It's an unusual start to Spring Break for the Schwab family this year. Not because we're going to Central America, not because we had to get shots before we left and not because we are going somewhere that we don't have to pay for our hotel. It's unusual because we got to leave out of YVR! Ordinarily we jump in a car and drive to our destination or we drive to the States to catch our flight. Our flight for Toronto left at 11:00p and was scheduled to arrive in Toronto at 6:20a for our 7:20a flight for Costa Rica. We were a bit late leaving and despite Kerry's frequent questions to multiple stewardesses about whether we should be concerned, we were assured we had plenty of time. We were a bit relieved when I discovered that our flight to Costa Rica was delayed by 10 minutes. This relief was quickly dashed when we heard over the speakers that 'If you are catching a flight to Liberia, Costa Rica, please rush!" We got off the plane and the desk agent had a sign that said 'Please rush to your Liberia Flight".
We rushed! We were stuck at the back of the plane for 10 minutes un-boarding. We got stuck behind a security incident. We were stuck behind a mob that rushed the security gate when it cleared. We got stuck at a checkpoint that made us scan our ticket to get through. We were almost eaten by the worst airport walkway I've ever been on. We arrived at our gate just as they were giving all the delinquent travelers a last call over the PA system including our names. We made it! For all that rushing it still took us 45 minutes to take off waiting at the gate and getting deiced.
We arrived in Liberia, Costa Rica about an hour behind schedule but it was before lunch and we had no real plans for our arrival day. I'm not sure if it was because of the size of our plane but they dropped us off on the tarmac instead of one of the gates and we walked to immigration. We were on an older Air Canada plane and there were quite a few older couples already dressed for the beach so the whole experience felt a bit like we had actually arrived in 1990. It took us a bit of time to find the shuttle to our rental car. I don't recommend Ace for Liberia. The shuttle was very infrequent.
We've been to Maui and Florida as a family but this was the first time the kids had been to Central America. Our plan was to stock up on a few necessities in Liberia before heading to the condo and although it's not very adventurous, our first destination was the local Walmart. We have no idea what to expect in Costa Rica so our hope was going somewhere familiar first would ease us in. It was not as familiar as I was expecting. It's very difficult to figure out what kind of meat is in a hot dog on a normal day let alone trying to translate from Spanish and figure out which one is 'All Beef'.
We knew in advance that Google wasn't a great map service for this area but I had forgotten to download Waze onto Kerry's phone so I tried Google anyways. It took us on a very interesting local tour of some back allies before getting us going in the right direction.
We arrived at our Condo just before dinner and spent the evening getting comfortable and checking out the pool. We haven't seen any monkeys yet but there is a family of mourning doves on one of the posts on our deck. I was out last night shining my camera light in their faces. They didn't seem to upset and they are still there the next morning. They are pretty big so I expect they will be gone before we leave.
Hopefully we find monkeys today!
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