We´re here!
So, this is it! We landed in San Jose, Costa Rica last night. Our little hostel has delusions of grandeur I’m afraid. There was some mention of being a “little slice of paradiseâ€. The scenery is, well, a little short of paradise. Hah.
From what we’ve seen so far, San Jose isn’t much to speak of, it was dark when we landed so we couldn’t see much but from what people have said in general, having the light of day wouldn’t improve much. Driving is madness here, not as bad as Nairobi, but San Franscisco and LA traffic is nice and orderly in comparison. Basically traffic signs and lanes are merely guidelines and it’s up to the individual driver interpret the guidelines as they see fit. Our taxi driver had a more liberal approach to the various rules of the road.
As for the flight, things went mostly smoothly getting here. There was an eerie moment in the San Francisco airport as we were passing through security… I think someone went into an area that they weren’t supposed to, I’m not sure, but suddenly all the guards were yelling “Breach!†and the whole area was locked down in a matter of seconds. It was pretty impressive how quickly things moved. We still don’t know quite what it was…some minor incident because business went back to usual after a few minutes. We were running a little late so I’m glad it was nothing major otherwise we might still be stuck trying to get here.
Here are some more pictures that I meant to post before we left.
It has been an exercise of cramming as much stuff as possible into limited spaces. All of our worldly belongings are packed away in a 7×7 storage shed and now we carry everything we need for 3 months in just two bags. We were surprised how things could be reduced. We did get rid of a lot of junk and we left some of the bigger things with a couple people. I think we should make a habit of this whole year long trip thing. Every five years or so, we take a huge trip so we get rid of all our junk. I guess it only really works if you don’t own a house, we were renting so everything had to go. So I guess it’s not such a great idea.
It was hard to say goodbye to everyone including our poor puppy who doesn’t even know that she is being left for 3 months, poor thing. But we’re here now and I’m really excited. It feels really good to find ourselves approaching a brand new experience with our jobs and the typical day-in-day-out responsibilities behind us.