August 13, 2009: LAX – Houston – San Jose, Costa Rica!

Owen: What a great day! I think that as long as I’m writing these blog entries, they will probably start with some variation of “Amazing Day!” or “Best day ever!” etc.. So let us begin. I haven’t slept in, oh maybe, 30+ hours? Our party left L.A.X. at 12:30 A.M. early this morning and arrived in Houston at 6 A.M. (local time). After a long, 3-hour wait in the Houston airport, we took off for Costa Rica, arriving around noon (again, local time), and had to wait in an excruciatingly long line to “enter” the country legally. We retrieved our bags and headed to the money exchange counter. Sean got 74,000 Colones. No big deal. After laughing about how rich we felt, even though Colones to Dollars is about 550:1, we met our Taxi driver. He was such a nice dude, just like everyone here. Everybody we have met thus far have been so polite and kind to us Americans who butcher their language every time we try to speak. Anyways, back to the taxi driver. This dude was crazy! Very nice, but a maniac of a driver! He has taught me three things about driving in Costa Rica: 1. Don’t worry about stop signs, nobody else does. 2. If traffic is not moving at a pace you agree with, argue with your horn as loud and long as possible. And #3, pretty much everyone walking the streets looks like they want to be hit by your car, but it’s okay, they jump out of the way before you make contact. Anyways, after struggling through a conversation in Spanish with this man, we arrived at our hotel.

The Hotel Rincon. Upon entering, we were greeted enthusiastically by probably the nicest person on this earth. We talked for a while, he showed us a few rooms, and helped us settle in to quite a nice little room. When we decided to go walk around San Jose, he pulled out a map, and showed us all the places to avoid, and some places to see. Apparently, if you’re ever in Costa Rica, stay away from the Coca-Cola district, there is no Coca-Cola there, just bus stops and people who want to steal your stuff. Today, we walked around and snapped photos all over town.

We spent most of the time at a market, which was really cool. Liam ordered us all some Arroz con Pollo and Coca-Colas, which ended up being HUGE platters. After embarrassingly admitting “Estamos Contentos”, we headed to our room again. Walking back, I picked up 7 lychees, a jelly-like fruit encased in a spiky shell and a 1000 Colones bootleg copy of “G.I. Joe” to watch later in the evening, we will see how that turns out… We all were wiped out when we got back to the room, but we all managed to take showers and start writing these entries. We planned a jam-packed day tomorrow for my birthday, so I will let you know how that goes! PURA VIDA!

Liam: The day started at 12:30 on our flight to Houston, I went in and out of sleep until we landed at the Houston airport at 6 o’clock in their time. We went to our gate then slept until 8’o clock and went to get breakfast. We then boarded the plane for Costa Rica, I slept a bit more on the plane but I was still a little tired when we landed. When we landed it was 11:45 and when we got out of customs it was about 12:30. A cab took us to our hotel were we all laid down on our beds for a few minutes before departing to see the sights. We walked around San Jose until we got to the main street; we looked at the different shops and walked down the road. When we spotted the main market, we looked around the massive shelves and then found a booth to eat lunch, we all ordered chicken and rice with Coca-Colas. Owen ordered some interesting fruits on the way out of the market. While walking back we decided to buy a copy of G.I. Joe for a little fewer than 2 dollars. Sean saw a supermarket where he bought us some snacks and water. We made our way back to the hotel where we all collapsed on our beds and then showered.

Sean: Apparently I am not going to have to do much writing on this blog. These boys are naturals! Though I would like to mention we stopped by the National Theater and made our way through a few parks scattered across the city. We also went by the hotel that I stayed at back when I studied abroad here. I expect many memories from that summer will come flooding back during this trip. Like my brothers I am exhausted from our red eye flights and I am ready to sit back and watch a movie before getting to sleep nice and early.