May 16, 2012
Laura
and I arrived at the Tampa International airport at 6:00am for a 7:30 flight
which would ordinarily be plenty of time to check in and get through
security. Today, however, we get to the
ticket counter only to find out that they will not allow us to fly to Ft.
Lauderdale (our connection to San Jose) without proof of transportation into
Panama as that is where we are flying out of at the end of our journey. This
was news to us. Of course, at 6 o’clock
in the morning there are no businesses open and most of the Costa Rican bus
lines require you to call in a reservation.
Neither of our cell phones will make international calls and the American
numbers we try keep getting voicemail.
FINALLY we get a hold of two companies – one really, really nice guy
from Colorado who was trying very hard to get us a confirmation number in under
10 minutes (by this time it’s 7:00am), and another very friendly man from
Virginia who was able to pull it off. We
were checked in, had our bags on the conveyor belt, and were being escorted
through security and to the gate and it’s 7:15.
Our escort was kind enough to call ahead and let the gate know we were coming,
and he even jumped back on the plane to let us know our bags made it! At the very least, it was an exciting start
to an adventure.
The
rest of our flights, getting through customs, and getting to the Avis where we
would be picking up our rental car went much more smoothly. However, when we got to the rental place we
found out that we would not be able to continue with our original plan. We had thought about crossing the border into
Nicaragua to have the opportunity to go volcano boarding (basically sitting in
a toboggan and sliding down the black sand-covered side of a volcano, just to
say we did it), but our Avis rep. said we would not be able to take the car
across. It was going to cost us about
$100 extra round trip in taxi and bus fares to be able to do it, AND our car
rental was already getting more expensive by the minute. Our rep had us upgrade to an SUV from a car
due to the unpredictable condition of the roads in the country (another
$7/day), get an insurance policy which we thought was covered by booking
through USAA (another $34/day), and a GPS ($9/day) since most of the roads
around here are not marked with signs so following a map would potentially cost
us extra in time and gas. So, with what we
hoped would be the last snag in our travels, we headed for Manuel Antonio on
the southern Pacific coast.
The
ride was beautiful. San Jose is more
mountainous than I was expecting for the capital city, and it was fun to drive
through – scooters passing you with about 6 inches of space between the cars on
either side, no one using blinkers (kind of felt like home actually), everyone
going way over the speed limit on winding mountain roads, and poor Laura was
white-knuckling it the whole way. The car is a standard, so I couldn't have driven even if I wanted to (ahem, Nicholas).
Once
we got outside of the city there were green mountains on either side and the
drive was a bit more relaxing. We drove
along the ocean for a bit in Jaco, and through farm lands to Manuel Antonio.
We are staying at La Pura Vida hostel in
Manuel Antonio, and the staff has been very friendly! To save a couple of dollars we opted for a
non-air conditioned room and the owner was kind enough to bring us extra fans
so we wouldn’t die of the heat. With the
window open (with no screen) and two fans going it is really quite
comfortable! Tomorrow we are planning on
going to Samara on the Pacific coast of the Nicoya peninsula after exploring
the Manuel Antonio National Park and snorkeling at some of the local beaches.
Hasta Luego!
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