It is already 10pm Costa Rica time, so midnight EST. So this will be just a partial start on today’s activities and will catch u up tomorrow.
Again there were only a handful of people wearing masks on the flight 🙁
It felt really weird traveling internationally for the first time since October 2021 when I ran the London Marathon and visited Edinburgh. For that trip I had to show my vaccine card frequently and get 5 Covid tests for the 7 day trip. I kept thinking I was not prepared when all I had for checking in, immigration, etc was my passport.
Flight down was smooth and easy. I read my Kindle mostly or just relaxed to music. I could see the Caribbean Sea out my left sided window and then On descent it looked tropically green with some large mountains around city.
Airport was small but quiet and efficient. I stopped to use restroom and drink some water before heading to immigration, just in case of long wait. But It is still the end of rainy season, dry season starts in a few weeks and December begins peak winter travel here, so it was super quick through customs, luggage, immigration.
I was waiting at the curb for the hotel shuttle less than 30 minutes after touching down. Everyone was super polite and I did the first half of the immigration interview in Spanish. Yo hablo y comprendo Espanol pero no muy bien. I was going to do my Pimsleur CDs in car for a month before trip until I realized cars don’t have CD players anymore and I didn’t have time to burn them to computer. I used the DuoLingo app that has a lot of new features including listening to your phrases for accuracy. I also played with the Drops and UTalk apps that I used in past for German, etc.
As soon as walked onto Jetway I felt the thick humidity but the curb was nicely shaded and it was only around 75 and partly overcast so not bad.
Except in the smaller villages and real locals places the US$ is accepted. But they often use a not so great exchange rate so I got some Colons (Spanish word for Columbus) from ATM at airport. 40,000 was about $60 and my Bank checking balance was 8 figures!!!
My room wasn’t quite ready when I got to the hotel at 1pm so I explored and had a Coke sin Azucar (which is a Coke Zero), a “diet” Coke is sometimes a Coke “light” which has cane sugar. Glass bottles 100% recyclable! CR gets 100% of its electricity from Green sources but they have very few electric or even hybrid cars.
Very nice hotel. Hilton Doubletree Cariari.
I had an hour to unpack a little and then headed out for a tour I found on Trip Adviser. I didn’t want to wander around Central San Jose by myself in dark first day in country but did want to see some of city and not go straight from airport to lodge like many travelers do.
