2018/02 Costa Rica - San Jose |
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This is the story of our short trip to Costa Rica in the winter of 2018. We were having a miserable January with colds and infections when someone asked Sandie where we were going this winter. We weren’t going anywhere until April, so we got to talking about it and I suggested Costa Rica: warm, lots of national parks, and no hurricane damage on its Pacific coast. Within a hour we’d found a company that featured Costa Rican nature tours and a day later we were booked into 3 places over 8 nights. We didn’t do much research; for a short trip we’d take our chances.
The obvious question is one of safety, but Costa Rica has been surprisingly safe and stable while its neighbours have been embroiled in wars and revolutions. Nicaragua, its western neighbour was embroiled in the war between Sandanistas and Contras, while as recently as 1989 Panama’s president General Noriega was toppled by an American invasion. Costa Rica, in contrast, has been democratic for the last seventy years.
Anywhere in Central America is susceptible to earthquakes and eruptions, but interesting geology brings interesting landscapes. Likewise, it has its share of snakes and crocodiles but no worse than Australia.
Our packing was complicated as our trip included an internal flight across Costa Rica and the airline has some stringent weight restrictions, like a 10 pound carry-on limit, difficult if you have heavy cameras and a computer.
Tuesday February 20th
We were on our way on a cold and sunny afternoon. The snow was melting off the roof but promptly refreezing. Our deck and steps and driveway were sheets of ice; a good time to be leaving.
Travel from Vancouver to the capital San José takes at least two flights and 12 hours. Staying overnight in Houston or LA, or flying all day and arriving in the dark weren’t acceptable, so we opted to fly overnight and arrive at lunch time. We were flying just before midnight on Aeromexico and changing planes in Mexico City.
Most of the lodges and hotels deal in American dollars but we picked up some Costa Rican currency in case we strayed into normal life. They deal in Colóns, an odd name, until you remember that the first European to lead an expedition to Costa Rica was Columbus or in Spanish Cristóbal Colón. Cristóbal would probably be unhappy to learn that his Colón is now worth about half a US cent.
Wednesday February 21st
We landed at dawn in Mexico City. Mexico and Costa Rica are in the same time zone as Minneapolis so we had only lost a couple of hours.
Aeromexico has a helpful web page describing how passengers transit through Mexico to other countries. It’s all wrong! It warned us that our passports would be collected and held by the captain when flying into Mexico. Luckily that didn’t happen. But it also said that passengers transiting through Mexico would not have to go through Immigration, but we certainly did. We filled out cards in duplicate and then joined the long line for foreigners. After having cards and passports stamped we joined the line for Security. The airline collected our duplicate cards and we were on our way again.
In the gate area we noticed a few ladies with hoops, big hula hoops, like in the 1960s. Some had bags with up to a dozen hoops, but there was one who are also carried a single silver hoop. She also had rainbow hair and a multicoloured suit that looked like it had been sprayed onto her skin. There is apparently some intersection of hoops and yoga and art in Costa Rica that is waiting to be discovered by the outside world.
It was dry season in Costa Rica and San José had a sunny and humid day in the 80s, similar to a good summer’s day in Minnesota. San José is at 10°N, well within the Tropics, so we’d packed for hot weather.
The tour company had arranged for us to be met as soon as we came through the jetway into Cristóbal Colón air terminal and a young lady met us and fast-tracked us through immigration, all to no avail as one of our suitcases, the one with all our clothes, had gone missing. Sandie eventually found it partly undone in a little group of similar strays. We were delivered to our van and driver, and were soon on our way out of the city.