Day 10 - Another Day of Travel

We got out of Monteverde early morning and it took right at an hour to get past the rock/dirt roads.  Nice way to start the day.  The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful other than hitting a dead-end when trying to get on a highway we needed to get on in San Jose.  Just a dead-end ... no detours ... no alternate suggestions ... just blockades on the ramp to the highway.  As I try to find another way around the GPS in the car is going crazy trying to "recalculate" me back to the same ramp.  I ended up going the opposite direction down the highway to the next exit and then turning back around.  And when I say highway, it's not what we expect.  It's still just 2 lane roads for the most part with an occasional passing lane if you're lucky and patient enough.

We had been warned that the Caribbean side of the country wasn't nearly as upscale as the rest, but we came here to see the gulf ocean and the lush rain forests the area is known for.  You pay a lot less and you get what you pay for, so no complaints for now.  We had a bit of an inauspicious start at the hotel when the 2nd floor room we were given didn't have a working AC wall unit.  Unfortunately we didn't discover that until we were fully unpacked.  With no elevators, it was a bit of a pain packing everything back up and moving down to the 1st floor, but we were rewarded with a room that looks out directly onto the pool area which then has the gulf directly beyond that.

We just got done with breakfast and met a woman and her 3 kids.  Her husband is in charge of the 250 missionaries in country for LDS.  Super nice women and the kids were as well behaved and polite as you might expect.  They're in country here for 3 years and she gave us a lot of good suggestions on places to go and where to avoid in this immediate area.  Quite helpful.

Not much in the way of pics today other than a few of our new residence.  Here's the patio outside our room where I'm sitting now writing this and the view looking back at our room from the pool area.



















And here's the mighty gulf behind the hotel and the beach area leading up to it.