the Arrival

I'm writing this now from the loneliest hotel restaurant in the world.  It is completely empty save Sean and I and the loud dance hall techno coming from the (empty) bar area.  We're sitting beside the Wall of Oppression, a floor-to-ceiling carved mural made of black stone, depicting gold miners, slave drivers, and imminent violence.  Despite the ambiance, our first dinner in Costa Rica was splendid.  We got delicious local cuisine: beans, rice, salad, veggie stew, fried plantains, fish.  Sean got a Coca Cola Light!  The Broncos beat the Dolphins!  The food perks us up enough that I put down my notebook and we reminisce about our day.  

We also decide that we are going to rent a car for the remainder of the trip.  I'm excited and super freaking out about this.  Like, I'm definitely old enough to rent a car on my vacations now.  But I've done it so few times, and never in a foreign country.  Renting a car will make tomorrow's plans waaaaaaay easier and cheaper, and it will let us "control our own destiny."  Sean is fond of using that phrase. 

I am so tired that I can barely keep my eyes open as I type this.  I think I slept about seven minutes on our flight over here, and that means that Sean slept for six minutes.  We had a fabulous time in the Sky Lounge last night, playing backpack show and tell, drinking free drinks, remembering our first airport adventure in Dubai with ACC, planning our future movie theater/brewery.  Once on the plane, we were so distracted by the plane tracker on the TV and the flight attendants kept giving us food that we didn't try to go to sleep until an hour in.  Our plane landed at like 6:45am Costa Rica time, which is 3:45 PST.  I definitely look a hot mess.  There is a picture to prove it somewhere.

We sailed through immigration and customs in two minutes, used the ATM, and got a cab to San Jose.  I've been super paranoid about pick-pockets and thieves and will not let my daypack out of my hands.  I wouldn't let Sean put his pack in the trunk of the cab, for which I received a dirty look.  (For the record, a vast majority of the time I'm right.  In this case, he needed both his sunglasses AND camera while in the cab and was quite thankful that he had them accessible.)  Then we checked into our hotel and I convinced Sean that he did NOT need to visit the breakfast buffet but rather should take a nap with me for an hour before we venture out.  (He fell asleep before me, naturally.)  

Oh!  In the middle of our nap, I woke up to the sound of water falling pitter-pat on the floor.  The air-conditioning unit mounted on the wall was dripping.  All over the place.  Sean McGuyvered a trashcan and towel so that we could continue sleeping with the A/C on while the water collected silently.  I dreamed of peeing.

After the nap, we gleefully unpacked and rearranged our daypacks and put all of our valuables in the safe.  Sean revealed that he brought Poo Pourri.  "I brought it to save the relationship," he explained proudly.

We sort of wandered around the Central Avenue before winding up at KFC for lunch.  Sean suggested it as a joke, but I thought it was a brilliant choice, such an incredibly bad idea that it became a good idea.  The chicken was pretty much exactly like American KFC, but my meal also came with beans and rice and fried plantains.  While we were sitting and eating, Sean turned to me and asked, "Did we lock the safe?"

I looked back at him.  "No.  No, we did not."  And I burst out laughing.  Guys, we were SO TIRED.  We had at least three conversations this morning planning out how we were going to use the safe and what the combination was going to be and was the laptop going to fit, etc etc.  But I was fairly positive that we had never actually CLOSED the safe. We returned to the hotel and sure enough, the safe was packed full of all of our valuables and wide open.  Luckily, everything was still there.  Sean probably gave me like eighty thousand exaggerated sighs, but I was too busy laughing at my own idiocy to notice.