We made it!

We arrived in Costa Rica last night around 8:30 PM.  We spent the night at Hostel 1110 in San José and woke up early this morning to catch a 6:00AM flight to Liberia…too early. After showering and packing everything up, backpacks on our backs, we realized that it was 3:30 AM, not 4:30AM.  At 3:31AM, we took our first nap of the day.

This morning’s flight was delayed because the airport was closed due to low visibility.  Their solution?  Drive us to San José’s main airport and have us fly out of there.  Once we got to the other airport and boarded our tiny, tiny plane we were delayed again by about 15 minutes due to, you guessed it, low visibility.  Once we got up in the air, the flight was definitely worth the wait but more about that from Todd later.

A shuttle met us in Liberia and took us straight to Villagio del Flor Pacífico, our home for the next month.  Our little casita is just as adorable as the pictures we’d seen.  It’s a great two-bedroom cottage with a nice front porch for reading and relaxing and just 100 yards from one of Villagio’s pools.

Already we’ve had a few surprises since getting here:

1)    A great surprise!  As soon as we got settled into our hostel in San José, I got an email from my friend Pam saying that she and her fiancé, Kevin have booked tickets to come visit at the end of June.  We are thrilled that they’re going to come stay with us!

2)    During that same email check I received a message saying that power in Playa Potrero was going to be out today from 8:00AM – 2:00PM.  A nice welcome surprise for us.  Really though, other than the air/fans not working in the house it hasn’t been bad.  It’s definitely warm but the pool outside of our doors is a godsend.  We spent most of the afternoon working on our second naps of the day anyway.  We are still waiting for the power to come back on.  It is now 3:58pm.

3)    Not a complete surprise since I/we’ve spent time in Latin America before but, traffic laws are just for kicks.  Here in Costa Rica the main ideas seem to be: A- Avoid anything in your way, you can always find a path around it.  B- Get to where you’re going as fast as you can.  And most surprising,  C- Red lights are a suggestion; as long as no one is coming through it from the other direction, there’s no need to stop.

In addition to those mini-events, we had the chance to walk into town.  It’s definitely a small town and I think it will be really easy to get to know the community.  We also had the chance to meet Meradith and Drew, the co-founders of Abriendo Mentes.  They gave us a quick rundown of how the program is running now, the lay of the land and some ideas of things to do and places to see while we’re here.  They’ve been so helpful with our trip preparations and it was great to finally meet them.  We will start working at Abriendo Mentes tomorrow afternoon and I’m so excited to see how everything goes.  It sounds like Friday tend to be arts and crafts or fun days so that will be a great way to spend our first day there.

That’s all for now, stayed tuned!

*Power came back on mid-way through dinner around 6:00PM.  Our air is finally working!  🙂

** Pictures to come – internet is a bit spotty.