An eventful beginning!

We woke at 5 to depart on our grand Watson adventure. Today was the day. The excitement and expectation was palpable in the air. My dad drove us to the airport. Outside, the sun was far from rising. We said our final goodbyes, and entered the Muhammed Ali airport, the portal to our yearlong adventure. An hour later, and we were in the air. It had begun!

Our connection through Huston Texas was uneventful, thank goodness. If anything, we learned just how big airports can be. Such a feat of human engineering and organization is hard to comprehend. It made Louisville a sleepy rural town in comparison.

After finding our gate, we waited for our section to be called, and boarded the plan to Costa Rica! The flight took us over the ocean. Bright clouds, and the occasional boat was all that we could see through the window. Beautiful clouds! Mo confessed that she was rather upset the day she learned that clouds were not soft fluffy pillows, but rather illusions of vapory water. If only we could walk on clouds! Flying is a far second.

As we approached San Jose and began to descend for landing, green verdant mountains came into clear focus! Beautiful mountains, sharper than the Kentucky hills. In the distance you could even see wind turbines doting the ridge lines.

We touched down, and the trees just looked different. If anything, I would say they were stouter than the deciduous trees of home. The man sitting next to me (a yacht safety professional) told us about a plane crash that happened right at the end of the ramp last month.

"It was all in the news, and everything. I think it's gone now, everyone survived."

We got through an unbearably long customs only to discover that my bag was left in Texas. What to do!? We were given a tracking number (which didn't work), and were told that they would call when it arrived. Looking back, we should have just waited five more hours till the next flight from Huston came with my bag. But we didn't know.

We took the first taxi that was offered. When I asked "Cuantos cuesta?" He replied that it was set by the meter. Besides, being new to this currency, I had no clue what a good rate for taxi services was. We were at the mercy of the first (and really only) option.

The boutique hotel we booked was only about a 20-minute drive from the airport. I had my first rudimentary conversation in Spanish. Not being able to talk about the past is very limiting (time for verb conjugation practice!). We soon arrived, getting out of the taxi in the pouring rain. The taxi cost 25,000 colons, which translates to about $45. Whew! Things were not cheap in Costa Rica!

The friendly hotel staff directed us to our room, labeled "descapacitado." Special treatment! The room was large and offered a view of the elegant, plant filled patio. The courtyard was surrounded by highwalls with coiled security wires on top. The crime rates a purportedly high in San Jose, and every place we visited showed similar levels of security.

After settling in, we walked a few hundred yards down the street, and too our great delight, stumbled upon "Cafe Otoya." We ate a delicious meal of fancy sandwiches with avocados and sourdough bread. Needless to say, we returned in the morning for coffee and breakfast. The next few days found us exploring the many cafes of downtown San Jose.

The next morning I called the airlines. They reported that my bag was at the airport, and asked if I wanted to pick it up, or if I wanted it delivered. I asked for a delivery, knowing that a taxi ride to the airport and back would run quite a fee! They assured me that the bag would be delivered in 24 hours. Time enough for us to catch the 3:30 pm bus the next day to Monteverde.

We decided to go to walk to the central market, only a few blocks from us. As we approached the market, the stores multiplied. There wasn't one shoe store, there were fifteen. One around every corner. Fruit venders stood every dozen yards or so. Slabs of meat hung open in the streets (and need I say smelled very inedible). On top of the many many people walking every which way, the cars and busses whirred by, and the motorcycles and mopeds beeped and honked incessantly. The driving and traffic is so bad that there's a special place in the San Jose newspaper for car crashed because there's so many of them, we later learned.

We purchase fruit. Star fruit, and rambutans as Mo calls them (I call them orangutangs for short). They're a red spiking fruit that when burst open offer a milky colored fruit that tastes like a mango mixed with a coconut. The fever of the shopping district increased to a veritable tornado of activity. We purchased plantain chips (doused in ketchup because I didn't understand how to ask for no ketchup fast enough), and exited the shopping nightmare to the park. The park was an odd place set dead in the center of highrises. It's a park full tropical trees and shrubs. Many of the plants are ordamental indoor plants in the U.S., but here they just grew huge and happy because it never gets cold!

Later that evening we found a Costa Rican guidebook in the common area. Upon reading the section about San Jose, they warned against visiting the shopping center at the wrong times as "It resembles the eighth layer of hell in Dante's inferno." Whew! We could speak for that.

But still no backpack.

I already bought the bus tickets to Monteverde the next day. The next morning I called United airlines. After about 20 minutes of holding, they informed me that my bag was at the airport. It had not been delivered. I knew that much. They asked if I still wanted it delivered or would come pick it up? What do I do? How long would delivery actually take? Or what if it got lost in delivery? That would be a terrible start to the year. I asked them to please deliver it, taking my chances. Just getting to the airport by bus would take up to two and a half hours one way! Public transportation in San Jose is something else.

At 2pm I received a call that my bag was on the way. What delight! Was it really was coming?! We could get on the bus to Monteverde afterall!

"I'll be there in 20 minutes," the man said. The only way to the hotel is a locked gate in a rather camouflaged entrance in the side of a wall. I was anxious that when the driver arrived, he wouldn't call, and wouldn't be able to find the place or get in, and just leave. So after 15 minutes I went outside to wait...and wait, and wait. After an hour I called him.

"Are you still coming?"

"Yes, I am here." I walked outside again, looking around and waiting. Language barrier, I guess. Hopefully by "here" he meant, "still on the way." I went inside trusting that he would call if he every arrived. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang.

"I'm outside." I ran downstairs, unlocked the gate, and after looking all around saw a man n motorcycle a block away, and he was wearing my backpack! What joy! I had seriously begun to doubt whether I would see that pack and all my belonging again.

"My bike broke down, that is why it took my so long." I thanked him for the delivery, signed the papers, shouldered the bag. There was no chance of making the Monteverde bus today.

With my very limited Spanish I communicated that we needed to stay another night if they had a room. Thankfully there was a room available, and our host showed us into it. We went to be early to wake up early to walk the bus station to catch the 6:30 am transit to Monteverde...