me and the tree Only needed a jacket in San Jose. Very hot in other places
I've been home almost 3 days from our Costa Rican adventure but have been very busy. For the most part, I had a great time but the beginning was marred by having a cold for the first few days and worrying about a bunch of little things such as the two airlines we were taking not seeming to have any record of me and getting a call from Social Security (I applied on line for Medicare) saying that my application for a name change listed the wrong state for where I was born and I need to show up in person with an original birth certificate plus fill out a new application for a social security card which would include my parents' SSNs meaning I had to find all these things with little time. The kicker was they made the mistake, not me but I am the one who had to take 2 hours and drive 30 miles.
As soon as we got to our b&b, I noticed the zipper slide was missing on my suitcase. Did TSA try to break in? I had to pry the zipper apart to access our clothes. How were we going to deal with a broken suitcase? I bought some safety pins (not part of the 63% of Spanish vocabulary I had learned) and had an exercise band to keep the suitcase closed until on day 4 I managed to thread one of the zipper heads back on track. The suitcase held together until the very final leg of our journey. It arrived in Detroit in a container with bags of clothes spilling out. We didn't seem to lose anything though.
The nice lady at JetBlue gave us an upgrade without us asking for our flight to Florida. Yay! Big comfy seats. In San Jose, we tried to convince the Caravan people to give us a ride to the hotel a day early. They said they couldn't do that (though a ride was included in our price) but did flag down the only taxi there. We were very surprised to have a German driver (he claims 30% of Costa Ricans are German) and doubly surprised he knew where our tiny b&b was. We stayed in a nice, safe residential area near a huge park and lots of restaurants. Total cost: $31 for 2 which included a very good breakfast and snacks (the latter snarfed down before we could get to them). It had nice public areas and a cute courtyard full of mango and plantain trees where we could sip our wine. Downside: it turned out we had to share our bathroom with lots of people so the shower would have to wait until we could get to the fancy hotel. As alcohol is expensive there, I brought a 3 liter box of wine, which the JetBlue lady said was fine with their weight limits but Spirit will charge us extra. I said our luggage would lose 8 pounds on the return so not a problem. But on the way home, even minus the 8 pounds of wine and a few other things, our luggage mysteriously weighed the same with Spirit's crooked scales. They didn't charge us though. Other people said that their luggage weighed a lot more than they thought it should.
After enjoying maybe too much wine in our sunny courtyard, we went off to explore the neighborhood. First stop, at the ATM to get some colones. The exchange rate that day was 571 colones equal one US dollar. Trying to do the math made my head hurt but I got out several crisp 10,000 colones bills with sloths on them. I went back to get more the next day. All are gone now except for a few stray coins including a flimsy 5 colones coin which is worth less than a tenth of a cent. They do accept American dollars but give change in colones. And their exchange rate is not very favorable. For instance, at one pay toilet it was 200 colones (30 cents?) or one US dollar. The park had lots of unusual birds in it and flowering trees. Also, very comfortable temperatures.We enjoyed our walk and went back there the next day to explore other parts of it. We ate dinner in a soda, which is their version of a diner. I got a plate of steak, rice, beans, plantains and onions. Tasty. But the best was the homemade ice cream. Over the next 2 days, we had cas (green guava), natilla (sour cream) and guanobarra (soursop). As we had began our day at 4 am , we went to sleep early. We had a nice breakfast of rice, beans and plantains before another walk enjoying all the different birds before we got a uber to our hotel. As we got there 4 hours before the regular check-in (they did give us a room after an hour or so), we sat next to the pool sipping our welcome drinks and had a light lunch. The hotel had extensive gardens and lots of birds so it was fun to watch them. I am glad though we didn't stay there for the first day as it was expensive and so isolated, we could not explore the city.
Soon t was time to join our tour.
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