Costa Rica - part 2

Our Thursday flight to Costa Rica was via Newark, New Jersey, and it left at the unearthly time of 6am. Doesn't sound so bad, you say? Well, it's an international flight, and US customs occurs in Ottawa. That means arriving on time at the airport, and thus getting up at 4:30 or so. While security is up and running at 4:30am, US customs crawls to a slow start at 5, so you can get there as early as you want but then you're waiting for a long time for customs to open its doors. I was a little earlier than R&I and made it through to the departure gate with only a couple of minutes to spare. In the snaky line I had just cleared waiting for customs, R&I were physically a mere few feet away from me but a good 20 minutes behind. Once I was through, I contemplated how I might hold up the flight for a while to let them make it, but I was told I should have had them jump the queue. Past the point of no return, and without a phone, I couldn't do much.

But lo and behold, there they came a-runnin'! They'd frantically sold the story that they were reeeeally late, and people very kindly let them ahead. Turns out most people had later flights and were in no rush. That was close... I'm not sure I would have stayed behind with them...

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We eventually landed at San Jose (capital city) airport and took a cab to Carrie's hotel, only 10 minutes away.

Most of the day was lost to air travel, so we mostly chilled thereafter. Reuben and I did walk over to a nearby mall (surprisingly similar to those here) to check things out. It wasn't far away, but there wasn't much in the way of sidewalks along the route, and it was after dark. Crossing the street at one point, I noticed that I was stepping over a minor trench at the roadside, maybe 8 inches deep and a little wider. Where in Canada you'd expect a flat area at the curb, with the occasional drainage grate, they instead have a little concrete ditch that turns out to be difficult to spot at night. I tried a quick "Watch it...", but Reuben was already stepping down...

My warning may have been just in time; he had the sense to make his leg buckle as his ankle twisted, minimizing the force on it as he stepped into the trench. He fell rather hard and yelled for a spell as I looked around and wondered how hard it would be to get an ambulance in these parts. I feared a sprained or broken ankle, but a couple minutes later he was able to hobble along and it eventually got better. That might have put a damper on his vacation early on. Fortunately, any such dampers wouldn't appear until the following week...

We hit the mall too late that night, but the next day we made sure to go cigar shopping, and thereafter started an almost nightly cigar-and-nightcap routine.


Two untanned gringos, ready for adventure:


The hotel we were staying at was close to the airport but a ways from downtown San Jose. We never ended up downtown, as apparently there isn't a whole lot to see (and it's not a particularly pretty city). We did do a tour of a coffee plantation, where we learned a bunch of stuff about coffee production (and storage, such as not to store it in the freezer). During a presentation, Reuben and another tourist volunteered to go up front and learn some hands-on quality control at the plantation, i.e., how to smell/slurp coffee samples all day without wrecking the taste buds. They won a coffee-picking hat for their slurping efforts.


In an effort to save money, we thought we'd all share the one room for the first couple of nights. What we hadn't counted on was various acoustic incompatibilities with respect to nocturnal... oh, whatever, I'll just say it: snoring!! Let's say only half of us slept reasonably well while the other half looked forward to the next accommodations where we'd have separate rooms.

Here's our too-cold pool at the hotel.