Who can sleep with the anticipation of our return to Costa Rica? I was wide awake at 3 am and our departure time wasn't until 10 am.Tracy arrived at 6 am to take us to the airport and we sat calmly drinking a cup of coffee…..we departed at 6:30. At 7:10 the cell phone rang, it was Delta (a recording) to let us know that our flight had been delayed until 11:15. Okay, not so bad we can hang out….no problem. We are on the tram on our way to Terminal E and the cell phone rings again….Delta (again a recording) the flight has been delayed yet again until 1:15 pm. Originally we were to arrive Costa Rica at 1 pm. We scheduled to meet Jaime in Paraiso around 3...it is about a 1 ½ hour drive from San Jose to Orosi Valley..... How do we let Jaime know that we won't be meeting him to pick up the keys to the Ranchita? We don't speak Spainish and Jaime speaks no English. Tension now begins to build…just a little. Ray being the friendly person he is immediately starts talking to everyone around us and meets a young woman who lives in CR and is headed home from a 10 day vacation in Miami. She is very fluent in English and says no problem she will call Jaime when we arrive CR and let him know of our delay. What a blessing she was and is. The flight was very pleasant. Ray was in First Class and I was in Business Class, he kept sending drinks back to me and it got more pleasant as time went on. When we arrived in San Jose and Pilar made a call to Jaime, we suggested we meet him the next day. He was very understanding but still wanted to meet with us….he would wait for us between 6 and 7 pm in Paraiso…..400 meters south of the park near the fire station…right….it was now 4. So we all hugged and said our goodbyes.
We headed to the car rental agency. Let me just make this short. I don't want to create tension within myself. Because we were 3 hours late……they charged us $1500 instead of the $500 we had agreed to before arriving. This is high season in CR and there were no other rental cars available so we are driving a very expensive "caro"!
It gets dark here around 5:30 so after an hour of frustrating communication at the car rental place darkness was beginning to fall. After 1 ½ hours of trying to get out of San Jose communication between mi esposo and myself was getting just a little edgy. You have to experience 4 turn-abouts on the way out of the city. The first 3 are "in at 12 o'clock and out at 6 o'clock"…simple enough. The 4th is "in at 12 o'clock and out at 9 o'clock". You'd think that 2 grown adults could agree at where 9 o'clock is. We tried every exit (we thought) and never could find where we needed to be. Funny thing is that we went this same way in September when we were here and drove it with no problems. But when you are tired, it's dark….nothing looks familiar, communication is non existent……trying to asked for directions was hilarious. Why everyone I asked if they spoke English laughed is beyond me. What the hell is so funny about that? Some would try to give me directions….."derecho, derecho" they would say. A taxi driver that I asked got very upset with me because I didn't understand what he was saying I walked away from him to ask someone else and he followed me….tapped me on the shoulder and once again was flailing his arms about "whew, swish, spiff…circle, circle he said. I said Muchas Gracias and I got the hell of there! After much xx!**! We made our way to Orosi. It was 8:30 pm and of course Jaime was long gone. We found our way….finally….after more wrong turns to the villa were we are staying for this first week. But not before we found the Super Mercado for a 6 pack of beer and a bottle of wine. Tomorrow I'll give you day 2 of our first Christmas in our newly adopted country. We are happy, still in love with ....Costa Rica.... and each other.....