Costa Rica - November 2013

Costa Rica Day 1 - Toronto, Panama, San Jose, Monteverde

The morning started out poorly.  Aside from not being able sleep, I misplaced my phone and was therefore unable to call a cab at 5:45am as I had intended. After turning the house upside down I finally found it while dumping my pack for literally the 4th time. I managed to get to the airport fairly quickly due to the early hour and was surprisingly not the last one there.  Sandra had slept-in in Waterloo so she and Sabina arrived a good half hour after me. At this time I was pretty queasy from my drivers erratic driving.  

The flight was pretty uneventful as far as flights go.  We had a brief stop over in Panama and I was concerned about the water on their coast.  It looked like a great field of dry cracked mud where the water used to be, and there were sections of brown then orange water before it morphed into green and blue.

 Not sure what is going on there. The river that snaked up Into the land was about half as wide as it clearly used to be, with grass growing alongside the otherwise thick trees. Other than that, Panama looked beautifully lush and green.  Definitely seems like a future trip to me!   At the Panama airport I had a fun exchange with a cashier while trying to buy a tea.  Luckily there was a bilingual man behind me who sorted out the situation for us.  

Once we had landed in Costa Rica we were met by a man who shook our hands and brought us to our prearranged car.  He put our bags into the trunk and then asked for a tip.  We thought he was our driver and gave him $15 and then found out he wasn't. Jerk. Our real driver was very nice and drove us the 2.5-3 hour trek to Monteverde. Most of the way there was over a new highway, past numerous fruit stands and small restaurants decorated in Christmas lights.  I fell asleep for a bit and woke up to a pretty heavy rain storm. It lasted an hour or so then trailed off.

About 25km out of the city the pavement ended and we had to climb our way up the mountain.  All gravel, all twists and turns, and periodically only wide enough for our oversized van, we were all regretting the suspicious chicken burger we'd eaten on the plane. Right as the pot holes began to get rough enough for us to believe we were actually on a rollercoaster we turned into Cabin El Sol.

A lady greeted us at the driveway with a hug and a kiss and led us into probably the most adorable cabin ever built.  You walk over a bridge to the front porch and enter into the wooden cabin.  Full kitchen, breakfast bar, eating area, living room, sitting room, with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.

We had 3 bottles of wine waiting for us and shortly after we settled in, a man showed up with a picnic basket with our traditional Costa Rican meal.  After a long day of travel and relentless motion sickness, it was heaven. Knowing that our zip lining and tree trecking began at 7am the next day we went to bed at 9:30.