2018 COSTA RICA DAY 1

 Maria was kind enough to take us to the airport after working all day.  She battled traffic south for 2.5 hours to pick us up and leave by about 5:30 PM and head for SeaTac Airport.  So we will be on this trip for 51 days.  We have ticket to return on March 1.  During the last week of our trip we plan on going to Panama to check out the canal and other sites TBD.  We will visit with one of my former colleges, Clara Davidson, who lives there with her husband.  We think we will have enough time here to to see at least all the major areas of this county.  

We will be renting two motorcycles to use for the duration of our trip except Panama since we can't take the out of the country.  We rented two Chinese 250 CC adventure bike which we will get on January 13.  More about motorcycles and gear when we get the bikes.  Needless to say we've spent quite some time preparing for the ride.  Inquiring warm weather gear was the biggest deal since we are all set up to ride in the lovely Northwest and not the tropics.  So lighter (cooler) gear was in order. 

We had one stop on our flight in Mexico City.  My advice is avoid that airport at all cost  We spent three hours standing in line just to go through customs then transfer our bags and check back in through security.  I was a real "Mosh Pit" of an operations.  People were trying to form lines and organize themselves because the airport offered none.  Paper work completed and rubber stamps applied we did eventually get through the place and on our plane to San Jose, Costa Rica .  As you can see from the photo the countryside is lush as advertised.

We were happy to get into the cab to take us to the Hotel Arajuez where we plan to stay for five nights.  The traffic and drivers didn't seem all that crazy as it had been described.  The motorcycles do some crazy stuff like  splitting lanes and cutting across traffic.  Pedestrians do tend to stand in the middle of the road at times while trying to cross.  Kind of like in that old computer game "Frogger". 

Tomorrow we plan to explore San Jose on foot for the day.  It's been raining but tomorrow is expected to be one the better days of the week.  Once we get the bikes on the thirteenth we will start exploring the central valley around San Jose.

We already had two meals here, lunch and dinner.  Lunch was the traditional rice, beans, salad, with some fried fish.  For dinner we went a bit fancier.  We shared a squid as an appetizer which was wonderfully prepared.  When I say shared what I mean is I ate it and Wendy watched.  She did have some of the garlic potatoes that came with it.  As  main courses Wendy had some fresh salmon and I had tuna, both were really well prepared and tasty.  

Oh yes Wendy did make a new friend as she usually does.