Today someone posted on our internal watercooler site asking for recommendations on travel to Costa Rica. Since AB and I went there for our honeymoon in 2000, I chimed in. I can now, after 6 years, look back on this trip with fondness. However, our week in Costa Rica was not the paradise we had been looking for. That said, we would go back in an instant. (Oh and I did not speak 90% of this story on the watercooler site.)
We managed to get to Costa Rica the night before a general civil strike began. The purpose of the general strike was to interrupt tourism and bring attention to the causes of the people of Costa Rica. I can’t remember a single one of the demands…
We woke up to news the next morning that instead of riding a bus to the east side of the country from the capital, we would be flown there. Our first thoughts were, ‘hey civil strike isn’t so bad!’ I get pretty serious motion sickness, so I had been a little concerned about a four hour bus ride. I’ll take a one hour flight instead! We spent about three days in the Tortuguerro Canals. Supplies were lean because they couldn’t get things shipped in due to the strike. Supplies mainly being alcohol. There was PLENTY of food to go around… beans and rice for all! Beans and rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Oh at lunch and dinner we did get shredded lettuce with some oil and vinegar drizzled over. I later found out that our beans and rice wasn’t due to shortage of supplies… nope, this is a Tican staple.
Near the end of our stay in Tortuguerro we were notified that we would have to vacate our cabana, new guests would be arriving. Where would we go? We were supposed to go to the volcano next? Nobody knew anything and suddenly people quit speaking English. They had no intentions of flying us back to the capitol city or to our next destination and we were just out of luck. We made efforts in trying to figure out how to contact the American embassy. We were feeling as though we were just left on the east side of Costa Rica without any resources. Our stay was done at the resort we were at and they plain didn’t care how we got to our next destination or IF we got there.
I was paranoid. Miss Plan-it-out was nervous and angry. My new husband was just beside himself, what could he do?
I don’t quite remember how it happened but we got word that we needed to go get on a boat immediately, which would take us by water for about an hour or so to a little town. We would get on a bus there that would take us to another local town about an hour away. We would be able to lunch there and then a private driver would pick us up and drive us all back roads (since the main highways were blocked) to our next destination. Shady? Yes, but what choice did we have? We had to at least get somewhere near civilization!
It all did pan out. Boat ride, bus ride, and car ride. The car ride was one of the best parts of the whole trip driving through all these little towns on the backroads with our own driver, who spoke little English. Fascinating.
We made it to Arenal volcano, or at least to our resort 25 miles from Arenal. We rejoiced in arriving to our destination. Smoked a Cuban cigar, ordered a bottle of wine and enjoyed the weirdest tasting beef with our rice and beans that night.
After a few nights near Arenal we were driven back to the capital city on the highways. The roads had just reopened that day and they were jam packed. Many, many tourists had been unable to get back to fly out for about six days. The capital city was packed. We went to our hotel and that night ordered a fantastic meal in the hotel that did NOT include rice and beans. I still remember the Caesar salad made table side and the bananas flambé.
Of course our travel perils weren’t over then. Nope, we arrived at the airport along with every single other tourist scheduled to fly out for the previous six days. We were offered $1000 vouchers, two of them, to fly to Panama, spend the night and fly out the next morning. We bit.
We arrived in Panama without the required Visa documentation, were not met at the airport by the promised American Airlines representative to take us to our hotel, hmmm what else? Oh yes, we were in Panama and didn’t even get to see the canal. We flew out the next morning. Panama to Miami, Miami to Dallas/Fort Worth where we were grounded due to tornados. I just wanted to get home. I sat down and nearly cried. Finally DFW to Reno and I was never so happy to be home. We had $2000 in vouchers in our hands that subsequently went nearly unused because of the extreme difficulty in using them. I still have them in a file somewhere and they might still be worth $500 or so after all the expiration fees are deducted. Vouchers suck.
So with all of our Costa Rica travel difficulties recounted, yes, I would go back in an instant. In all this recounting I failed to mention the awe of being woken up by howler monkeys, peeing in the early dawn with a toucan sitting four feet from my head watching with amazement, seeing Arenal volcano erupt while sitting in a hot springs pool with a swim up bar, seeing a very rare tapir mom and her baby, tasting a cacoa bean directly off the tree, admiring the local women scrubbing their front patios as we passed through the tiny villages on the back roads. Monkeys, birds, crocodiles, caiman, sea turtles, and sloths in their natural habitat. What could be better?
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