Costa Rica (part 1)

Finally... Eric and I were able to take our honeymoon. Destination... Cost Rica!

We were there for a week and I have A LOT to cover, so this will be broken up into multiple blogs. Mainly cause I have a good feeling that my hands will get tired from typing! So here goes part one...

We headed out on Saturday afternoon... go figure - there's limited flights to Costa Rica! So, after all the flying and airport time, we picked up our bags close to 9pm and headed to Hertz for the car.And what a fun car we got! A Diahatsu BeGo! Didn't even know this brand still existed! Pretty much everything in Costa Rica is of the Asian brands... and a Volkswagon truck that they don't sell in the US for a good mix. Very few American brands... we weren't too sure about 'Beep Beep' at first (the nickname Eric affectionately gave it), but it turned out to be just what we needed.

So getting to the hotel... that proved to be interesting... at night. We knew we wanted to get the the 'new' highway, as the locals call it. We asked directions at Hertz, and it seemed easy enough. But we got on the road, and couldn't tell what road we were even on! They don't sign their highway (or any streets) well at all!! We finally broke out the compass on my iPhone and saw we were heading the opposite direction (east) of what we wanted to be heading (west). So, after finding a way off the highway we were on (VERY limited access), we literally drove through a nighttime construction zone (we just followed the locals that were doing it) and got back on the highway, heading in the other direction. Finally, after passing our initial starting point, we saw a sign for Puntarenas, but it wasn't via the highway we were looking for. But the fact that we were heading in the right direction was good enough for us. The county is smaller than West Virginia, how far off could it be??

Turns out we were within 1 mile of the new highway when we were heading in the wrong direction. They didn't explain that we had to head into San Jose to get to it (which was east of the airport).But none the less, we did finally make it to the DoubleTree resort, which more than welcomed us after the long drive! Check-in was easy and they took us to our room, which was thankfully far from the 'nightlife' part of the hotel. We walked into our room and it was decked out is rose petals and a bottle of wine for us, with a note welcoming us to our honeymoon. Which could finally begin after this long day of traveling.

Since we arrived so late, we had no plans set for Sunday. But we had our car. So after a late breakfast and a little pre-planning for excursions later in the week, we headed out in the daylight to see what we could find. Our first destination was Jaco, which was a surf town. It was about a 45 minute drive south along a highway that paralleled the coast (it wasn't a coastal highway, as you only saw the water for a few miles of it). We got to Jaco, which seemed to be a lazy little town you'd expect to find in California. There didn't seem to be much surfing going on, but we found out why a short time later when we headed to Playa Hermosa just a few miles south. To our surprise, the Costa Rica Surf Championship was happening there. What are the odds of exploring that beach on that day?? It was packs full of both surfers and spectators.

Even more interesting was that in our third beach visit, we had a completely different type of beach. The beach at our hotels was very typical looking, though a little more course than what I'm used to in FL. Still beautiful, though. Jaco was a sprawling, flat beach with a darker tan-ish gray sand. And here at Playa Hermosa was a nearly black sand, obviously volcanic by the color, but some of the softest sand I've felt on my feet (rivaling some of the powdery, white sands you find on the west coast of FL). So not only does Costa Rica have an array of ecological systems to explore, they also have a number of beach types to explore!

At this point, we could tell it was nearing sunset. Sunset occurred around 5-5:30ish this time of year in Costa Rica. We hoped back in Beep Beep and drove back to the hotel. We had a dinner reservation to make, so we didn't want to be late. And this would be our first major meal in Costa Rica. To this point, we had just done the breakfast and lunch buffet at the hotel (gotta love all-inclusive places), but even that food was great! So we had even greater expectations for the individual meals. The place we went specialized in seafood, which made sense being on the coast. And it was amazing! First, there was the Ceviche - three different kinds, plus sashimi! Then for an appetizer, I had this seafood bisque type soup that had full pieces of crabs and oysters still in the shells in a tomato based broth. YUM! I'd tell you what Eric had, but I was too engrossed in my meal! The main course was just as delicioso! I had these shrimp kabobs with these huge shrimp on it that were marinated and grilled to perfection. Eric had a sea bass dish that he practically inhaled! So the food completely hit the mark we were hoping!

So our first full day in Costa Rica was a hit and were were even more excited about what was to come in the remainder of the week!