Costa Rica Days 7 and 8, March 30 and 31

 There isn’t much to write about on the last two days. We were up early for showers and packing. We had our last breakfast at the lodge and settled the bar tabs. We asked Jess to take a group shot with each of three cameras, one per couple.

Left to right: Me, Barbara, Terry, Jerome, Tom, Diane

The staff picked up our luggage at the rancheros and delivered it to the boat. The process was, predictably, the reverse of our arrival. The water landing was now familiar. We bounced to the grassy airstrip in the Land Cruisers. The “airport” was an open shelter with a few old and dusty wooden benches. The scale worked, though. Can’t have mistakes with that. We weighed our bags and ourselves again. I don’t think they even bothered to write out a boarding pass.

Drake Bay "airport"

I took a couple of pictures on the flight as we passed over plantations butting up again rainforest and awesome alluvial fans.

Palm plantation and rainforest

Alluvial fan

After a couple of stops, we arrived back in San José. The taxi vultures awaited us here also, although they were fewer in number and a tiny bit less aggressive than at the big airport. We found the driver from Casa Bella Rita very soon and were on our way.

No one was feeling very motivated that afternoon. Some of us were hungry, though. Rita recommended a restaurant nearby where they made excellent roast chicken. Terry was still not feeling well (Rita graciously volunteered to pick up some medicine for him at a pharmacy when she went out to do her shopping). Barbara, being a vegetarian, didn’t figure there would be much for her on the menu. Jerome was tasked with bringing back something she could eat.

I speak no Spanish. Diane and Tom did their best to get us through the ordering. I must say I still dream of that roast chicken. Following Rita’s recommendation, we got the combination platter that came with five or six sides and took the leftovers home for supper.

Jerome and Barbara left for the airport at 3:00. I was jealous. I was ready to be home, and it was going to be another horrible, long day of travel for us the next day. Diane and Tom weren’t leaving until Monday.

The rest of us hung out at the Casa, reading, checking email (Rita and Steve provided a computer), napping. Toward evening, Diane and Tom opened a bottle of wine from the well-stocked refrigerator in their room. We drank it in the sitting room upstairs. We went downstairs to microwave the leftovers. We ended the evening in the relative cool of the outdoor patio around the pool.

It was a short night for us, you bet. We had to be at the airport at 5:00 for a 7:00 flight. Rita was up and had packed up some banana bread and bananas for us to take with us. She put us in a cab, and off we went.

I’ll cut to the essentials. We flew to Mexico City, killed a couple of hours, flew to Guadalajara, killed a couple more hours, and finally few home to Chicago, arriving at 1:40 a.m., April 1. We went through customs for the last time. I panicked briefly when I couldn’t get my cell phone to work. The plan was that I would call Jane, who would be waiting at the nearest rest area, to come and get us. But my cell phone kept giving me error messages about needing international access. Granted, I was not at my cognitive best at that hour in the morning. I turned the phone off and on several times before it occurred to me that what I needed to do is leave it on long enough for it to “find itself.”

When all was said and done, we were home at 4:30 a.m. I got a couple hours of sleep, got up, showered, and went to work.

It was an amazing trip, but I’d never try to do it over spring break again.