Costa Rica Trip Day 1 - 2009-03-06

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/link774/sets/72157614900827014/

I flew into Costa Rica last night, arriving at around 10:30 Costa Rica time (Central Time). The flight was fairly uneventful: the most exciting thing that happened was that there was nobody in the center seat, so I had a bit of extra room. Unfortunately, some guy who was sitting next to a baby came and asked if he could sit in our center seat, so it was only like that for half the flight.

Kellian was there to greet me as I came through customs. There was a glass window where everyone who was waiting for someone was pressed against the glass, which was pretty amusing. It looked like they were watching an exhibit in SeaWorld or something and I was the exhibit.

We took a cab back to Kellian's place, which took about a half hour. It was a very exciting ride though: evidently drivers here don't really pay much attention to red lights. They just go straight through them if there is no traffic in the way.

When we got back to Kellian's place, we had some PB&Js and I got to meet two of her roommates, Brianna and Peter, who were both quite nice. We stayed up for a bit chatting with Peter and then headed to bed.

Today, we woke up fairly early because the sun comes right in Kellian's window. This is probably for the best, since there isn't a whole lot to do around here when it gets dark, because it isn't really safe to be out walking around. We had omelettes for breakfast along with some gallo pinto that Brianna cooked up during the middle of the night (she evidently doesn't sleep). Breakfast was tasty. We ate it out on the patio that overlooks a stream that runs by the house. There is a really cool tree that stretches over the stream from the opposite side all the way to our patio.

The patio is also decorated with a bunch of dreamcatchers made by another one of Kellian's roommates, Juan Carlos, who I met in the morning. Check out the pictures, they're pretty neat, not your standard dream catcher. After breakfast, Juan Carlos taught Kellian some Spanish.

Next, we headed over to meet Kellian's boss, Robb, at his house in Escazu. To get there, we took a bus from San Jose. We had a nice walk to the bus station and got to see some of the pedestrian shopping areas of San Jose. Once we got to the bus station, we had a bit of trouble finding the bus we needed, but eventually we located one.

It wasn't quite the right bus, but it got us pretty close so we took a cab the rest of the way. Robb's house was pretty cool, check out the photos for some pictures of the house and the view, which is incredible. It was windy as hell up on the top of that hill though, and they said it is pretty much like that all the time.

Perhaps the high point of my day was meeting Robb's daughter Georgia's dog, Talula. Talula is a miniature dachshund puppy that was absolutely adorable. Not much to say other than that, but you will probably notice that I am a big fan of mini-dachshunds by the huge number of pictures that I took of her. Once she got tired out, she took a nap on my lap, where I found that I could adjust her position gently to get even cuter shots. The cuteness may just make your head explode: you have been warned!

Alright, this is getting pretty long so I'll summarize the rest and wrap it up: Kellian and I went to lunch near Robb's house. I found out that I didn't like ceviche very much. We hung out at Robb's a bit and then headed out to dinner which was pretty good: it was one of those places where they shave meat off of a skewer. Kellian didn't much care for it. She got a big pile of shredded iceberg lettuce. Yum!