For anyone who has ever watched the TV show Friends, you will recall the episode where Chandler and Monica are discussing who got their surrogate pregnant.. the highschool sweetheart or the shovel wielding father killer who is currently in prison.. to which Chandler remarks “Its US! Of course its the shovel killer!” That statement alone has come up countless times over the years whenever we manage to make a snafu in planning or something goes terribly wrong- its US, of course the insane thing would occur.
That little story will lead me into the remarks on today’s adventures. Upon arriving in the cute little Liberia airport, we pass through immigration and customs without a hassle… wow wait.. that never happens. Trying to find our rental car company was a little more difficult with many trips from one end of the airport to the other, but again, not that bad. We head out in our 4×4 to the little town of Liberia to get SIM cards since neither of us has internet on our phones here and we kind of need it to run WAZE (the most widely used way to get anywhere in Costa Rica). It’s Sunday. The town is closed. Are we surprised, honesty, no. Are you surprised? (you shouldnt be if you read the starting paragraph) Luckily Matt, being the amazing planner he is, downloaded a copy of Google maps as a back up and although it does not have the latest road data updates, it will get us to Monteverde which is our first stop.
Google maps in Costa Rica…. not the best idea. When people tell you that Costa Rican roads are bad, well Google Maps helped us to validate that today! The highway was not terrible leaving the city except the weird and sudden speed limit changes. But then it goes down to a 2 lane road, which is still not terrible with the exception of the traffic backup near the police station for whatever reason. But then we made a left turn… the left turn that we instantly regretted and continued to regret for 27 long kms…. to call the roads here “roads” would be an insult to the inventor of the road – we shall call them “driving surfaces” and note that between the potholes and steep drop offs you can lose your nerve, lose your lunch or lose your car! It took FOREVER to wind back and forth and dodge potholes right and left.
Road saga ended for now and we are at an incredible AirBnb on the mountain side overlooking the valley and the ocean. Its amazing to me that we are almost in the middle of the country but you can see all the way to the ocean from here. Immediately we have made a dog friend who came up to us while we were taking photos outside.
And since we hadn’t eaten since the egg bites at 6 AM this morning, we went to a neat little local restaurant called Sabor Tica for authentic Costa Rican food and margaritas (pictures to come). Seriously proud of my highschool Spanish classes for sticking in my head this long because I remembered how to say things and talk to our waiter! (it wasn’t necessary because he also spoke English but it was fun to try)
Dead on our feet, we swung by the local grocery for some coffee additives and various other things including Imperial which is the local beer and had a nice after dinner drink on our patio.
The night is still young but we are not and having been up now for many more hours than I care to recall, its time for bed. Buenas Noches mis Amigos!
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