We arrived at Juan Santamaria International right on time. Jet Blue delivered the goods. Compared to our last flight down on (Kill your) Spirit Airlines, this was like traveling first class! If you don't know, Jet Blue provides a ton of leg room in every seat and 35 free channels of DirecTV with a screen in every seat back. I learned about the earth's magnetic field, how to make a "perfect" martini and saw the latest Johnny Depp movie (oh yeah, they offer three free in flight movies along with the tv). Even Reed found something he liked for a little while. That said, traveling internationally with a 2 spon-to-be 3 year old requires Shao Lin level patience and control, especially when your ittle guy hasn't been in the same time zone for more than a few days at a time for the last several weeks. However, having a little guy in the stroller does have some advantages, like your own special immigration line along with the wheelchair crowd so even though we'd taken the time upstairs to pick up a Kolbi/ICE sim card for our "new" unlocked GSM formerly ATT phone we still made it to baggage about as soon as the rest of our flight. The baggage guys and gals at SJO are maybe the best I've encountered - they have all the luggage off the merry-go-round and stacked neatly ready to be picked up before we got there. At least one attendant hovers around the bags to make sure that only those whose claim checks or I.D. matches the bags can take it away. Get this - they even take the time to try to put each persons multiple bags together with one another so you don't have to sort through the whole stack! They got three of our four together and then fourth was close by. Yes, you read that correctly, we had 4 checked bags each at 50 pounds. We are planning on being away for at least 6 months on this jaunt and we packed a ton.
We breezed threw customs and made our way out to the mad scene that is the "arrival" gate at SJO. I wish I had the foresight to take a photo of the corridor of hollering Ticos (costa rican men; ticas are the women) that greets the weary traveller whom has just been ejected from 72 degree air conditioning into 80% humidity - if it weren't so intimidating it would be hilarious. 4 deep at the ropes lining the terminal exit all hollering one thing or another (mostly "TAXI?") in English, Spanish and combinations thereof. Please note: unless you are going nearby to a hotel you really ought to arrange your ground transport yourself ahead of time via email or even better speak to a person. Many of the companies have cool links that when you enter a phone number after clicking them, they immediately call you on you phone at no charge to you; definitely a good way to make sure of what you are getting. If it is a rental car, what your getting is bent over. Sure the rental price of the small SUV you've rented in $168.00 for the week, but did we mention that you must purchase the insurance and after that and taxes your bill will be $431.00? Oh and go ahead and add another $35 for an extra driver and a $70 drop fee for Jaco (argh). Anyhow, I would curse Mapache (Costa Rican owned and carbon neutral car rental company) for these ridiculous charges, but I reserved with Dollar and Budget too and they were almost exactly the same price if not a little higher.
The Mapache folks keep their rides off-site so we loaded our traveling circus into a van and picked up our ride. As we departed the lot, all the water in heaven descended upon us in the most intense rain, thunder and lightning show I've been witness to in a long time. Before we left, I loaded our Garmin with a map of Costa Rica from Cenrut, which is open sourced and free to download. Maybe I should have bought a commercially prepared map! No matter where we were or what direction we were headed all that machine would keep repeating "turn right to road 124 in .3 miles". Did I mention that the main road, the Pan American highway number 1 was being completely re-done and traffic in San Jose is legendary without the extra road work. Oh, and no road is marked with any kind of identifying mark - nada. After 30 futile minutes we decided to back track to the airport to try again. To be continued!
