Archive for the “San Jose” Category


It’s the end of a long day, but we’re all safe and sound in our lovable hotel room in San José. I predicted Dean would be difficult during air travel and I was wrong. He got frustrated a couple of times, but mostly he sat looking around, and babbled at us. Graham on the other hand was a piece of work. At the end of the short flight (Austin - Houston) he was crying and demanding to get out of the plane. At the end of the second flight, he sort of lost his marbles and kept trying to run away from us in baggage claim and customs. We’ve got seven bags and two car seats and only four arms between the two adults, so it was all we could do to keep G within line-of-sight. Our Sit ‘n’ Stroll was a lifesaver, thanks Mom!

We spent the entire afternoon and evening in the calm and quiet of our hotel room. Elizabeth took Dean out into the grounds for an excursion while I tried to figure out why I can get online with my laptop but not with our high-tech phone.

God bless room service on a day like this! I had my first drink in 12 weeks. No, I’m not a recovering alcoholic, I just wanted to see if I could abstain until we got here. Oh, that modest glass of red wine went down nicely. Elizabeth and I both ordered a plato tipico, which is the Costa Rican “typical” meal. It was simple, and perfect: rice, black beans, a small salad with ripe avocado slices and those bright pink pickled onions, and a succulent portion of seared sea bass. Elizabeth had the vegetarian version; Instead of fish she had beets, green beans, and a hard-boiled egg.

We’re spending one more day in San José before we take the last leg of our journey: a four-hour van ride to Puerto Viejo de Limón, our home for the next twelve weeks.

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That is, all four of us are here, and each of us is all in one piece. Very tired, but the travel could have been much, much worse. The Hotel is beautiful!

More details later, hopefully after some refreshing beverages…

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And now we have just 25 days left to get the 34 things I just put on my To-Do list accomplished, not to mention stuff like teaching the boys to swim, throwing Graham a birthday party, attending a birth, celebrating Mother’s Day with our families, teaching a series of childbirth education classes, keeping the house from falling down or Dean from scaling the bookshelves, eating, sleeping, and exercising…

To say that I feel overwhelmed would be putting it mildly. But that’s ok, because I’m extremely excited about our upcoming adventure. I also have the peace of mind that comes from knowing that all the crucial stuff is taken care of — we have lodging in Costa Rica. We have a house sitter. We have passports and tickets. Things are coming together.

Today I (hopefully) booked our hotel in the San Jose area for our first two nights in the country. The Hotel Bougainvillea looks pleasant and has some awesome gardens, including frog ponds. I await confirmation from their reservation system eagerly.

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