It's Like America, But South! Days 1 & 2

The title comes from the movie Up - my favorite! Ever since we booked this trip, I knew that I was going to name all of the posts, "It's Like America, But South!"

Let me be clear that I'm well aware that Costa Rica is NOT in South America! However, since Costa Rica is a stepping stone to South America and is part of this trip, I'm including Costa Rica under the same post titles! We had not originally planned to make Costa Rica part of this trip, but it turned out to be the least expensive way to get to South America because we were able to fly direct to San Jose on Southwest. We used our Companion Pass, so we only had to pay for one ticket, and then flights from San Jose to Cartagena, Colombia were much less pricey than flying from D.C.

This entire trip is a "city" trip, which means, particularly for Costa Rica, no beaches or rainforests this time. We've always envisioned Costa Rica as a standalone destination, so we'll definitely be back to spend more time here and explore the country!

The day before we left, we had to get Yellow Fever vaccines. This was a bit of a last minute thing because we ended up having to adjust our trip somewhat. You may recall that our original itinerary included Peru - and that was probably the part of the trip I'd been most looking forward to. However, after travel advisories against going there due to political unrest were issued, we altered our plans and are now going to Bolivia instead. The problem was that there was so much conflicting information about the travel rules for Bolivia - photos needed, visa costs, vaccine requirements - that we decided to go ahead and get the Yellow Fever vaccine just to be safe.

We left our house at 4:30 am on Saturday and drove to B1 and S1's house. We are leaving our car there and B1 kindly got up very early to drive us to BWI! Our flight to San Jose was about 4.5 hours, with much of it spent with the seatbelt sign on due to turbulence. When we arrived, it took about half an hour to get through customs, and then we took an uber to our hotel. After we got settled, we went out to get a bite to eat, and then came back to rest for a while. Well, that "rest" turned into me sleeping from 3:30 pm until 2:00 am, which is why I didn't write a post yesterday!

Our hotel is beautiful and centrally located, making it easy to walk around and explore the city, which is what we did today before it rained this afternoon. We spent quite a bit of time at the National Museum of Costa Rica, which was very well done and then just hung out at our hotel during the rain. It was a nice combination of doing stuff and relaxing!

Happy Tails to you!