Costa Rica 2014

Post 1

Hola!

Welcome to the first post accounting my 2014 trip to Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica.

I’ve had to start this blog a little late so this first post will be a relatively lengthy one, I’ve just woken up on day 2 in the house — which we planned to start with a trip to the National Park but we’ve postponed it due to the RIDICULOUS storm atm. Looks like they weren’t kidding when they said we were in the rainy season.

But anyway, I’ll start with the journey here.

With this being my first flight to the americas since I went to NYC when I was about 3 (I feel guilty for having next to no memories of that trip but come on, how much can you remember when you were 3 years old) the prospect of a 14 hour overall flight seemed overbearing to say the least. Couple that with this being the first time I had ever flown solo, to say I was a little nervous would be an understatement. However — I made my way through Heathrow security at lightning speed and was feeling good when I boarded the plane headed to Houston TX — despite it being delayed by an hour. The 10 hour leg was made light by the in-flight movies, possibly a rather sad statement but hey, it’s the little things that make me happy (side note: the LEGO movie is seriously good, 10/10 would watch again). However, I was relatively wary when touching down as the delay had seen my window to get through customs shortened from 2 hours to just 1.

I think there’s a general belief that getting through customs is a lengthy process at the best of times, and I have no idea if this is more so in America compared to other places… but MY GOD to these people take their time. I know they have to be thorough but I was in a queue of no more than 8 people and was waiting there for at least 45 minutes. This caused a mad dash through the rest of security and gate E22 for the flight to capital San Jose, to which I arrived with a mere couple of minutes to spare. Despite all this and my complaints, by the time I sat down on the flight with only a few more hours until I touched down in San Jose i was feeling pretty good about the whole thing thus far, I even thought I’d done pretty well. The hardest part was over.

Oh if only I was so lucky.

Skip ahead to my arrival at San Jose airport: after another slooooow (but not quite as slow) journey through customs I came to the baggage carousel, where the real fun began

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I search for the correct carousel — No.3 UA1565 Houston TX — to see the carousel not moving and no bags to be seen. I look to the left to see a collection of suitcases in a line, which I presume was the result of someone taking them all off for people to collect. A nice gesture, I thought to myself “Hey, I might be out of here quicker than I thought.”

Wrong again.

After individually checking every one of the suitcases a minimum of 3 times I accepted my fate and concluded my bag was not there. Bearing in mind I had been awake for roughly 20 hours at this point, so you can imagine I did not take this realisation all too well. Attempting not to dwell on it, I went over to the baggage retrieval (a misleading title, in my opinion) to ask where my bag had wondered off to. The man behind the desk was very helpful — well, as helpful as one can be without actually resolving my situation — and gave me a number to ring, saying to contact them the following day and to go from there. So, I sucked it up and walked out of the airport with not much more than a couple of flight pillows to my name and went to continue my journey.

The good news is, I woke up today to find my suitcase sat waiting for me in the living room, so I went and gave it a big hug and now I’m unpacked and feeling fresh. It’s been a good start to the day!

To stop myself from rambling on too much I’ll skip ahead to my arrival yesterday at Manuel Antonio and the GVI house. After the usual introductions and health and safety spiel we were all moved in and looking forward to what was to come. So, we all went out for dinner in the evening at just around 6. Now, Manuel Antonio is essentially one big road on the top of one big hill: an observation that was less apparent on the 3 hour bus journey from the capital, but became glaringly obvious when we decided to walk to the restaurant.

This is a SERIOUS hill. I’m talking a good 50degree incline for at least 15 minutes, let alone that it’s still baking hot so we’re all sweating like crazy and exhausted by the time we reach the top — all thinking to ourselves we definitely should have taken the bus. But then comes the highlight of the day: the sunset. my lord. I was genuinely devastated I didn’t take a camera with me (side note 2: We were warned that it’s not the best idea to have valuables openly on display when walking around, so I’m not sure how easy it will be to get pictures to accompany these posts, but I’ll try my best!) But seriously, add a costa rican sunset to things you HAVE to see. I was speechless. I’m determined to get a photo at some point during my stay.

So that’s about it for my first post! Sunday’s are our day off (not that we’ve actually done anything so far that would require a day off but hey I’m not complaining) so the plan is to visit the National Park (to which I’m definitely taking my camera) and then watching the World Cup final at a bar in the afternoon. Sounds like my kinda day, I think I just might enjoy it here.

More posts to come soon, thank you for taking the time to read this and

Adios!