The GCW Tour, Costa Rica: Two Important Initial Lessons

We made it! 

Flight to Los Angeles last night was lovely and reaffirmed an important lesson: better is better. Sib2's MVP status with Alaska got us upgraded to first class and even on such a short hop -- assisted by some very aggressive tail winds -- I have to say that first class is better than steerage. Someday I may have to spring for the upgrade on an international flight. 

But the more important lesson: if you come to Costa Rica, bring a GPS unit. Actually, bring a few of them. If our experience was any indication, you're going to need them. Here's how the trek from car rental to hotel worked for us...

The "address" for our hotel on the Expedia confirmation page read "South West of the Peace Park, San Jose." That's it. No street. No address. Just southwest of the Peace Park. And given that none of the streets have signs, and none of the buildings have numbers, it probably makes as much sense as anything.

So we put the name of the hotel into the GPS search function. Nothing. So we put "Peace Park" into the search function, and go a hit. So we were off. According to the GPS it was about a 40km drive to the hotel. That seemed to make sense, since were headed out of San Jose and into the mountains tomorrow. So off we went, enjoying the (dark) scenery and adjusting to San Jose. Then the road got very narrow, and the pavement disappeared, and we thought it a little strange, but kept going. Finally, we got to the GPS's location: I big university-run wilderness area -- the "Peace Park" -- with a few houses around it and loose gravel roads. We managed to find a local -- or rather, he found us -- and with my lousy Spanish exchange enough information to confirm this was not where we needed to be.

So we turned to option 2: Sib2's phone running Google maps. It  found our hotel when we searched by name, and gave us a location way back near where we started. So back we went, and came to a very busy roundabout. Next to that roundabout was the block where Google claimed our hotel was. Car wash, industrial waste, funky locked up church, yes; hotel no.

So I tried the Maps software on my phone and go yet a third location a block or two from where we were. The only problem this time was that the hotel is organized around a central square which could only be accessed form an inner street, and we kept driving around the outer street. Finally, Sib4 looked backwards and noticed a sign and while we were paused looking at that, a guy walking by used some very simplified Spanish and hand gestures to get us on track.

After this experience, I cannot even begin trying to find your way around this country without a multitude of GPS devices. We'll see how it goes tomorrow when we head up to the volcano.