While I've never felt prisoner to my style of writing, I found the quote intriguing, and realized how much I wanted to get back to my undoubtedly narcissistic task of writing on Huppdates. Jonathan and I have been mighty busy little bees as of late, so I'll start with the most exciting of our adventures and progress forward.
(Last week in June)Just 5 hours after having boarded our direct flight out of Sky Harbor, we landed in San Jose, Costa Rica. Our plan was to stay our first night in San Jose, hop on a tiny plane the following morning to head to Manuel Antonio for 3 days at the beach, then return to the capital city on an equally small plane, for the duration of our trip. While our flight was just peachy, our ancient, far past retirement, flight attendant made for a challenging trip through Immigration processing. Having been provided the wrong forms to enter the country we managed to deduce from the non-English speaking Immigration agent that they also did not have the proper forms, but if we were lucky we might find some loose forms across the room at an empty desk. Needless to say we were not alone in the hunt for this requisite form. Thanks to the generosity of another airline who had dumped their extra immigration forms on said desk we eventually finagled our way through immigration and customs only to realize we had arrived in a country without their currency nor dollars of our own.
Bamboozled by an exchange rate, but with Costa Rican Colones in hand, we confidently hopped in a cab and enjoyed the horn tooting, speed weaving ride that snaked us through the city and dropped us off at the back alley of our hotel. Turns out the city of San Juan, wasn't exactly what we were expecting. We decided we'd head to the beach for a few days, then figure it out. Nothing wrong per-say, just considerably less to do than would keep us busy.
The following morning Jonathan and I were half of the entire passenger list on the single engine plane that carried us for 20 minutes from San Juan to the Quepos airport. Despite concerns, the short flight was quite pleasant, very entertaining, and hands down a far better option than the 3-4 hour packed bus ride alternative. A short taxi ride, a brief check in and a short downhill walk had us on the beach in no time. Not. Half. Bad.
One slightly stormy afternoon we went kayaking in the mangroves with 3 other couples, all of which were on their honeymoon. It was cute to see them all shmoopy moopy in love and they no doubt found our 6-years-later banter equally entertaining. We could not bring our camera or phone due to the mosquito bite preventing, pouring rain, but witnessed some pretty interesting wildlife, including a large snake residing in a low hanging canopy, a sloth waaaaay in the distance, a tiny, tiny pygmy anteater none to happy to be disturbed, more brightly colored crabs than I could count, and my favorite, a Jesus lizard who even ran on water for us. We ended up becoming travel pals with the couple from San Diego who was staying near by, and later caught one of three futbal games with them in a bar across from the beach.
Speaking of futbal, we were fortunate enough to have watched three World Cup games while in Costa Rica, two including the Costa Rican team, and one, a sad showing of team USA. The first Costa Rican game played against Grece came down to a shoot out and the nail-biting Costa Rican win was awesome! The casual abrupt-triple-honk greeting became a cacophony of rhythmic celebratory honking by all who drove in the area. We sat roadside outside our hotel and cheered with passengers and drivers alike, Jonathan even getting a high five from a well balanced, bold motorcycle passenger. Team USA played two days later and despite an fantastic showing by the goalie who was later, albeit briefly, dubbed the Secretary of Defense on Wikipedia for having saved 16 goal destine shots. They lost to Belgum in a rather pitiful game. Details of the last game we watched, below.
During our second Kayaking adventure, this time in the ocean, we learned of a local farmer's market that would be taking place that evening in Quepos, just a short bus ride from hour hotel. This would be our second trip out and about in Quepos, the first having included one of my favorite local moments. When we first headed into Quepos to get some supplies for the week, I had a lovely tan established and while speaking in my best broken Spanish to a local he asked which country I was supporting in the World Cup. Before I could say, "los estados unidos" he commented, that it had to be Portugal, because I was clearly Portuguese. Needless to say I smiled. Ok, back to the farmer's market trip. The block long evening market was filled with vibrant fruits, veggies, vendors and shoppers. Having learned of some interesting locally grown fruits from our kayak tour guide, I purchased a few Rambutans (a close cousin of the Lycee that looks like a little hairy alien), as well as a few Mangosteens. Both were unlike any other fruit I've ever tried, or ever dared to purchase, but I'm happy to have experienced these very unique fruits for myself.
Our final adventure was walking about in the petite national park, host to all sorts of different monkeys, sloths, lizards, beach goers, and the most humid hiking route I've ever traversed. After crossing the beach we hiked along the path that twisted up and around a small hill. The forest was amazing, the howls of the howler monkeys were bombastic, and the views from each view station were stunning, but the humidity left both of us comprehensively drenched. During our time in the national park we saw a couple of sloths, both on the move and both blowing my concept of sloth speeds. Click here to view a video of the fastest moving sloth I could capture, complete with silly narration.
On the morning of our departure back to San Jose, we opted for one final trek down to the beach. Per usual Jonathan took on the waves of what had become a dangerously high, post-storm high tide, while I stayed dry seated on a log, just beyond the non-existent shoreline. Just before leaving the beach, Jonathan managed to discover out final sloth sighting. Our little furry friend, complete with it's own unique trove of self sustaining/sloth assisting ants, was enjoying a firm grip on a branch on the underside of a massive tree's canopy that extended far enough beyond the shoreline to capture what was surely a refreshing ocean breeze. The contented smile he displayed, whether by choice, or by design left us feeling equally contented with our experience in Costa Rica.
The passenger list was considerably larger on the way back to San Jose, perhaps about 12 people, so this time we boarded a plane with two propeller engines. This flight wasn't quite as smooth and included a little cloud traversing, which I found to be quite disorienting and left me hard pressed to locate and confirm the ground beneath our little plane. We landed safely, then headed to another part of San Jose, or perhaps a San Jose suburb, where we checked into our swanky hotel. After dropping our bags off as quickly as possible we headed to the rooftop bar to join fellow World Cup fans. When we got to the host station at the restaurant/bar, the hostess looked at Jonathan, then back to me and started speaking Spanish. Sure I was flattered, but me oh my I had very little understanding of what she was saying. I got across that I could only speak a limited amount of Spanish at which point she smiled and broke into English. We watched, cheered, and shared in the brief disappointment when during the final shoot out, after double overtime, Costa Rica lost to the Netherlands. Something I found truly refreshing was that when the game was over, loss and all, people still celebrated Costa Rica's game, as if to celebrate the achievement of participating at such a high level. Sure they lost, but more importantly, they were highly successful throughout the tournament, and they took their futbal loving fans on one hell of an enjoyable ride! Given the early morning ahead of us we finished our Costa Rican vacation in true Americana style, and headed to our room and caught the second half of a subtitled Indiana Jones movie and the first half of Wayne's World.
Bright and early Sunday morning we cabbed back to the airport, experienced an uneventful flight and snaked our way through the immigration and customs line, before breaking free of the airport into the hot, dry, afternoon desert air. We had a great time in Costa Rica, met some fun people, saw plenty of neat sights and wildlife, but were glad to be home.
