On our way to Costa Rica

We're off early this morning, 6:00am is my alarm time - but I woke up at 4:33am for some reason - ugh!

Our flight leaves at 9:45am this morning, so the plan is for my parents to pick us up at 6:45am and head to the airport.  Maria and Jim aren't far ahead of us as we coordinate arriving at the airport.  We are parking at the Viscount lot but they took a car so even though we are both arriving at the same time, really we're about 20 minutes behind them by the time we get to the terminal.

We get in and get our baggage tags, we're already checked in online, and go to drop our bags only to find out we're in the wrong area.  Usually we travel to Costa Rica in carry ons, but last year we were delayed by 5 or 6 hours so we got a 10% off coupon from Air Canada which when I booked these flights I also found out had a free checked baggage and free seat selection as well!  So anyway, since I have a free checked bag for me and the girls, I packed one full suitcase with 3 floaties, 3 towels, 2kg of peanut butter (because a half size of our peanut butter is $9USD in CR), and 2 eight lb weights for workouts, which I am fully intending to do.  Oh, also there are 7 partial sunscreens leftover from the summer in the bag because sunscreen is F'en expensive and I swear they're half full. 

Anyway, we are heading over to where we need to be and Maria is waiting for us because the line up is HUGE!  And because Maria, our favourite travel companion ever,  is an Air Canada Super Elite member because she travels so much for work she walks us over to the Elite bag drop which has no one in it instead of being wrapped around the zig zaggy line for 5km waiting to drop our bags off with the peons.

She then also gets us into the Super Elite line for security and into the Air Canada Lounge by saying we're immediate family.  Lol, there's something about Maria (like the song from The Sound of Music).

The flight itself was fairly uneventful.  The girls and I sat in a row with Gram and Grampa behind me and Jim and Maria in the front of the plane in 'business class' (for Air Canada Rouge).

We landed in CR,  and headed to the duty free store before baggage because Mom had read that the liquor there was cheaper than getting it once you get out of the airport and I tell you - man!  We got bottles of tequila (100% agave after getting schooled at my Birthday party by Ethan Zon about cheap tequila) for $21USD.  (we looked today, because I'm writing yesterdays today and the same bottles were $44USD!! - so we plan on getting Jay to grab some from duty free when he arrives on Friday - you can bring 5 litres in without paying duty! Yay for us).

We picked up the rental cars, which is always a shit show because of the extra insurance they cost.  The cars are so cheap its ridiculous, we got 2 cars - a 7 seater that will fit all of us and a little 5 seater.  The 5 seater was $201 for 2 weeks! But by the time you add the mandatory insurance it was $768..such a sham.  The 7 seater was $501 and ended up being $1,162 for the 2 weeks with the minimum mandatory insurance.  We had brought print outs of what our insurance will cover (which is called a certificate of insurance if you print it out from the credit card website) but the Thrifty rep says that that's not valid as of earlier this year (ok, right) and we have to take the full insurance.  Anyway, I had already prepped my Mom that the cost of the car would double anyway when I booked the cars, but on TOP of that the road is under construction where Thrifty is located so the Thrifty rep says is might take 2 hours to get from the airport to Thrifty (a 5 min drive) when we go to leave - are you fucking kidding me?!?!?  Oh my God.  We have to call them before we leave the house to see if the road is open or closed.  Apparently we were lucky when we arrived at 3pm on Friday because it was open.  Hopefully we're lucky 2 Fridays from now when we have to drop the cars off and its open again.

Finally we get in the cars and get moving and make the 1hr long drive to the house - we arrive at the rental office up the street and are quickly taken to the house for the tour - and this is what we were waiting for.

We got unpacked and settled, its about 5pm and decided to go down to Marie's Restaurant at the bottom of the hill.  We had a nice chilled out dinner and had some grocery shopping to do, just the necessities - I mean we had bought 8 bottles of tequila at duty free, so really all we needed was limes, orange juice, water and sugar...oh, and some stuff for breakfast tomorrow, like bread.  So we got all the stuff for sours and the other stuff, like bread.

 Turns out the sours stuff was unwarranted.  By the time we got organized and everything away it was 7:30...which is bedtime..so Mom turned in first, then me after I got the kids to bed, then apparently Maria and then Dad and Jim was the night owl who went to bed at 8:45pm.  Likely to be an early morning tomorrow though - up with the sun and down with the sun on vacation!

Love it here.  Pura Vida.