Leaving home at 1:15 AM in the morning was not as difficult as I had imagined. I guess we were excited and anxious to start our adventure. There is NO traffic between Blue Mountain and Toronto at that time of night. We were therefore way too early for our 6:15 flight. All went well and we were off the ground heading for Miami! Upon arrival we knew that we would have to hustle to catch our flight to Liberia, Costa Rica. Tom flagged down an employee driving a golf cart and he gladly drove us to the farthest gate just in time to board. We never would have made it if we had continued to walk. Miami is a huge airport.
We landed in Liberia at 11:07-right on schedule. That was Costa Rican time-2 hours earlier than home. We arrived at our villa, The Breeze, at about 12:30 and began to explore at about 1:30. We found the beach nearest our villa and decided to have a late lunch at a simple cafe right on the beach called El Pescador. Our host Omar made fast friends with Tom and we enjoyed a simple meal with wine and beer. We said "adios" to Omar after meeting and chatting with some folks from Chicago and headed toward the downtown of Tamarindo.
I would like to tell you that it is a quaint, colonial town but it is not. The streets are dirt roads with rubble strewn along the sides. However, the people are friendly and helpful. We walked around for awhile and found the Super Compar (supermarket) and bought a few groceries. By this time we had spent $75 for airport shuttle, $33 for lunch and $50 for groceries. We thought we knew how to calculate the cost in CR money but so far everything costs more than we thought!
Our Villa is nice-quite modern, spacious and fairly new. The caretakers, Annabelle and Jose, are very nice and helpful. They don't speak English and our Spanish is virtually non existent. Getting our WiFi working was a challenge. That should be the first lesson taught in any Spanish course. Then Jose had to try to fix our hot water (we didn't have any). He reset the breakers and the hot water tank blew up! He has since installed a new one. We collapsed in bed after a spaghetti and tomato sauce dinner and slept very well in a very comfortable bed. Our first day in Costa Rica finished.
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| Tamarindo Beach from the Air |
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