Costa Rica was so different than the places I've been before. The scenery was beautiful! The country is about the size of West Virginia with about 5 million people. It's very mountainous and has terrible roads... twisty and narrow, no middle lines, lots of potholes and some aren't even paved (good thing I brought the Dramamine!) Costa Ricans drive around like crazy and people walk on the sides of these roads because there are no sidewalks. I thought for sure our drivers were going to hit someone! We had arranged for drivers instead of renting a car... definitely a good idea for a first time visit.
Some nice things about traveling in Costa Rica are that they basically use the US dollar as their second currency and we were able to pay for everything using $'s. We also could get change back in $'s at most places. Also, they are on the same time zone as us at this point of the year, so no jet lag! And their electric outlets are the same as well, so no convertors.
So on to all the fun stuff we did... (side note: eventually Matt is going to add some comments to this here blog, but he's super busy catching up with work right now)
We woke up Saturday morning bright and early (4:30am!) to see that it was snowy and windy. Luckily, our flight was not delayed and we were off! Yay!
After a short layover in the most boring airport ever (Fort Lauderdale), we flew into San Jose, Costa Rica. San Jose is not a tourist destination... it's kind of a crappy city, but it's where the airport is.
We were picked up by our driver at the airport and she gave us this weird gift:
I said "thank you" because I had no idea what it was and didn't want to offend her. We spent the first night at the Hotel Alta in Santa Ana. The guy at the front desk laughed at my new gift and said it looked weird, too, so I figured it must not be some traditional Costa Rican thing.
The Hotel Alta was up on a mountain and we had a room with a balcony and excellent view of San Jose. We got our first tropical drink when we checked in. We think it was papaya juice, but not sure. We later had some of the same juice, but had them add rum to it and it was excellent!
We had dinner at the hotel and caught some of the football games. Yes, we actually got all of the major US channels there (ABC, CBS, NBC)! This was the only hotel where that was the case, though.
Early Sunday morning, a new driver picked us up and drove us to La Paz Waterfall Gardens. I'm glad I took some Dramamine for this trip! Lots of narrow curvy roads with blind corners and potholes. Despite the rain and clouds, the drive was nice and we got to see a lot of little villages where people live along the way. Very typical of what you would expect Central America to look like.
La Paz Waterfall Gardens is kind of like a zoo, botanical garden and waterfall park all in one. We saw birds, monkeys, frogs, snakes, ox (smelly!), lots of plants and flowers and some beautiful waterfalls. It was rainy for most of the tour, but it was warm.
We had a buffet lunch, which included hot dogs and pizza (definitely catering to the tourists!) and the native beer, Imperial. Very tasty!
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