Costa Rica 2008 - Day 1 - Boston to Alajuela

GETTING THERE

So I spent months reading the Fodor's Costa Rica book from front to back, highlighting and putting post-its like Chen used to do, preparing for this one week in Costa Rica. It was really stressful actually! But I was really happy to have made and rechecked my packing list weeks ago, because the day we had to leave I spent a really hectic day finishing up odds and ends at work and then cleaning the house after weeks of neglect. With the packing list, I didn't really have to think at all and worry that I'd missed something, and yet I still forgot my student ID (I actually stupidly took that out on purpose, but luckily I didn't end up needing it) and my mini alarm clock that I bought in Germany that saved me from oversleeping many long train journeys with Sam.

We were getting picked up by Dima at Andriy's house at 2am, so I had to bike all my stuff over there. I would've just waited to get picked up, but the other half of the stuff was already there, and I wanted to consolidate everything and make sure I didn't forget anything. I was so tired from holding up my huge bag of clothes right in the middle of the bike handle so that it wouldn't cause me to swerve into oncoming traffic that I was forced to take a short break at Sally's apartment on the way. Which was good because I had to say goodbye before she left for California, and then we watched a bit of the women's gymnastics uneven bars finals where everyone boohooed that Nastia Liukin didn't get the gold (pretty crazy the tie though).

Finally getting to the airport, plane leaving at 5am, no sleep for two days, and lots of baggage to carry meant a really cranky Ling. Fortunately the flight went smoothly, and we were able to avoid any delays, even though we were passing through Houston aka hurricane central (I checked wikipedia hurricane report every day, we were very lucky). They played Made of Honor on the first flight, but I fell asleep halfway through. That movie was basically a total ripoff of My Best Friend's Wedding with reversed sex roles and an even more poorly devised characters. Finally, around noon on August 19th, we arrived in Costa Rica.

CAR RENTAL

Course of action for travel around Costa Rica.

So everywhere you read about getting around Costa Rica, they tell you about how horrible the roads are and how you can't get by without a 4x4. We did like all of this research to get the best deal possible, and we still ended up spending roughly $520 on a Daihatsu Terios Bego automatic 4x4, which has great handling but a really sad engine. We could have gotten only the basic insurance and saved a hundred dollars, but we figured we might as well go all out and avoid having to think about things like if some crazy Tico cuts you off or you fall off a bridge with no railings or your car gets stolen because you left something of not much value in plain sight. We could have just taken the bus, but we packed so much into the itinerary that the inflexible bus schedules just didn't work out (plus the added laziness factor of not wanting to carry a giant sack of belongings around to the bus stop), and shuttles were only marginally cheaper. In the end I was really glad to have had the car because the whole experience of Costa Rican driving was totally part of the adventure (it wasn't that bad, and the parts that were were fun).

Our car.

The airport was relatively small, but customs was a lot faster than we expected. The car rental guy met us at the entrance with a little sign for "Didovyk" - personalized service! We waited about fifteen minutes for the driver and chatted a little bit about the weather, and finally we were taken to Toyota Rent A Car. The place is slightly outside the airport with a few other rental companies, which is nice because you avoid paying the airport tax of $12. There were a couple of companies that were slightly cheaper, but we read some horror stories so we thought we'd stick to a highly recommended company. Again, smooth service, free water and coffee - Costa Rica was really impressing us so far!

JARDIN TROPICAL B AND B

We headed out onto the highway for the short drive to our overnight bed and breakfast, Jardin Tropical B and B. However, since we were not exactly at the airport, we asked for some altered directions from the car rental guys. That was a mistake! Whatever they said and whatever we did was definitely not the same, and we ended up driving all through the town of Alajuela, which was surprisingly small and reminded me of some of the villages in Taiwan. I got super confused because it was only after we drove away from Alajuela that we found our way back, even though we were supposedly staying in Alajuela (turns out Jardin Tropical is actually in the nearby area of La Garita). It was lucky for Andriy's navigational skills, because I had no idea where we were.

I even asked a local in Spanish - also a mistake! It's sort of pointless to ask in Spanish when you can't understand the response (though I got back into the groove of speaking Spanish as the week went on, and it all sort of came back to me, for which I'm grateful). The thing about speaking a different language is that you have to be fully confident. I was afraid of sounding stupid, so I ended up being more timid, and since I was more timid, I spoke more softly and my voice wavered, and since I spoke more softly and my voice wavered, the guy couldn't understand what I was saying, and since he couldn't understand what I was saying, I had to repeat it, and since I had to repeat it, I got embarrassed, and since I got embarrassed, I got more timid... really vicious cycle.

Andriy at the gate of Jardin Tropical.

So we chose to stay at this Jardin Tropical place because I read raving reviews on TripAdvisor about how homey it felt. It was... okay. The hostess Cinthya speaks excellent English and she was really nice, but compared to Oma's house in Cochem (where Frau Ostermann was basically like our oma) and this place called "Our Home" in Taiwan (where the place was full of people who were once customers that moved there because they loved it so much), it felt really a lot like a nice home that we were staying at and not our home. Cinthya was really accommodating, but I felt a little awkward because she just talked a little about what we needed and whatnot and wasn't super talkative (maybe we were also tired and not so talkative ourselves). She has two cute little boys that also speak English, but again, they felt like strangers and not like "family" as the reviews suggested. It was okay for us though, we were so tired anyway that we just wanted to be left alone.

When we got settled in I just kept thinking about our house in Taiwan, mostly because the room furniture was made of bamboo and smelled like it. We got the cheapest room for only $40, and even though it wasn't big, it was clean and the beds were comfortable (I only lament they were kind of squeaky, which was a bit annoying). We also had to share a bathroom in the hall, but there were no other guests sharing it for that night, plus it was really big and clean and smelled of fresh potpourri. There was also a TV so we could watch some Spanish pop videos and news about Obama.

ZOO AVE

Even though we were a little bit away from the town of Alajuela (which didn't really bother us because, driving past, it didn't look like there was much to see), we were just a few blocks away from the zoo. We got to Jardin Tropical around 2pm, but it was over an hour later when we left for the zoo. I don't know what took so long, we just kept reorganizing stuff, leaving, forgetting something, coming back, reorganizing again, etc. On one of the rounds I helped kick a soccer ball to some local boy, which made me feel super cool.

The road to the zoo was lined with banana and coconut trees, which reminded me of Taiwan for yet a third time. It's interesting because the rest of Costa Rica wasn't all that similar (with some exceptions), but that first day really made me want to go home. Andriy had never seen a banana tree before, so I told him he just had to go visit Taiwan with me sometime. We took a couple of pictures on the road, and all these cars driving by honked at us, which made me feel really touristy and embarrassed.

Andriy on the way to the zoo.

So the zoo, Zoo Ave, is not actually Zoo Avenue or Zoo Avenida, rather a zoo of birds with some other animals thrown in (Ave = birds... light bulb over head moment). They totally tricked us into thinking the zoo was free by the free entrance from the parking lot, but then you have to pay a little bit further in. I was a little more successful in speaking Spanish this time while we paid for tickets.

It basically started raining once we got there, but we had umbrellas and rain jackets, and the rain made for some really nice lush green pictures. I really liked the zoo because the way they set it up was really rainforesty to set the mood and made for a nice relaxing way to start off the trip. Andriy has his fancy camera with his new wide aperture lens that can take those artistic pictures with the blurry background, so everything takes like 5x longer because I have to wait for him to get the perfect shot (I didn't think I'd find someone who was worse about that than I was). There were lots of birds, and I even saw an ocelot! The only thing was that the animals started to hide once it really started pouring, so we left around 5pm.

Ling and Andriy at the zoo.

Macaws.

Peacock Man.

Monkey Woman.

Mural of birds.

Flower.

DINNER

On our way back we stopped at the small "restaurant" across the street from the zoo for dinner. It was basically a large open air dining area in front of a kitchen area with strings of onions and squash-like-things hanging on the way, and during our stay we came to realize this was a very typical Tico restaurant. The food looked delicious, steaming hot in the cold rain, and it was not very expensive (around $13 for the two of us). I got the fried fish, which was delicious, and Andriy got some sort of "fajita" which was really just meat with rice and beans but also delicious. I was just sad that the food got cold fast after we got it because of the wind, while I watched more piping hot soup being served to nearby customers. We also got drinks, and Andriy's papaya milk juice was really good while my tamarindo was very blech ("like bull's pee" - Andriy). I thought tamarind was this tomato-orange like fruit, but now that I look it up it actually looks kind of like brown edamame, so I'm not sure what I was thinking about. Yeah, it wasn't very good.

When we got back to the house we were covered in mud, and I felt so bad about trekking into Cinthya's house, but she insisted that we not care about it. It was so nice to have a shower, but I didn't figure out how to get the hot water until I was almost done (the cold water wasn't terribly cold though). I was glad that we were exhausted because I couldn't think of much else to do, and I didn't really feel like chatting (I guess I wasn't really quite ready to mingle among the Ticos...). We were so tired, in fact, that we fell asleep at 7pm and slept all the way until the next morning around 7am. Despite the squeaky bed, it was a great sleep! It was good because we didn't get to sleep much for the rest of the time in Costa Rica because we were so busy loving it!