Tranquility base here… The eagle has landed

The last 36 hour have been a whirlwind of new experiences, with a side of panic. Our arrival in Costa Rica was uneventful, outside of me snapping at Jill once on the airplane (apparently I get snippy when I’m nervous).

We made it through immigration with no problems. Jill went to wait for our luggage while I went to the Kolbi cell phone stand to get a Costa Rican SIM card. I stood in line for 10 minutes only to find out that I needed my passport to buy a SIM card. My passport was tucked safely into Jill’s purse. Costa Rica 1 – Todd 0. We will make another attempt at getting a SIM card today when we visit the “big” town of Alajuela to go to PriceSmart (Costco).

Luggage retrieval went without a hitch. Our driver, Javier, was front and center when we exited the arrivals hall. Javier took us to his sub-compact car, where we proceeded to wedge all of our luggage into every nook and cranny. I rode in the front seat with Javier because Jill was sitting next to a suitcase in the back seat. Dinner options in Costa Rica are sparse at 9PM on a Sunday evening, but Jill and I both had low blood sugar and needed food. Javier came through with a great taco place. We can attest that delicious tacos al pastor exist in Costa Rica!

We made it to the Boutique Hotel Villa Toscana, where we stayed last time, at around 10:30 on Sunday night. Jill had just enough energy to reacquaint herself with Fritz, her favorite German shepherd on the whole planet, and then fall into bed.

Monday morning…

The sun comes up at 5:45AM in Costa Rica so we were up bright and early Monday morning. One of our favorite things about Villa Toscana is the staff basically treats you like family. We sat on the patio and drank coffee until we were ready for our heuvos rancheros, which were… delicious.

Cesar, our car guy, arrived at Villa Toscana right on schedule at 9AM with our rental car, a well loved Honda Pilot with 150,000 kilometers on the odometer. Everything on the car is in working order. Cesar told us we need to keep our passports with us when driving because any traffic stop by the policia involves them needing to see your passport and immigration stamps. This conflicts with the online guidance that we just need to keep a picture of our passports with us. Hmmm… we will sort that out over time, but for now I guess we’ll keep our passports with us.

Once we had the rental car we set off for our new home in Costa Rica. The drive to the house was uneventful except that the last 400 yards is up a fairly rustic track that makes you happy you have a 4 wheel drive vehicle.

I’m pleased to report that the home exceeds expectations. Everything is as advertised. The photos don’t do the view justice. Mia Mosher, you will be happy to know that there are four full baths in the house, one more than advertised.

Also under the heading of Under-promise and Over-deliver, nice surprise was that Magda, the owner of the house, had upgraded the 10mb internet to fiber the day before. Once we got the wifi password sorted, I was able to verify that we were getting 40mb down and 8 mb up with 5ms ping times. That makes me one happy IT guy, as that should work great for Jill’s video counseling sessions. I’ll still have backup Internet plans in place, but that’s one floating anxiety down.

Probably our biggest culture shock of day one was the grocery store, La Coope. There were several points where I locked up due to both unfamiliarity and completely different offerings. Example, we eat a lot of yogurt. The yogurt in Costa Rica is primarily in liquid form. Think thick milk you pour over granola. The Greek yogurt revolution has not made it to Central America. It took us 2 trips to find salt, which was not by the spices but was in 2lb bags labeled “Sal”. So we need to add salt and pepper shakers to our acquisition list. All in all the grocery store was less intimidating after we’d been there for 30 minutes. Funniest thing that happened is that I was standing in front of the coffee beans trying to figure out which bag to put in our cart. I picked what looked like a good option and was putting it in my cart when a man tapped me on the shoulder shook his head disdainfully and handed me a different bag. Apparently I had chosen… poorly. I smiled and said “gracias” and he nodded never saying a word. And for reference, my annointed bag of coffee beans was 2000 colones (approximately $3.33). Yay, Costa Rica!

Pro-tip: The prices at La Coope are lower on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We assume that is to ensure that tourists pay full freight and locals get their discount. Jill learned that from a Canadian expat name Dale, who recognized new fish when she saw us. Dale also pointed Jill at a wine-in-a-box that she said was deceptively delicious. We went on a Monday and it was easy. Will report back when we go on a Saturday or Wednesday. I expect chaos.

For lunch we ate a roasted chicken that we picked up at La Coope.

While I was busy with IT and air conditioning systems familiarization, Jill was getting us settled in. We made a list of convenience items that we need to pick up for the house, which we will try to find at PriceSmart today. Things that apparently don’t exist in Costa Rica: liquid measuring cups (they have nesting measuring cups but not the beaker style with marks on the sides), ice trays, and kosher salt. Jill found time to make a fantastic pico de gallo while I was screwing around with my tasks.

We had our first of what I hope are many happy hours last night as the sun was going down. We bought gin at duty free in the San Jose airport and managed to find tonic at La Coope. Unfortunately I neglected to make sure we had ice and the ice maker was not turned on so we were limited to about 8 ancient ice cubes at the bottom of the icemaker. The icemaker is now on and we will continue looking for ice trays on our adventure today.

We had pico de gallo and chips plus yogurt and granola for dinner. I then started screwing around with getting our Amazon Firestick working. I failed due to poor wifi coverage. Poor wifi coverage in the back of the house is the only issue we are currently grappling with. We will resolve that by adding Google wifi devices when Jackie comes to visit. I was successful in getting the Firestick working in the upstairs TV room and verified that we’ve got access to all of the things we watch at home.

Final note on day one, as the sun set the lights came on in the valley. We expected this, as it’s one of the reasons we picked this location, but it was still amazing.

We were exhausted from a long productive day and fell into bed at 8:30. All in all not a bad day in the gulag.