All the way to Costa Rica!

Eventually, after spending hours and hours researching the upcoming weather in Nov. and Dec. of 2022, I decided to head to Seattle on Nov. 8th in preparation of my flight to Costa Rica. I had already bought and paid for my airline tickets, $720 RT (including flight insurance, taxes, and fees), and paid rent for the entire 30 days at a home I was going to be staying at in Costa Rica, $780. Thirty days at $26/day. A bargain for that area of CR!

That timing was to avoid a problematic situation of early snows blocking or shutting down the shortest route from Milton Freewater to Lynnwood, WA where my brother, nephew, and grand nephew live along with my 101 year old Uncle, various cousins and what not. I’d have to traverse Snowqualmie pass which can be closed this time of year, in which case, I’d need to head to Portland and then north. Adding a couple hours to the trip.

As it turned out though, the weather was fine, but obviously early winter weather. I was planning on taking some pictures of that trip and my arrival at Dan’s place when I discovered that my camera’s battery was fully discharged and for a while, I wasn’t able to find any charging method. Turned out I was overlooking the obvious…the charging socket under the battery door of the camera when I had been looking at finding some way to just charge the battery with it removed. Doh!

Anyway, I had fun from Tuesday Nov. 8th until Sunday Nov. 13th working on getting Dan and Paul’s electronics fixed up. The TV settings were whacked so got that straightened out and the Cat5 cable had been smashed sometime in the past so 3 wires were broken. Once I fixed that, they had their living room wifi zone working again for their whole house system; smart TV, Alexa system, guests, and so on.

Eventually, just before I left Seattle for Costa Rica I figured out I could charge up my camera using one of the generic cables I had on hand but that was the night before I left so I have no pictures of those several days at Dan’s.

But, with that problem behind me, on Nov. 13th packed up and Dan drove me to SeaTac airport in Seattle, dropped me off at 9 PM, and at the electronic check-in Kiosk, for my 11:58 PM flight, it asked if I wanted to upgrade to business class (Alaska Airlines) for a mere $69 so I punched YES. The first leg of this red eye flight was to DFW and business class had more leg room. Turned out that there was an empty seat right next to me too. I tried to sleep but without success. After landing I’d have a stop over of a few hours then at 6 AM on an American Airlines flight direct to Liberia airport in Costa Rica. It’s the rainy season in Liberia and at the Pacific coast so the day looked like this picture below. And it drizzled a few times during the car trip to El Coco Playa where I’m staying.

Landed in CR at 11:55 AM and spent at least 45 minutes in the airport with all the other arrivals snaking back and forth until reaching customs. All they did was ask to see a copy of my return ticket, which I had handy, then headed through the luggage check for a total of 1 hour check-in with customs. Outside the building, I met the VRBO host and the driver, and off we headed to El Coco Playa around 38 minutes drive away. We stopped at a bar for a drink on the way, I paid for that and paid for the travel, $40. When we got to the house, it’s outside looked just like the pictures I’d seen online…

I’ll be staying downstairs.

And I fell into bed and slept the rest of the day and all night. Didn’t realize I was so tired.

Next morning, got up and the host cooked b-fast, then told me they charge $4 for b-fast and lunch, then $5 for dinner. This turned out to be a bargain compared to eating out every day in CR however, the meals were somewhat skimpy. One strange thing was the host told me that the entire package of bacon was mine and after cooking some for me twice, I skipped 2-3 meals there and the bacon disappeared. When I asked about it, all I got was a shrug.

But I had kitchen rights, plus a shelf in the refer and a dry goods shelf. The only problem was that the owners, nice as they are, never left the building to me alone like the VRBO ads say. They stayed there. Live there 24-7. I got my own room, but we shared everything else. I’m pretty easy to get along with as it is and so are they, and I would have enjoyed being there alone, but having them there to cook and clean the place so regularly was handy. But I know how to wash dishes and sweep the floors and provide groceries and cook so, yeah, woulda preferred the place to myself though it did come in handy to be able to ask them questions about where to find things the 3-4 times I needed some info.

There was a washing machine too along with free supplies. Even the coffee was sort of free until they realized how much I drank, than they asked for some money, which I was happy to contribute. The guy Will, does speak English, but his wife Sary (Spanish for Sara I think) does not so if she wanted to communicate with me, she’d speak into a translator app on her phone and show me the text. That worked fine.

Here’s my room:

And the next day, I just sort of rested and surfed the internet using their fine 58 Mbps free wifi…which is how I found an email from the bank telling me there had been some suspicious activity on my Visa card. WTF? And sure enough, when I looked at it, there were 8 freakin’ charges on there that were NOT mine! Anyway, back to that later. Nine if you count the charge from Expedia which first showed up as a credit for $110 and then a couple days later as a charge for $110. I didn’t bother to check what that was about and I didn’t buy or attempt to buy anything from them.

Here are some more pictures of the place, I spent the majority of my time on the veranda or in my room working on the Visa card issue. Hours and hours:

And here’s the kitchen area where I cooked my meals when I didn’t eat what my hosts where cooking. BTW, Will the host is a chef! So he cooked several big meals which were shared with other renters staying around nearby. The Costa Rica style meals are rather uninteresting so I just thought they were okay. I know for sure from several Costa Rica FB pages that many people luv CR cooking but I found it mostly rather bland. I much prefer fiery Mexican cooking.

Sary was the better cook of the two and I enjoyed her meals. But not for long. I soon had enough food purchased that I generally cooked for myself. But I did wander up the street 100 mtrs or so to have meals at the tiny mom & pop restaurant several times. A meal there was $7 – $11 and usually very good. Not saying Will or Sary’s food wasn’t good, it would certainly keep you alive, it just wasn’t the best I had while there in CR. But for sure there were times when they’d serve something that was excellent.

And here was the entertainment section. A tiny screen TV where we watched soccer games several times. It was adequate though I teased Will about it a few times.

That first couple days I oriented myself around the lodging and neighborhood while spending hours on the internet trying to find out about the bogus charges to my Visa card and usually spend hours sitting here on one of the many places to sit:

I called American Airlines and had a long talk with them and they couldn’t find any record of the three things they’d charged me for. I know I didn’t order anything while on the plane, and only got the free drinks offered, but certainly not anything that amounted to the ~$150 they had charged me for. The acct tech and I thought it was a glitch due to me buying the Alaska Airlines upgrade. See that was transferred to AA but their system screwed it up and multi-charged me for stuff I didn’t get. I didn’t even get the business class seat.

And then there was the bogus rip off outfit that somehow got all my CC info, enough info that they were able to charge me for another 5 line items from 3 of their bogus companies. These are ‘buyers clubs’ for travelers that I have never had anything to do with but somehow they were charging me. Amount was over $200. I called and they kept trying to upsell me but refused to refund. More on this later. Meanwhile, I cancelled the card.

And here’s the road just outside the rental. Walk up that 100 mtrs that direction and there was that restaurant I mentioned, turn around, and I could walk 400 mtrs to the beach.

You can see the ocean from here. Just a few steps to this corner from the house. If you go left, that takes you downtown. Go right and there are several strip malls, one of which I’d buy food and beer.

But to get to the beach, I’d head straight at that corner. Once reaching the end of the pavement, have to walk down the short and well traveled sandy trail and here’s the beach.

And the sunset that 2nd day after arriving looked much like this days later when the clouds cleared. I borrowed this picture.

So that was the first few days in Costa Rica. Like I said, I spent much of the first few days there struggling with getting those bogus charges removed. Unfortunately, none of the charges could be or would be reversed, so I had to cancel the card. Luckily, the high speed internet connection meant I could call, text, and email without worrying about a dropped connection. I used Whatsapp (FB VoIP system) and Google’s Voice for phone calls back to the states. I had considered buying a SIM card when I got here but ended up never needing it as Google Voice relayed all my calls and texts from the US and there was high speed internet wherever I hung out.

Anyway, thanks for reading. There will be more from CR following this one.