Okay, so this is my second time writing this post. I tried to get all fancy and add a map. The map had our location in Costa Rica. I did something else and the default map of New York showed up. I deleted that and poof, the whole post was gone. Yet another lesson learned. So now I will try to recreate what I had written previously....

After a short delay in Ft. Lauderdale, we made it to San Jose, Cost Rica. It was about 1:00 a.m. or 3:00 a.m. to us coming from Puerto Rico. Fortunately, we booked a hotel near the airport that included a shuttle and breakfast. It took about an hour to go through immigration, get our bags, clear customs, catch the shuttle and get to our room. Needless to say, we were pretty tired.

We planned for a day of recovery. We slept in and enjoyed breakfast. We went swimming and ate an early dinner. We had planned an excursion out for dinner, but we were too tired, so we went to bed early in order to get a good start on the next day.

After breakfast, we had arranged for a taxi to take us to the location where we had reserved a car. Only after we arrived did we find out that they would have picked us up for free. Sigh. At least we know now that when we drop it off next week, they will transport us back to the hotel. We knew we would get the hard sell on additional insurance, but we were not planning on the extra $100 in taxes. Oh well. All in all, it was a decent experience. Better yet, Liam was impressed with the car and the push-button ignition.

It was about a 3.5 hour drive to the house we rented. We made our way through the small town of San Ramon in about 40 minutes. After that, the roads narrowed and became quite curvy. At one point, Michael got something in his eye and we changed drivers. I probably would have puked if he had continued driving anyway.

We stopped in the touristy town of La Fortuna and had lunch. This is where many people stay for Arenal Volcano tours, hot spring baths, sky trams, zip lining and suspension bridge tours. We will have to decide which of these we are doing when we return for a day trip.

We had about another hour of zig zagging roads. We didn't get too far when traffic stopped. People got out of their cars in the middle of the road to look at nearby animals. Not sure what they were....a cross between a monkey and an anteater, but we decided to heed the advice of the signs warning not to feed the wild animals. The five cars in front of us not only ignored that, but they stopped to snap pictures. They even took out their young children so they could have a better view. I chose to video tape it with the window down as we drove by.

We stopped in a small town called Nuevo Arenal for some groceries. My two years of high school Spanish were not too helpful, but I was impressed with myself that I could ask if they had eggs. The young man at the checkout was kind and helpful.

We were eager to see our rental house for the week. We drove over a kilometer up an unpaved road. The property manager Jorge was waiting for us. He gave us a quick tour of the house and its amenities. Once we realized our location and distance to stores and such, we decided we weren't going anywhere else that night. We took a tour of the property and found the community infinity pool. Later, we enjoyed our dinner of grilled cheese and chips before settling in for the night. Time to make plans for the week.

Beautiful view from the community infinity pool