Costa Rica Part 1

Flower placed at entrance to shower stall at Hotel Buena Vista

March 14, 2019

Dear friends and family,

We are back from our trip to Costa Rica.  The trip was thoughtfully planned by my sister, Barbara, who is more seasoned a traveler than I am, which made it all the more delightful.  We traveled with her and her husband, Ron, who celebrated his 82^nd birthday in a foreign cloud forest, as well as their son, David, and his wife, Simone.  We enjoyed getting to know David and Simone better. Simone turned out to be my Sherpa on some of the more perilous hikes.

On March 1 it snowed in Laurel. Bundled up in winter coats, we parked our car at the Baltimore airport at 4:45 AM and were on the plane to Houston by departure time at 6:00 AM.  In Houston, we walked as fast as our elderly feet would take us to make connections with the plane to San Jose.  No time between flights to grab anything to eat, and American carriers no longer provide meals. You have to purchase them. The pretzels were good and so were the cookie, the coke and the juice.  Horror # 1: on the HoustonàSan Jose flight, while fumbling with the ear buds to watch an in-flight movie, I dropped my hearing aid down the space between the seats. All I could see down there was a jumble of unforgiving metal mechanisms which would surely crush the hearing aid or put it forever out of reach if I tried to move the seat. Fortunately, the man beside me in the aisle seat located it.  I gave up on the ear buds and watched Can You Ever Forgive Me? without sound at least 3 times before eventually returning to Baltimore. It’s about a writer who did something bad.

Arrived in San Jose late in the afternoon.  Going through customs took forever, but soon we were outside looking for the promised van from Hotel Buena Vista.  At least 300 greeters/drivers were waiting, some holding signs that said things like “Welcome, Bill and Melanie”.  Total confusion. The hotel had advised us to e-mail them in advance to arrange transportation and we all had tried. All we received from them was a message, in Spanish, that said, “Thank you for your e-mail. We will reply as soon as possible.”  Repeated e-mails elicited the same response, so we gave up and hoped for the best.  After all, we had reservations and they knew we were coming.  Still, there we were, tired and hungry and stranded.  A lively little lady of about 70 seemed to be there to guide and direct the lost.  She had us sit on a certain bench and told us to just wait.  She stressed that above all, we were not to take any taxi.  Eventually a van from Hotel Buena Vista showed up. We had the first of our “Mr.-Toad’s-Wild-Ride”-type trips during our stay in Costa Rica. Up the mountain the little van roared, heedless of the abrupt no-guard-rail drop-offs  and the many rocks in the road.

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