3500 photos and videos! That’s not even including any photos the girls took on their phones (which I’m pretending don’t exist). Thankfully I’m counting on Abigail to put together another amazing video with all the footage we took – but it will still be a process to get through all the photos, here goes….
First a little background about how our trip to Costa Rica came about. Again, like Bali it was booked in the middle of Snowmaggedon – February 2019 – the world had seemed to stop in Snoqualmie. School was cancelled for days and days, streets were impassable, businesses closed, grocery stores emptied. I had a few friends that were lucky enough to have made plans for travel and I was getting stir crazy that we didn’t have a single trip planned besides a family reunion to Bear Lake in the summer. My parents traveled to Costa Rica when I was younger and I remember they loved it and I added it to my bucket list of destinations I wanted to travel to (no list actually exists, but it should). My friend Sommer went to Costa Rica a few years ago with her extended family and felt it was one of the best family vacations she’d ever had. Then last year I had a group of friends interested in planning a couples trip together and Costa Rica was at the top of the list. I looked into it then and was excited to make it happen, but the trip fell through (we went to Seabrook in June 2019 instead). Anyhow, the point being… Costa Rica has been on my want to travel list for many years and when I spotted airfare for $415 we decided to make it happen. I ended up booking four of our flights with points and we bought the other three. United changed our flights three times over the course of the 10 months and it was a pain each time to get us all moved to flights that made sense. United wanted us to travel home via San Jose – Newark – San Francisco – Seattle or other crazy 20+ hour options. In the end we ended up with better flights than we purchased, but it wasn’t without significant effort. Sommer pretty much replicated her family’s Costa Rica trip for us which was nice to not have to do a ton of research on our own about what to do.
Abigail finished her finals at Bellevue College on Friday, December 6 and we left on Saturday, December 7. The rest of the kids missed 6 days of school so we could avoid the peak holiday travel times and increase costs. It ended not being a big deal for Jason, Katie and Drew but it’s taken Carly several weeks to make up all of her missed assignments and tests. Thankfully she’s such a great student. She says the trip was well worth it.
Day 0 – Travel Day
The night before we left for Costa Rica was my annual girlfriend pajama party down in Auburn. I won't miss this party if at all possible. I knew it would be a late night, but I also knew it would be worth it. I was surprised when I looked at my watch and it was already 1:45 AM when I started heading home. I had eaten so much sugar that I was pretty wired and I knew it would likely take me a long while to fall asleep once back home. I was right. I got to bed around 3 AM and finally fell asleep around 4 AM. It was far too soon when my alarm went off at 5 AM. We had a little bit of last-minute packing to do. I thought Justin and the kids would get more done than they did the night before, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. We were out the door little bit later than I had hoped but on a Saturday morning there’s not much traffic.
I was prepared for the possibility of a little drama at the ticketing counter. We booked basic economy flights on United, which was a great deal. I knew that the standard policy for basic economy was that passengers would not be allowed any carry-on size baggage. However, United also has a policy that if you are flying on a transatlantic flight you would be allowed a carry-on baggage. Each time United changed our flights I verified that Costa Rica was considered a transatlantic flight and so we packed accordingly. Each of us having a carry-on bag. The lady at the counter in Seattle tried to tell me that that wasn’t the case and we ended up going back-and-forth about it for over 45 minutes. In the end she checked our carry-ons free of charge, but never admitted that I was correct. And I never admitted that she was doing us any favors. It was actually nice not to have to haul around any of our bags onto the flight or during our layover in Houston. We were hopeful that things would work out as well for us going home, preferably without as much drama.
Another drawback to flying basic economy is that you get last selection of seats. We were able to get seats somewhere near each other although we had a few kids that had to sit off on their own. The flights were uneventful. United doesn’t have the best entertainment options, but we made due. I tried to rest the first flight, but I’m not sure I actually fell asleep for more than a couple minutes at a time.
We had a three hour layover in Houston and thanks to the perk of one of my credit cards I have access to lounges and/or dining options in most airports. Houston had a Mexican restaurant that would provide me and my guest a $28 credit for dining. So Justin and I decided to take advantage of that $56 and the kids ate Chick-fil-A. Both dining options were near each other but they were in terminal A, where as our flight arrived and would depart from terminal C. Getting between those two terminals took about 20 minutes of walking and riding on a train. We started to head back to our terminal about 30 minutes before boarding would begin. When we stepped off our train at terminal C I noticed that Justin didn’t have the camera bag with him. The camera bag not only has my good camera in it but it also has our passports. In a panic he jumped back on the train that we just got off of and headed in the opposite direction of our missing bag. So I had to get on the train going the right direction and run back to the dining area to see if I could see if our backpack was still there or if we were in loads of trouble. I ran like a crazy person and thankfully the bag was still there (20+ minutes unattended). I was both relieved and incredibly frustrated. That would have been a complete nightmare. We got back to our gate with only a few minutes to spare.
We arrived in San Jose late, around 9:30 PM and the line to get through customs was incredibly long. We waited over a half hour and then a kind customs agent took pity on our large family and let us go over to the nearly empty native passport line versus the visitor passport line. Then it was off to rent our car. This was another area in which I was prepared for a little bit of a fight. Costa Rica has a reputation of making visitors pay for additional insurance when renting a car. I came prepared with a letter from my credit card company of the third-party insurance that they provide as a perk to cardholders. Thankfully we were renting a car from Alamo and they were incredible to work with and didn’t give me any grief. We headed straight to our hotel and got to bed as quickly as possible.
Day 1 – San Jose to Los Lagos
We originally thought we’d catch church at 9 AM, however since we were not yet adjusted to local time that seemed awfully early. With a quick little internet search we found out that there was a temple within a few miles of our hotel and that there was also a chapel on that same property with sacrament meeting at 11 AM. A much better fit!
It’s always neat to attend church away from home especially in international locations. Can’t say anyone besides Justin understood much but it was still an experience. The closing hymn was Silent Night which is actually a song that Jason, Katie and Drew learned to sing in Spanish last year during singing time at church. I enjoyed seeing them singing along in Spanish.
Jason thought it was pretty memorable that the parking spots were grass
We had about a 3 hour drive to our first destination near Arenal. However about 2/3 of the way there we came across a large truck and trailer off the side of the road that was getting pulled out of the ditch. The road was closed for nearly an hour and there wasn’t any alternate route.
As a result we arrived at our hotel much later than expected. We got a quick bite to eat at the Red Frog in La Fortuna and then enjoyed the hotel pools and waterslides in the dark before getting to bed.
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