We, Bricole (everyone’s favorite celebrity couple), have made it a sort of tradition to go away around Valentine’s Day. We’ve been to England, Peru, Northern Ireland, and most recently Palm Springs. Last year’s downgrade was due to Nicole contracting what we now think was probably Covid-19. Unfortunately at the time, there were no tests to confirm such things, so we can only go by the fact that she had “Covid tongue” for the ensuing eight months.
This year we are in Costa Rica. And yes, I understand that traveling during a pandemic is a contentious issue. While I do not recommend it for everyone, I would like to plea my unique case. I work for the airlines and I am forced to be exposed to the exact same germs and filth as flight crew as I am as a passenger. If the airline and the country deems that my job is essential and that I must risk my health everyday so people can get to Las Vegas, well by golly I’ve earned a vacation. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s go to Costa Rica.
Nicole and I got seats in an exit row for the flight down to San José. We were shuffled around a bit because the flight attendants had decided to move people around at random. This caused a small amount of chaos, but that’s basically United’s slogan these days. “Thank you for flying the friendly skies, where we will show you a small amount of chaos.” After landing in San José, we had a shockingly fast transition through customs and border control. We had to fill out a health form online that is to be used for contact tracing, proof of health insurance, etc. It generated a QR code and we barely had time to pull it up on our phones. Having not checked any bags, we were also nearly the first people on our plane out the door.
It was then a few minutes wait for the rental car shuttle to arrive, but we eventually became the proud renters of a manual Nissan Versa. Renting a car in Costa Rica is a somewhat dubious task. Many of the companies have pretty abysmal reviews mostly due to insurance fraud. You will see many $5/day rentals that end up costing thousands for a small scratch upon return. I ended up going with one that was more like $35/day for the hopefully more reputable Dollar car rental. I took a few pictures just in case.
We got our first lesson on driving in Costa Rica. I thought people were just running red lights, but this is actually like a legal thing here. Or at least mostly legal. Apparently if they really want you to stop and wait for green, they will have a stop light AND a stop sign. Now you know. Wish us luck.
All of the restaurants were closed when we arrived, so we ended up making a Valentine’s Day dinner out of snacks purchased in the market in our hotel lobby. I offered to get Nicole some chocolates from the market, but she ended up paying for them herself because she gets 12x points at Hilton properties with her card. She’s a Hilton Honors Gold member you know.
It wasn’t especially late, but I think between the plane, the mask, and my dry sinuses, I became quite tired. We went to bed and crashed for our first night in Costa Rica.
passports & pepto bismol 