Costa Rica – Coast to Coast June 2005 and August 2006

After watching CNN we learned that hurricane Ernesto was passing through Cuba and was due to hit Miami at the same time we were supposed to fly there on our way back tome to San Francisco. This worried us as we didn’t know what to expect at the airport or how we were going to get back home. After breakfast we headed out back to Alajuela. It was mostly a smooth ride until we got onto the pan American highway and were heading up to the central valley. We would get stuck behind a line of slow moving trucks. After leapfrogging ahead we would get in front of the trucks and have a few minutes of unobstructed driving only to find ourselves stuck behind another line of slow moving trucks. We passed the debris of a really bad accident that occurred a few days earlier involving two big rigs and a few passenger cars where three people died. On the side of the road was a wrecked tractor trailer and a lot of debris. After seeing that, we decided to take it easy the rest of the was back into the central valley.

As we got to Alajuela we decided to stop at the airport to check on the status of our flight the next day. We learned that our flight had been canceled but they had no more information available for us and said we had to call American airline customer service from a phone to see when we would be able to leave. On the way back to Orquideas we stopped at the Mega Super in Alajuela and stocked up on coffee and salsa chillero (we are able to buy Lizano where we live in San Francisco). The coffee in the supermarket is ½ what they charge in the tourist areas.

We headed back to Orquideas and my wife made the calls and learned that the soonest they would be able to fly us home would be on Friday morning. This worried us as we both had obligations back at home be we decided to put that all behind us and make the best of the two next days we were going to be in Costa Rica. I called Tricolor to come pick up the car and when the guy arrived, he said the car was too dirty and caked with mud to make sure that we hadn’t damaged it in any way. He said that he trusted us and tore up the credit card imprints what would have covered any damage that the insurance did not. He also didn’t charge us for an extra day even though we returned the car 5 hours late. We spent the rest of the evening in the bar hanging out with other travelers who had just arrived in Costa Rica and giving them suggestions on where to go and what to see.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.