Manuel Antonio

Our day begins pretty much the opposite of how we envisioned it. Instead of sleeping in and shifting into vacation mode, we up early, repacking, and hopping into an Uber for the airport. We have 3 more hours in the air but, hopefully, will finally get to our destination around 11am local time. All in all, that won’t put us too far off of our original schedule as our rental car pick up was pretty close to that anyway. From San Juan, the plan is to drive south to Manuel Antonio, arriving in time to catch the sunset.

Joining us on this leg of the journey are three chatty old men from Ft. Lauderdale. At least two are veterans of the trip, sharing their wisdom on how easy it is to get Viagra in Costa Rica (apparently 100mg is the gold standard) and making arrangements with the third to trade 7 pills for a bottle of rum. From the discussion, it also sounds like they must have great plumbers is Costa Rica, as one old duffer has arranged for someone to drive an hour to each way to “clean his pipes”. I don’t know how many pipes you can get cleaned for $60 as he didn’t appear to have any with him. Must have been in his checked baggage.

For us, the wheels start to go off the bus shortly after we land. Clearly we aren’t the only flight arriving as the immigration line winds all the way back through the ropes and back into the hallway. Thinking we would be comfortably situated in our hotel at this time, I scheduled a few necessary conference calls that I could take care of before hitting the road. Call one happens from the bowels of the airport as we slowly weave our way back and forth towards immigration. Connectivity is surprisingly good given the circumstances so perhaps this is a common occurrence here.

Call number two happens standing outside of the rental car office. It is hot, humid, and my travel companion is putting out a bit of an unhappy vibe (as Mr. Pickles would say, “please don’t use a bad word when you can use a good one.”)

We’ve heard horror about booking a car in Costa Rica, only to arrive at the rental counter and have the price double or triple with mandatory insurance and fees. We’re a bit nervous as the stubborn side of me would ride a bus for three weeks before paying $1,5000, but armed with a bit of Internet advice and a letter prepared by our credit card company highlighting their coverage, we sailed through.

The drive itself is mostly uneventful. The roads are all in good condition, although very curvy generally only two (skinny) lanes wide so every slow truck trying to grind its way up a hill slows everything down to a crawl. With all the delays, the final 45 minutes or so are in the dark, just as the rain starts up. It’s a bit stressful as they don’t seem to have discovered lane markers or street lights yet, investing instead in the deepest gutters money can buy.

We do make it to the hotel in one piece, and without a scratch on our brand new car. We’re stating just a short walk from both Manuel Antonio Park and the beach, so the location should be great. All that will have wait until tomorrow though, as with two long travel days plus the plague, we’re completely gassed, relying on our old standby, noodle soup, for some quick calories before crashing hard for the night.