Sunday, November 17, 2013

Costa Rica ... It's An Adventure!!!

Here begins the saga of the two stepchildren who took off to the wild green yonder to see what they could see!!  But first ... a disclaimer!!  When you ride on a tour bus for 8 hours a day, you get lots of tour bus images ... some good, some bad and some blurry!!  In an attempt to show you the REAL Costa Rica, I have chosen to include some blurry ones.  There were no do-overs on this tour ... and the roads are such that even at the fastest camera speeds, blurry is all you get!!  For this I apologize, but you just have to see some of this country.  It's amazing!!

You probably read previously about the first major disaster of the trip.  We were all on time at the Junction Shopping Center in Sonora at 4:45 am for the bus trip to the airport.  The driver gave it his best, but you just can't squish 4 hours of Monday morning San Francisco traffic into 2 hours.  Eighteen of us missed our first flight to Dallas/Fort Worth.  This was a biggie!!!  While everyone was milling around, I dug out my Emergency Contact List and called Collette Vacations, our tour company.  The first thing they said was "why didn't you make it to the airport ... you had 2 hours and 17 minutes!!!".  Mad as a wet hen, I tried to be nice and explain about rush hour traffic when I discovered she was in Rhode Island.  Apparently Google Maps was their authority instead of the bus company.  So now what???????  With NO apologies, she promised to return my call when they decided what to do.
Collette said the airline HAD to reschedule us.  American Airline said it was Collette's problem ... while we all sat grouchy and hungry in the lobby!!  Finally, after I called them three more times since returning calls wasn't in their book ... and four hours later ... 11 were instructed to just find a hotel (at their own expense) and fly out the following day.  Four of us immediately became the stepchildren!!  We were instructed to hang out at the airport from 6:30 am to 9:30 pm (yup you counted right ... 15 hours) until we caught our NEW red eye flight at 10:00 pm for Miami.  In the meantime, we had to pay for all our own meals, which were supposed to be included in the tour.  Needless to say, there were 18 VERY UNHAPPY campers sitting in the airport.  The only good thing to say here is that Napa Farms has a restaurant/bar/store where we bought some Mac N Cheese made with Tyler Florence's recipe.  It was awesome!!!
Being good little tourists, we did what we were told and arrived in Miami starving and now awake for 26 hours.   Next up ...  a layover of 5 hours in Miami.  Cranky Nancy started to emerge!!!  
After an airport breakfast, we finally got on our flight to Costa Rica, another 3-1/2 hours away.  
Now awake for 36.5 hours and still standing, we arrived at the Wyndham hotel in San Jose Costa Rica.
Little did we know how much we would appreciate these rooms upon our return two weeks later.
Towels, water and coffee were provided in this hotel, along with hot water.  YAY!!!  You will see why this is significant, later on.
The first order of business was food.  We were starving!!!  The buffet was $20 each, so we opted for the $12 each salad bar.  Not very satisfying considering we had NO food on the plane, only the Goldfish and Biscotti we brought with us.
The tropical grounds were beautiful and the flowers amazing.  Patty and I walked around as she named off everything she recognized.  There were lots of oohs and aahs.  
Although the neighborhood didn't really look like two American girls should be walking around in it, we did try to navigate across to the Hard Rock Cafe ... but alas, they close up from 3-6:00 and we couldn't get around to the front.
We happened on to the hotel greenhouse however, full of orchids used for decoration in the buildings.  The door was unlocked, so we made ourselves at home.
Spectacular color everywhere!!  Too bad we couldn't hide them in our luggage!!
At last the restaurant Quattro opened and we ventured in with our other two stepchildren, Diane and Burt Maxwell who had braved the Miami diversion with us.  I ordered the Rigatoni Pesto with Walnuts ... and it was delicious, as was Patty's spinach ravioli, Diane's chicken and Burt's shrimp.  
Exhausted after being up for over 40 hours, we all crashed at the hotel for our 7:00 am tour bus ride to catch up with the rest of our group ... the seven who drove themselves to San Francisco and caught their flights.  The 11 stragglers came in about 9:00 pm and hit the hay.  We all met up in the morning to exchange our horror stories!!!

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