ocean till you got where you're yeah till. Basically we got where we were going.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think we passed it and I missed it, but you know so so you get there and it's like when you first step out of here, like, like wow, this is amazing, or is it like you're just seeing a sign and having to walk to a hotel?
Speaker 2:You, just like the whole Red Aspen team is there welcoming you. That was, that was fun. The CEOs were there, they hugged your neck and welcomed you, and then you go in.
Speaker 1:Let's go back for one second. Air conditioning on the bus yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, or the wind is down. Yes, air conditioning was on the bus.
Speaker 1:Now, when we're talking bus, are we talking like a big van or are we talking?
Speaker 2:like a school bus, like the church bus, like our church bus, like a 15 passenger type bus thingy.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But on the way back it was probably a bus Kind, of, like a shuttle, yeah, a shuttle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's probably a better word a shuttle. All right, so they're welcoming you with open arms.
Speaker 2:They're welcoming and you got to go check in Temperature outside it was okay, just like a summertime day. Yeah, it was okay, just a summertime day, because you're walking through the opening of the resort, you're going through there and you go over here and you check in, you get your swag bag and my room's not ready so everybody else is going to their room and everybody else is not getting there at the same times either, you know, because everybody's flights different.
Speaker 2:So, um, my director's already there. She's like come, come on, get in, go change, let's go to the pool. So I'm like my room's not ready. So I had to wait about 15, 20 minutes for my room to be ready.
Speaker 1:No, big deal.
Speaker 2:Well, when you're standing in there by yourself and you really don't know what to do and yeah. I'm starving. So they got some food over there so I went and got a sandwich. It was pretty good. I don't know what I ate, but I got a sandwich, it was good. Then, finally, I get my room. I go up to my room, get changed. Oh, did we talk about the monkey stuff on the last podcast that I had to watch out for monkeys? I think you'd mentioned that. They've warned about it, warned about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can get. They have a lock on the ties at the top.
Speaker 2:Okay, on the inside, yeah, on the inside. So I really thought that was uh and that's, that's monkey proof in the monkey proof in the room. I really thought that was, uh, yeah, they're just saying that, you know. But okay, so anyway, we'll get to the monkeys and get ready, and it's like you just go Like you just have free range of this whole resort, resort Everything's free.
Speaker 1:So you just roam around the resort. You got different pools and different little it was like, oh my goodness, four, five different pools.
Speaker 2:There was like four or five different restaurants. You finally walk all the way down winding and you get to the ocean.
Speaker 1:So it's beach access. It is beach access Attached to yes.
Speaker 2:You just got to get there without sweating to death. I thought Alabama had humidity.
Speaker 1:It's hot down there.
Speaker 2:Costa Rica got the humidity when you can't even sit out at 7 o'clock in the morning and have breakfast without sweating and you know I'm not, I don't sweat much.
Speaker 1:You get close to the equator, but this is what happens.
Speaker 2:I was sweating. It's like you got to go by the pool or you can't. You can't hack it, I can't.
Speaker 1:Just think about living down there. I know Having a regular job.
Speaker 2:I guess you get used to it, though I don't know. I've lived in Alabama.
Speaker 1:I've lived in Alabama for 49 years and I hadn't gotten used to the heat.
Speaker 2:Yet how long was that? 49?
Speaker 1:you miss that again oh, a little over 49 in a few months. Oh so that night. So I'm good. What I'm gonna do, too, is, as on youtube, as we're discussing this, I'll I'll pop some videos of the monkeys. When you start talking about the monkeys, I'll put that on there.
Speaker 2:So that night we just got there. My roommate didn't get there until late, bless her heart. She didn't even get a welcome committee.
Speaker 1:Because everybody came in at different times.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, we had. What did we do the first night?
Speaker 1:we had dinner somewhere, one of the restaurants then see, I thought at the beginning of this, this was like a working trip, like y'all had a thing to go to like every day, that you'd have classes or whatever no, not this one, not the one you earned.
Speaker 2:Girls weekend what's called girls weekend? I don't know why they call it girls week I think y'all need to change the name. Swapping around girls weekend needs to be like hey, the free trip right, but girls weekend is like our conference, where you go and you do classes and you hear speakers seminars, yeah, stuff like that, um, but no, this one was a. You do what you want to do anytime you want to do it so you're trying to kind of relax.
Speaker 1:The first night went out to eat. I went to the ocean.
Speaker 2:We saw the sunset and all that, so that was nice the first night you should have took a picture of that, a video I got a picture okay I got lots of pictures and then the next morning, of course, like I'm not a get up early person, but let me tell you I could not sleep.
Speaker 2:I slept fine through the night, but at 5 and 5 30 I was ready to get up and go out and like I would just lay there because, because my friend over here, she was asleep so I didn't want to get up. Oh, hold up, we gotta talk about the room yeah, the room is not private at all, not what I consider private.
Speaker 2:It's one big room. Okay, that's fine. Your shower is behind a glass door and your commode is behind a glass door, that if anybody else is in your room, they're gonna hear you using the bathroom and you can pull the curtain, but that's still not privacy to me, I don't know. So there's no doors in there, nothing, as far, there's not a door to like.
Speaker 1:Make a room to make.
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 1:So you don't have like a bathroom, it's just kind of open. It's just kind of over to the side A big room.
Speaker 2:I mean, we'll show you a picture of that. That's strange, so that was very strange when I got there. It's not private, but whatever so.
Speaker 1:So what's the temperature in the room? I mean, could you get it down as cold as you wanted?
Speaker 2:it. Yeah, Okay, Because we kept it cold and then we'd have to turn it back up because I had it too cold. One day we left and I forgot to turn it back up a little bit. It was freezing when we came back in there.
Speaker 1:Well, I'd rather it be freezing than you get in there and it's too warm and trying to get it back cool.
Speaker 2:It'd take forever, yeah, so um, so you got up, got up like I was up and ready to go, like jody would have loved to been on this trip with me because I did not stay in the bed. I was up and ready to go and I'm never up and ready to go.
Speaker 1:I'm like, I'm like itching to go. I was like there's daylight, something's got to be done. Let's go find out what needs to be done.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't like they had blackout curtains and everything, so it wasn't like the sun was coming in and waking me up.
Speaker 1:I just Well, time change, different location, yeah, all this stuff, and I wasn't tired.
Speaker 2:Like I didn't feel, feel like I was tired, and so I was up and ready to go every morning by six o'clock like it was perfect. Um, and so the second day we have, um, sunrise and mimosas, and that that was the breakfast, and then the rest of that day you done what you wanted to do, whatever you wanted to do, and then our teams would kind of meet up and have lunch or dinner together. We got dressed up for dinner and went to the different restaurants. We ate lunch one day, all these days run together. We ate lunch today one day with the ceo. Then we had, oh, then, tuesday, we had an excursion you could have done extreme which was whitewater rafting, rappelling, zip line, horseback riding and hot springs. Um, man-made no, not man-made hot springs, natural hot springs, that's what I'm trying to say. Um, but I opted for the. I didn't opt for that one, I opted opted for the easy one, just the hot springs and lunch. But you had to ride a tractor to get there, after we had rode the bus again another almost two hours.
Speaker 1:That far. Yes, oh, I don't, I just said nah.
Speaker 2:Well, we wish the one that we had picked. We wish we had just stayed. Now, the view when we got there was beautiful, and we were told that they recorded one of the jurassic parks um at this volcano.
Speaker 1:So that's a tourist selling point. Maybe it is, maybe it was, but it was beautiful.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we'll put that picture in too. We got authentic Costa Rica food there, but it was like beef and pork. I got a pork chop. It was good.
Speaker 1:From the local pigs that run around on the beach.
Speaker 2:I guess so. And then we went to the hot springs. So from there to get to the hot springs you had to ride tractors and that was another 30-minute ride. It was crazy, but I mean it was fun. But we did have one lady. She doesn't do good with riding, she gets sick.
Speaker 1:And she chanced it. She did, oh, my goodness yeah.
Speaker 2:She did not feel good when we got there at all.
Speaker 1:How do you take a trip to costa rica if you're not good with riding? Well, I mean, we didn't know, we didn't know the plane I guess so she was fine on the bus no, she why would you put yourself? I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't, I don't know, I guess you know, we didn't know how bad, bumpy and all that it was gonna be well, I guess you didn't know it was a two-hour ride after you landed on the plane, so well, we did know that one, but we didn't know the excursion ones were gonna be that far.
Speaker 2:So, um, we did that excursion and then, so that was Tuesday. We got back that night, of course, we went and ate at a restaurant Wednesday. Yeah, wednesday, we had got to do what you wanted to do the whole day. And then that evening was the um dinner on the beach and it was all white, so, like you had to dress up in the white dress and then we had prom. After that, under the sea, prom dance, going away party, so we had to re redress for that that's crazy, so it was fun.
Speaker 2:So, look, you have skipped through and not said a single word about a monkey well, I was getting through all that okay, but you made it sound like you didn't see a monkey till the end of your trip no, I forgot what we did in the first day, but some of the people, um, some of our friends did. They got in their room. With them in the room the other lady thought it was the other lady over there making noise and it wasn't and she turns around and the monkey has stole their Chex Mix and out the door with it.
Speaker 1:That and bubble gum, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:That was another time that they got the bubble gum throwing the bubble gum at people. So then, wednesday is when we finally saw monkeys, and I FaceTimed y'all.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we fed the monkeys.
Speaker 1:You're not supposed to feed the monkeys, so they come up on your banister, they come up on the balcony and, like I really thought they were going to come in the monkeys You're not supposed to feed the monkeys, so they come up on your banister.
Speaker 2:They come up on the balcony and like I really thought they were going to come in the door and I got nervous of looking. Like we never had food in our room, except we did order room service a couple of nights, but like that food was already gone, so we didn't have snacks or anything in our room. But it was a sight.
Speaker 1:So why don't you feed the monkeys? Why did they tell you not to?
Speaker 2:feed them. I don't know, but everybody feeds them. They got to know that everybody feeds these monkeys.
Speaker 1:Why did y'all feed the monkeys when they tell you not to?
Speaker 2:Because everybody else was Peer pressure. They take it right out of your hand. I think I fed mine pineapple.
Speaker 1:Do they gingerly grab it?
Speaker 2:No, they grab that stuff Whatever you give them. I think somebody tried to give them pretzels. They don't like pretzels. They just shooed the pretzels away and walked on.
Speaker 1:It was funny Too salty.
Speaker 2:I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 1:I know the one you sent me. Is it a pineapple that he's eating? He's sitting on the banister.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or the railing yeah, that's the one I fed him and he chews on it. Then he looks straight up like he's sucking the juice out of it or something. Yeah, I think that's what he does and takes a bite, because you can hear it Really. I think you can hear it, I don't know.
Speaker 1:But I don't think so. I think so. It's just weird how he's doing it. And 9. If they get in your room, they look for shiny things, shiny things.
Speaker 2:So one day, the day we went to the hot springs, my fingers were swelling, so I took my rings off and put them in the safe, so there was nothing left out.
Speaker 1:And then one day you texted me and said, hey, I think I've lost my watch. Oh yeah, I had no clue. And then I told you texted me and said, hey, I think I've lost my watch.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I had no clue.
Speaker 1:And then I told you I didn't even put it on.
Speaker 2:You said, the monkey got it Well.
Speaker 1:I said no. Look at all the wrists.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, look at the monkey's wrist. That's the day we spent the whole day at the pool and I didn't even put it on, and I guess I thought I had put it on and I didn't. Oh, and on day two, my director, that's over me, she got us 80-minute massages. That was nice Was it.
Speaker 1:Yeah it was. That was real nice, so I'd be afraid it was like a deep tissue massage. You just tell them I mean she would ask you is that too hard, or I bet?
Speaker 2:yes, yeah, you would, you won't even do it. Um, they ask you if you have any points that need more. You know massaging or whatever. I was like nowhere on my back. No, yeah, my shoulders, my neck Back, shoulders neck yeah.
Speaker 1:But that was nice, they had a cold plunge 80 minutes, I know, I thought that was long, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2:They had this. So at the spa they had this rotation that you were supposed to do too, and one of them was a cold plunge, and I didn't have time to do it. I really wanted to do it, to test it, to see if I could do it and how cold it was, and then they came and got us. I'd forgotten about it. And they came and got us for our massage. We went in the sauna, we went in the steam room. The steam room, the steam room.
Speaker 1:It was your breath with the, the three pools of water. That was really hot. It was almost like each one was hotter yeah that was at the natural spring yeah, and you said so, the one that we got in was hot.
Speaker 2:I I think it was like my shower water. I like my showers hot so.
Speaker 1:So there's one before that, so it wouldn't have been as hot.
Speaker 2:No, it was hotter, so he took us all the way down.
Speaker 1:No, but I'm saying like, you took the middle one, wasn't there three different ones?
Speaker 2:you could Well, yeah, but the one we went to first, these weren't all connected. Oh, okay, they weren't connected.
Speaker 2:So the one he took us down to first it was just for red aspen people, so he took us down in there I know and uh, we took some pictures and stuff and, um it, it was hot like bath water and then we, there was, you could do a mud bath, which is not exactly what I thought it was it was. It was mud in buckets and you wiped it all over you and you go stand and you bake in the sun. I thought, when you tell me a mud bath, I thought we getting down in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought you got in mud.
Speaker 2:Well, the other crew did that, done the bigger excursion, so anyway. So we're walking around and we see another pool that says I forget what the temp on it was, and so this guy was going down in it and he's like oh my, this is hot. He's like, but my wife will like it. And I'm like OK, I'm going to try. I'm the only one out of our crew that tried it, so I went down. I think I went down three steps and I was done. I got back out of it.
Speaker 1:Just too hot.
Speaker 2:It was hot, it was really hot. Yeah, you could not have done it. You barely could have done the first one we went in. Yeah, probably not so.
Speaker 1:I don't like hot, hot yeah. But I couldn't do a cold plunge either. I'd be. I know when our hot water heater went out one time and I had to take a cold shower that was miserable. I don't know how people do a cold punch.
Speaker 2:I don't know either but I wanted to do it.
Speaker 1:I don't have the willpower.
Speaker 2:I totally forgot and we ran out of time to do that, so I had a good time. Would I go back? Yes, if it was free. Yes, I think that's the thing I like the most about it.
Speaker 1:I wonder how expensive it'd be if you went for four days.
Speaker 2:You just walk up and say I need a Coke.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would be nice I need a slice of pizza. But your trip back. You said you sat beside somebody.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, that was from.
Speaker 1:Oh, you landed in Miami.
Speaker 2:This time I had to go to Miami.
Speaker 1:And you had a three-hour layover.
Speaker 2:I had a three hour layover. I had a three or four hour layover somewhere in there, I can't remember yeah, because you didn't get back till midnight, one o'clock in the morning I didn't get home till after one o'clock on a monday morning.
Speaker 1:Sunday night monday morning no no, what am I?
Speaker 2:third friday yeah, friday, yeah so on the way back, I've had good flights. You know everything's gone smooth, except I did get nervous. Did I not text you when we was going through? It was the flight from Costa Rica to Miami. They started pulling people out and checking them and I'm a little agitated Not agitated, I'm a little almost freaking out because I'm like my suitcase is so packed. If he opened that thing, it's all going to pop out on him and I'm like how am I going to get everything back in here?
Speaker 1:That'd be a struggle.
Speaker 2:I was struggling and so they had somebody up there. As my turn was coming up, they already had somebody up there. She couldn't get my thing to scan. I'm like, oh, my gosh, well she had to type it in my uh, my, I was gonna say receipt my ticket, whatever, it's a boarding pass. Yeah, it wasn't scanned. She typed it in. Fine, we went on. I'm like, oh, I can just see my suitcase popping open and all my stuff falling out, right, and how am I going to get it back in there? Because it took me a flipping minute to get it all in there. To start with, I left some stuff at Costa Rica Two dresses and some shoes.
Speaker 1:Did you?
Speaker 2:really I did. They were sheen dresses. They cost me one was six and one was 12. I mean, you know, I wouldn't have ever worn them again anyway. But we got these swag bags and we got the biggest towel. It was so thick. I mean it was a good gesture.
Speaker 1:You had to make room for stuff, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's why I say, next time I will not do it Just don't take as much. You're there four days. You need swim clothes, you need dress clothes.
Speaker 1:You got too many dress.
Speaker 2:Appearance you're a woman you're gonna carry all these because you don't know what you want to wear so anyway. So once you got on the miami flight to birmingham, once we got on the miami flight, oh, every night there was a show. Forgot that there was a little these dancers like, one night was disco night, one night was, I guess, maybe mexican night like chippendale or what no I don't know.
Speaker 1:You just said these dancers I don't know what performers oh, that's even better.
Speaker 2:That sounds better well, whatever they come out in their little outfits and see there you go, there we go. Yeah, okay, digging yourself a hole no, because there was a 14 year old boy dancing well, nowadays it don't matter, it really don't know what his age was. He just looked really young. We done trivia one night down there, like in the main lobby part. You could go and ask for ice cream every night yeah, you uh text me.
Speaker 1:We need no answer for one of the trivia questions.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I was texting Jody, it was music trivia, but then it went into some movie trivia too, something yeah. Anyway, so okay, we're done with all that. And on my way back from Miami to Birmingham is just two hour flight, hour and a half, something like that. It wasn't bad, but this guy that sat beside me smelled raunchy. He smelled like poop.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:I think he was farting. I don't know what he was doing, but every time he would move in his seat and I'm like, oh my gosh, he's pooped his pants. How do people not know? I don't know what he was doing, but every time he would move in his seat and I'm like, oh my gosh, he's pooped his pants how do people not know?
Speaker 1:I don't know, but then he'd pick his nose I'd say that's nasty and I'm just like, do you not just?
Speaker 2:get any closer to the dang window over here. He stunk so bad, it was so bad and it was just a two-seater.
Speaker 1:Oh, there wasn't three seats on that one.
Speaker 2:It wasn't three seats, it was two seats, so you were really close. So yeah, was it?
Speaker 1:a full flight too.
Speaker 2:Yes, that one was a full flight. Yep, all of mine, but one were full flights. So the flight from Dallas to Costa Rica, me and this other guy got lucky and there was nobody in between us, so we had plenty of room and that was the flight I didn't have. I was a window seat, but there was no window there. I was so sad. I picked a window seat every time, and then I get there and there's no window at that seat, or it's, I don't know. I don't understand why I didn't have a window. I was a little mad because I couldn't get any good pictures. Yeah so, but yeah so my.
Speaker 1:You want something to glance out of. I know right there. So my trip ended with stinky people, but you had a good trip I did have a good trip and you'd do it again and you'd go there on vacation if it wasn't too expensive. And you'd do it again and you'd go there on vacation if it wasn't too expensive.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, it wasn't just like Do they have snorkeling and stuff like that?
Speaker 2:Yes, Now on the beach? Of course they did. They had people coming up to you wanting you to do these excursions with them. You could snorkel, you could kayak, you could ride four-wheelers, you could get a massage on the beach. I think we had we had one or two that snorkeled, we had somebody that kayaked. Um, I think we even had somebody get a massage on the beach. So, um, I mean it, it was fun, but I think I just couldn't relax and really enjoy it. Yeah, just because of the situation Of course so would I go do it again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd go do it again.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So in September we'll find out where next year's is. So get ready. Hmm, I'm going to bust it so I can get back. Why has it got to be so far? Why can't they find somewhere?
Speaker 1:I'm going to bust it so I can get back. Why has it got to be so far? Why can't they find somewhere? I don't know. I mean you could go to Tampa. Really, I don't know. Really, pick a place, panama City.
Speaker 2:Really no, why not? Not an everyday place you could go Vegas.
Speaker 1:There's plenty of vacation spots in the US that you could go, instead of going to Costa Rica. You don't think so?
Speaker 2:No I don't think so. That was like 230 women that earned that trip out of thousands.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, that is crazy. I didn't realize this company was that big.
Speaker 2:And it's actually small. Three women started it in their dorm room, so do they rent out the whole resort no, I thought it was rented out, um, but no, the whole resort wasn't rented out.
Speaker 2:But they, they did like that night on the beach, like you know. They set out tables and they had a stage and all this stuff for us and they had all the food out there on the beach and then I guess it was like a ballroom or like a conference room. That can be turned into different things. You know, that's where the prom or dance party was. It was in there. So I'm glad it wasn't outside because it was hot yeah.
Speaker 2:It was hot on the beach eating that night. Yeah, it was hot, it was just hot.
Speaker 1:Hot, so yeah, rain.
Speaker 2:No, it never rained while we were at the resort. It rained on us coming to the resort and it rained on us going back to the airport, but at the resort it didn't unless it was overnight, you didn't know yeah that's strange.
Speaker 1:I would have figured you'd get rain all the time well, he said this was the rainy season.
Speaker 2:You never know what you're gonna get, but but it was good. It might have sprinkled, but that was all it was good. I'm back. I'm ready to go back, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I need to enjoy it just a little bit better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm glad you're back. Did you enjoy?
Speaker 2:it.
Speaker 1:No, I didn't Too much going on.
Speaker 2:You had too much going on you had too much going on. Yeah, all right. So that's enough about me. I'm done. I've talked enough. This is not my podcast this year's well, this was yours.
Speaker 1:This time we are done and done yeah out of here. Yeah, shut her down check us out on youtube. Check us out on tiktok. Sometimes we do tiktok lives. We haven't done one in a while. No.
Speaker 2:We need to put some bloopers out.
Speaker 1:That's too hard.
Speaker 2:No, it's not, you just do it and let it go.
Speaker 1:What do you mean? You just do it. You have to go in and edit this.
Speaker 2:No, you don't Not a blooper, you just put it out there.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know about that he don't like the bloopers. It's too much work, it's not. That's the whole part. That's the whole point there it is work now if you've got a blooper in your recording.
Speaker 2:That's fine is that what you mean? No, when we started recording and there's a blooper at the beginning of this one yeah, but if you like, put them together.
Speaker 1:You have to reach, you have to find them, and no you don't put them together, you cut it so you don't know. You don't know what she's talking about. Go back to Costa Rica.
Speaker 2:I just post every day. I don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:It's different, it's different. Trust me On.
Speaker 2:TikTok, it's not Just put your blooper out there and let it go.
Speaker 1:No, because this is all intertwined. You see this right here.
Speaker 2:It's like a file it's called a laptop that you put this. You know you have to have. It's like it's hard. All right, clip it. Check us out on our next episode. We're out of here. Bye, see ya.
