Costa Rica Adventure: getting there.

Scott and I flew into Costa Rica the day after graduation, arriving around noon. We flew into San Jose and picked up our rental car, a smallish SUV called a Suzuki Jimny (I don't think I have ever seen one in the United States).

We drove for seven hours down the Pacific coast and saw all kinds of crazy things: multiple people piled onto tiny motorbikes, animals that roamed onto the roads, a huge billboard for a crock pot, an overturned logging truck.

We drove toward the Osa Peninsula, our final destination. We stayed at a lodge near Puerto Jiminez called Finca Kobo the first night. The last few hours of our drive were tense: the roads were winding and hilly, and it was pouring rain. We pulled up to the lodge two hours later than we had anticipated and the gate to the lodge's driveway was closed and locked. Scott hopped the fence, found the caretaker, and drove us onto the property. Finca Kobo is a chocolate plantation, but chocolate would not come until the next day. It was late and we were tired, so we headed to our room. We hadn't eaten all day, so we split a granola bar and each had a banana that the caretaker had given us.

The next morning, we got a legit breakfast and took a walk around the plantation's grounds. It stopped raining early in the morning, and all the flowers were glistening and hummingbirds were buzzing all around.

The lodge does a "chocolate tour" where they show you around the plantation; we skipped it because we wanted to get on the road to our main destination, Finca Exotica. We had heard the road was really gnarly and takes some time to get over even though it does not look that far from Puerto Jiminez to Carate. That rumor proved true. More to come.