Costa Rica - March edition , Day 1

This trip to Costa Rica sometimes felt like it was never meant to be.  First of all, when we originally booked we were supposed to be going to Nicaragua - 3 nights in Grenada and 4 nights in San Juan del Sur, but then the President called for a cut to social security in the country and protests turned into riots where a few people died.  Jill's friends who were living in Nicaragua at the time told her that a lot of ex-pats were leaving until the political unrest stabilized.  Thankfully, it was far enough out from our trip and both of the places that I had booked had no cancellation fee at that point, so I did some research on where else Air Transat would fly direct and we switched our flights to Costa Rica.

Then, I had wanted to try going to the Caribbean side for this trip, try somewhere new in CR.  When I originally booked the house in Playa Chiquita, about 40 mins south of Limon, the drive said that it was a little under 4 hours...that's a hike, but doable, and I figured we could shave a little time off that because the roads in CR are really good for the most part.  But 60 days prior to when I mapped it out again it was saying 4.5 hours so I emailed the booking agent and asked and they said there is construction around Limon at this time of year and it could take up to 5 hours to drive there with no guarantee.  Yikes!  So I checked with Jill and Trev, who are travelling with us this year, Jill checked with her friend Ava who is joining her and everyone was ok with switching the house AGAIN...back to the drawing board.

We fly into San Jose so I looked on the Coast for rentals and a lot were clustered around Jaco, which is right near Playa Hermosa a surfing beach.  I found a few rentals on Hermosa, Trev did some looking and found some too and we settled on Villa Wanderlust just outside Jaco.

We picked up Trevor this morning at just after 6:30am and when we got to his house Jay said he was literally just waking up!!  A colleague had texted him at 6:27am and woken him up, he had set his alarm incorrectly I think.  After Trev we picked up Jill and then headed down to Brock Rd and the 407 to meet Ava at the GO carpool lot.  We got there about 7:10am and then were on our way to the airport.  The girls had asked us how long it would take to get to the airport once we picked up Ava and I said "I think about 30 mins from there"...Trev and Jill both said longer, Jay agreed with me (but then somehow this became the challenge that he was going to win) and so a timer was set and it took 29:30 approx (I don't know the exact but it was between 29 and 30 mins) until we had our parking ticket in hand and were entering Viscount parking.

We had one check bag - for Stanleys and sunscreen basically! So got that all checked in, the boys had to check in with the rep as well because they're booked in the Emergency Exit row so needed to be assessed to ensure they were able bodied, over 17, spoke fluent English or French and were willing to assist in the event of an emergency.  Turned out those seats sucked, they didn't recline and had zero extra leg room..so I think I'll change their seats for the way home.

The flight was uneventful, except with Air Transat apparently you have to download their entertainment app but then ALSO download the content (like Netflix downloads), so none of us had done that.  We just downloaded the app in the airport but had no content.  The girls and I had Netflix downloads on our phones, so that's what we watched during the flight.  They ran the movie Maze Runner on the old school movie screens that came out of the ceiling!  I haven't seen those in years, and the audio on the right side of the plane wasn't working, lol - we were on the left, but it didn't lend me a lot of confidence in the plane!  I had some concerns over the girls and the movie on the screen since half of it is set in a medical lab and the other half of it features zombies!  Good lord.  But they were good, I told them it wasn't a movie that they could watch and they focused on their own screens and didn't watch the movie.

We have arrived!!

Jai, the Host of our AirBNB place, gave me directions on WhatsApp to a restaurant near her house - there is a road that isn't a road so she wants to meet us there and drive us up to the house.

We picked up tequila in the airport at Duty Free and Ron Zacapa - between us we have 10 bottles of tequila and 2 bottles of rum.



We picked up our rental cars at Economy, the cost of the rental was approx $130 USD for the week, we got 2 cars this trip, one for Jay and the girls and I and one for Trev, Jill, Ava and Diana (who didn't end up coming because she and Trev are no longer).  I briefly looked into how much it would be to get one 7 seater car, but it was more expensive so we just stuck with the two vehicles.  We got Hyundai Tucson - and we got the letter from Insurance which took the total price down from just under $800 total (yes you read that right, over $600 in insurance!) to $433 for us and Trev was just under $500.  Same car.  LOL.  The guy that was helping me out had 19 year old identical twin girls and a 20 year old daughter as well - so he gave us a discount AND gave us a brand new car!  I guess sometimes the girls can save us money too - but not often!

I asked Jai, short for Jaime, if there was a grocery store on the way that we could stop at and she sent that link via WhatsApp so we headed for the grocery store first.

As we got in the cars I asked Jill if she was a good navigator and she said "I'm an excellent navigator" so I said that we would follow them because Jay sometimes doesn't pay attention or wants to send emails, etc.  So we left as a two car caravan, and as soon as we left the parking lot Trev turned right, crossed 3 lanes of traffic and made another quick right.  Mother Fucker!  So we went a little further, made a U-Turn and made the right and Jay's phone rang and he picked up the call (which is why he's a shitty navigator) so I'm interrupting him to say "where am I going?" while he's on his phone call.  When he got off I said that I would appreciate if he is navigating in the first 5 minutes of our drive that he didn't take a phone call unless he knew I was going to be on the same road for at least 15 km.

It was a nice drive, full highway almost the whole way, tolls (460 colones, 780 colones and 460 colones) which I was surprised at, but that and tourism pay for the highway and I'm sure that it was a MUCH longer drive before it went in.

We got to the grocery store with no problems, loaded up our carts with groceries and Jai said she could meet us at the restaurant or give us directions right to the house and asked if we had 4x4s.  I said "We have Hyundai's, but we're adventurous!" So she sent us 2 links, because there is a new road and if she gave us one link it wouldn't take us to the right place, so link 1 got us half way there and then link 2 got us part of the way there as well except where the dirctions told us to go right we were to go left.  There were no further directions after that so I messaged her and she gave us the rest of the directions to the house.



Its super cute.  There were no pictures of the kitchen in the ad, I didn't notice that - but its basically a camp style kitchen - no dishwasher, a 2 element stove top (not built in), no microwave or oven (I had bought stuff for nachos, lol).  The beds are SO comfortable.  There are two bedrooms upstairs, for Jay and I and the girls, and two bedrooms downstairs, for Trev and for Jill and Ava.  Each bedroom is decorated nicely, has a king bed, AC and has its own bathroom.  Its like they ran out of money for the kitchen!  haha.

Its smaller than it looked online as well, but we usually spend a lot of our time outside, so that's ok, and its only about 5 minutes from town.



The girls room.



Our room.









We got a rundown of the house, basically a list of Don't's, and got settled with the groceries away.

We got a recommendation from Jai for dinner, we're all starving!  We went to Tsunami Sushi in Jaco Walk, an outdoor shopping area.

After the first two photos, where Sophie was the 'boy', they switched so Sophie could be the 'girl' and Paige would be the 'boy'. 



Paige ducked out of the first few photos!  lol.



Dinner was delicious!!  We got two tuna surf towers which I didn't take a photo of but was avocado and tuna on wontons stacked 4 high.  Then Jill, Ava, Trev and I each ordered a set of rolls and shared them.  Jay ordered two sets of rolls of his own and a tuna appetizer and the girls had edamame and cucumber rolls.





Everyone had a different favourite, but everyone agreed that my rolls (spicy shaved tuna) were not the best, lol - they actually tasted like pork.  So there were 3 left of those but all the rest got eaten.

We went to dinner in one car, on the way there the girls piled into the back of the car (the trunk) and on the way back they sat in the back seat with Trev, Ava and Jill.  I'm going to ask Jai what would happen if we were pulled over by the police.  This is definitely more developed than where we usually go, even bigger than Tamarindo, which would be sleepy compared to Jaco.

We got home from dinner, everyone stuffed, happy and TIRED.  But Trev and I took the time to make 2 pitchers of sours to get tomorrow under control.  Trev squeezed 2 cups of limes and I made simple syrup and filled up Stanleys.  We had put the tequila in the freezer when we got here so it was perfect, I can't wait for my first sour tomorrow!