March 1st was a great day because we got to see Fernando and Eva again!
March 1st was a rough day because after leaving Fernando and Eva, part of our drive to San Jose was kind of a nightmare.
But first the good part. Guillermo and I got up early this morning because we had a LOT to do. We had to pack up, Guillermo had to go get a rental car and I went to the nearby plaza looking for some sort of birthday cake for Fernando. I didn't find anything in the plaza, so when Guillermo got back with the car, we drove into town. We went first to the watch store that Fernando asked us to pick up some batteries from, and then we drove up and down the streets of Liberia looking for a bakery that might have some decent birthday cakes. Luckily we came upon two that were right close together and one of them did have a nice little birthday cake that was just perfect. The important thing is that it was fresh! The cakes in the plaza that I looked in earlier were several days old to more than a week old, and that just wasn't going to cut it. So, we got the cake and also stopped at some grocery stores to pick up some fruits and vegetables that Fernando and Eva had asked us to bring out to them. Since it's about a 40 minute drive to Santa Rosa National Park, and we were bringing ice cream to go with the cake, we got a ziploc bag that we had and asked the store to fill it with ice so that we could place the ice cream container in it. So, it was a busy morning, but we had fun doing all that.
Then we packed everything up in the car, checked out of our hotel and drove to Santa Rosa National Park. We kept the air conditioner going full blast on the way to the park, so that the car was nice and cold inside for the ice cream. At the park, we met Fernando and Eva at their dorm. We gave them all the stuff they had asked us to bring and also dropped off one of our suitcases so that we wouldn't have to take it with us to Panama. Then we went to get some food from the comedor that is there in the park and then we brought out the cake and ice cream and celebrated Fernando's birthday again! :-) It was so nice having lunch with them on the picnic tables outside, having cake and ice cream and then later getting to meet Fernando's advisor and her husband and also getting to meet the professor that Fernando works with when he goes to Tokyo.
We left the park around 1:30pm to start on our drive to San Jose, since we needed to spend the night there to be able to catch our flight to Panama the next day. We had a great drive until about 4:30 and then we got into traffic that was stopped. Then it would start again, we'd move just a few feet and then it would stop again. We thought maybe this wouldn't last long and at first were hopeful. When the traffic would stop, we just read the newspaper or just kept an eye on when the trucks and cars would start moving again. We asked some guy who happened to walk by our car what the problem was and he said "It's the bridge". We remember reading something about a bridge on some highway, but sure didn't think it was THIS highway. Should have read those articles a little closer. There was nothing we could do except wait and wait and wait. We had NO idea how close or how far we were from this bridge. Well, as it turns out, we didn't get to this "bridge" until about 7pm and what it was was a one lane narrow little bridge that spanned some chasm. So traffic on this EXTREMELY busy highway had to take turns going across it.
We left Santa Rosa at 1:30, thinking we'd get to our hotel before dark and be in our room relaxing by around 6pm. Ha! It got dark before we even reached the bridge part. Once we crossed that little bridge, we still had quite a way to go to our hotel (which by the way we weren't exactly sure how we were going to find it). When we finally reached the area where our hotel was, we decided to stop at a restaurant to pick up some food and take a much needed bathroom break before tackling the job of finding the hotel. After getting turned around once or twice, Guillermo luckily asked some guys directions. They gave us great directions and we finally were able to get into our room and relax - at about 9:30 pm!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment