Secretly Spontaneous: Day 0.5

Day 1 of our trip was so long that it needs to be broken down into 2 parts. 

We left work early on Friday, January 17 to catch our 6:30 p.m. flight to Denver, taking the light rail from the University of Minnesota to the airport.  Over the past year or so I've come to really appreciate public transportation in the Twin Cities.  Yes, it's not perfect, especially if you have very specific places you want to go.  But since Nathan and I live near the largest art museum and work at the largest university in the Twin Cities, we usually can find some pretty convenient bus routes.

Our next 12 hours of existence were in and out of airports--I won't bore you with the details, but we did learn a few things:

1. There is no reason to fly Frontier airlines because they don't give you cookies anymore.

2. There is no reason to fly Frontier airlines because they don't even give you a free thimble-full of soda anymore. ($2.95)

3. It is very hard to find vegetarian food at airports, even in Denver.  We ended up going to one of the more-expensive, fancier grill-type places in the airport where we got a veggie burger and veggie Philly, which I didn't even know was a thing but man was it delicious.


So.  We left Minneapolis at 6 p.m. and arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica at 6:40 a.m.  If you think the Youngbloods were going to drive to their resort and spend the day recovering from jet lag, you have yet to go on a vacation with me.  From the time the plane landed we had exactly two hours and twenty minutes to make it through customs, pick up our rental car, and drive 50 minutes to the Poas Volcano before the afternoon fog covered the crater from view.

We exited the plane down a staircar, which provided ample material for some early morning Arrested Development quotes between Nathan and I.  Exiting a plane via stairs is so much more romantic than walking right into the airport.  The minute you step outside you're hit with your new surroundings--a blinding morning sun, and a warm breeze that paradoxically makes your skin shiver.

Unfortunately my perfect plan was ruined by the fact that although Nathan confirmed with the Rental Car Guy TWICE that he would pick us up at 7:00 a.m. from the airport, nobody arrived until 8:10, because, as the man who picked us up stated, "We don't open until 8." 

For the first hour of Costa Rica, we were standing outside the airport with another family with three small boys who each amused themselves on an iPad while the mom and dad made out for a while.  Costa Rican men would approach us in polo shirts looking important, claiming to work for the rental car company we rented from, pretending to talk to someone on their cell phone, and then claiming that someone would be there in 10 minutes.  I gazed wistfully at the tops of palm trees peeking out from behind the parking ramp. 

Finally we and the Makeoutersons were taken to the rental car place about a mile away where we signed our lives away for our little, gas-effiecient economy car which (foreshadowing) although reasonably priced was not equipped to drive over bouldery paths, up mountains, and across rivers.

The best investment of our trip was by far the $8/day we paid to rent a GPS unit, because:

1. There are very few signs for the touristy things, especially in the impoverished towns you have to drive through to get there.

2. Not many people spoke English, and I wanted to use my Spanish skills only as a Last Resort (more foreshadowing).

3. The next week involved us traveling coast to coast, and I didn't want to spend hours taking wrong turns and wasting away our vacation.

By the time we were ready to hop in the car and try to make it to Volcan Poas, it

was around 9 a.m.  TripAdvisor had warned me that you wanted to arrive as close to opening as possible (9 a.m.) in order to be able to see the volcano. 

We twist and turned our way in our little economy car through the narrow roads of Alajuela where the velocidad maximo was 40 kph. 50 minutes later at around 10 a.m. we pulled up to the parque nacional and were informed that "the crater was cloudy," but paid the $10/person anyway because, what the heck, we were in Costa Rica and maybe we could see something through a couple clouds.

We had driven high enough and into a rainforesty-enough area that our first international purchase was for two tent-sized, yellow rain ponchos. 

After a short walk through a bit of rainforest, we came upon the lookout point for the volcano crater.  I took Nathan's picture, we laughed, and continued our sleepless first day in paradise.  Our next stop was a waterfall garden.

Nathan in front of Volcan Poas.