Costa Rica – Day 1 – March 16th, 2015

We arrived at the airport around 9:00 a.m. in the morning. The airport was very nice. Immigration was really nice. Everyone had a twinkle in their eye. They encouraged you to try Spanish, but they didn’t force you to use it. They wanted you to learn if you wanted to.

Outside, our tour guide was not around and was not holding a sign as he said he would be. Immediately, it felt it wasn’t a country where you can go up to someone and ask them to borrow their phone without a fee. (I arrived in China and immediately met a Chinese guy my age and asked to borrow his phone at the Starbucks in the airport.) Anyways, after unsuccessfully trying to find internet access at a restaurante, we found a pay phone and called the tour company. The phone worked and they sent the pickup person.

There was another guy in the van. I thought he was a co-tour guide, but it turned out he was from Australia. We figured that out about 20 minutes into the car ride. We drove to the zip-lining resort which was about 1.5 hours away.

Zip-lining was great. We did the 8 or 9 lines with the canopy tour. The superman line took some courage just to climb the tower. It took even more courage to jump head-first off the tower, but it was great after the jump. I even went through a little opening in the forest at the end. We went back to the resort. Andrea had a “comida typical” which was her best meal of the week. I had “arroz chino” which was Chinese fried rice. I wish I had the typical food.

The sunrise was around 5:40 a.m. and sunset was around 5:40 p.m. We did find a great grocery store next to our hotel, so we shopped there at night. It was slightly expensive, but it was great just for the week. There was a Hard Rock Cafe and a McDonalds probably 3/4ths of a mile from our hotel, but it was too dark to take any risks walking there when we returned every night. We stayed at a Country Inn and Suites which was perfect as all the hotels nearby were on the tour stop. Thank you Jonathan for giving us the points for the stay. It was really nice and very safe. It was really neat to eat at places without any walls, windows, doors, and screens.

https://youtu.be/1x-7g1j-iGo