Costa Rica Bound...

Welcome back everyone! The past few weeks have been hectic to say the least and unfortunately that has prevented me from being able to share our recent experiences. Last week we were in Costa Rica looking for our next home and this week I was in CA for business…

Well, let's start by rewinding a couple of weeks to the Costa Rica house hunting trip….

Day 1: It started with the usual 6 hours of flying. Two over to Dallas and then 4 down to San Jose. When we got to Costa Rica it was already dark, keeping its secrets of CR hidden just a little longer. By Costa Rica standards we got through immigration and customs with great speed and ease…a nice start considering G3 (Grandma Gi-Gi) was a little nervous about the whole ordeal ;-) But that was about where the whole thing started to unravel… We made our way over to the rental car stand and were quickly getting on the shuttle to go to the off site location. When we arrived I was informed that we had a reservation for a mini-car and not a mini-van. Hmmm, why exactly did I call to confirm the reservation with National in the first place? Anyway, the interchange with the rental car agent goes a little something like this:

Agent: "No worries, Mr. Cavagnaro…oh wait, we don't have a mini-van. Maybe we have a mini-bus…nope. Where is your baggage?"
Cavitaition: Points to left
Agent: Looks to the left and sees 4 adults, 2 kids, 6 suitcases and various small items like car seats and handbags. "Uh oh".
--- Time passes ---
Agent: "We have a land rover but that only seats 5 with room for luggage…you want that?"
Cavitation: Tilts head to side and says "huh?"
--- Time passes ---
Agent: "We can take you to the hotel in the shuttle bus and try to find you a mini-van tomorrow."
Cavitation: grumble, grumble, grumble…"ok".

So we finally get to the hotel and get the kiddos settled in for some rest. Oops, we remember that we left the car seat base at the airport…so I head up to the hotel front desk to see if anyone can help me. We try calling the airport…closed…but you can call tomorrow. I am too tired to pursue…fine….off to bed.

Day 2: AM comes around and I call the rental car place…they have found a mini-van and they are driving it over to the hotel…the day is looking good so far. Then I call American at the airport…"Yup, your car seat base is right here, we can hold it or you can come get it."..the day is still looking good so far. We head down and get some breakfast - which is pretty good….day is definitely looking up. We checkout, hop in the car and head down to the coast for the weekend. Before leaving, I got directions from the tourism desk so we were good to go. Within 30 mins we had taken a wrong turn and headed into Alejueja. There we proceed to drive around a lot, ask for directions repeatedly (no one speaks English) and continue to be lost. After about 45 mins we find a Burger King by the International Mall…why someone here must speak English….uh no. Oh wait, a customer overhears us and offers to help…in English. Bingo…within 2 mins we are on our way. We finally reach Jaco, on the beach, and due to the excursion in Alejueja we are late and everyone is hungry. So we head up to the hotel restaurant and eat…mistake! The food is terrible and expensive…but we choke it down, pay the bill and head to the beach. As yu can see from the pics, Kade and I had a blast building a big sand castle. Payton got a bunch of sand everywhere and started crying so she ended up taking a nap. After the beach, we headed into town and had a good dinner (at a restaurant that I had been to before and knew it was "safe"). Overall for the day…it wasn't too bad except for getting lost, a horrible lunch and the heat was pretty intense too.

Day 3: Pretty uneventful day. Kade and I spent the morning at the pool and the afternoon on the beach again making another sand castle. Kade did take the time to throw down some gang signs as you can see from the picture at the left... For lunch we ended up at a Gourmet Taco Bar which was good but pretty darn expensive. For dinner we ended up at the Hut…that's right…Pizza Hut. It was great. They had air conditioning and the kiddos ate a huge meal which was the real reason for going there. Then it was back to the hotel to put the kiddos down and to pack for our trip back to San Jose.

Day 4 onwards was where things got really interesting…. On the way back to the hotel in San Jose, we did stop at the crocodile bridge. Kade loved it and he informed me that he was going to tell all his friends about the big crocs he saw and that crocs were now his favorite animal ...

more about days 4-7 later...