Day 1 - Monday 3/4/13 - Flight to San Jose

The alarm went off at 4:30. Ugh!! The cab arrived at 5:10 and off we went to the airport. It was 30 degrees, and we had no coats, so we were happy to be off. No problems getting through security. I grabbed a banana and coffee, and Bill got a breakfast BLT. The flight to Houston was full (2 hrs 45 min), and we had a young guy between us who slept all of the way. We had a couple of hours waiting in Houston, and then it was off to San Jose. This flight was not full, and we each had 3 seats a piece, so we slept most of the way (3 hrs 24 min).

There was a line to get thru immigration, but it went quickly and smoothly. Both of us were surprised when we exited immigration to find a girl holding our name. We had been met by Lindblad/Nat Geo even thought we were early for the trip. That was nice. The girl was joined by another Lindblad person who grabbed a baggage guy who carted our 2 large suitcases (yes, they made it!!!) and escorted us outside to a van and driver who brought us to the hotel (DoubleTree Cariari) and made sure we got checked in. On the drive (and from the airplane) we could see bright yellow trees. Achilles, our driver said they were yellow pui trees which are different from the yellow shower trees which we had in Hawaii and they also have here. We were given chocolate chip cookies during check-in and then taken to our room.

The hotel is lovely but not awesome. Everyone is quite helpful and friendly. We came back down and stopped at the tour info desk where a delightful girl helped us arrange our tours for Tuesday and Wednesday. We knew what we wanted to do, but none of the organized tours quite fit the bill. So we have a private guide/driver on Tuesday from 9-12:30 who will take us into the city, and we can see what we want for 3 1/2 hours for $100 which was about the same as the organized tours. We are happy with that. We also set up transportation to the Doca coffee plantation for a tour on Wednesday. Wednesday at 7pm we have our Nat Geo welcome dinner.

After resting up for a bit we left the room at 6:30 to go down to dinner at the casual restaurant called Las Tejas. We just got appetizers since we weren't really that hungry. I got a mahi ceviche which was really quite good. It had avocado and cilantro. I also got an interesting (I thought) spinach, corn gratin. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't order it again. Bill had a Caesar salad with sautéed shrimp, and a spicy Aztec soup. The hotel does have 3 computers set up in the lobby with free access. it is also unusually windy here in San Jose. All the locals are talking about it. That makes it a little cooler than we were anticipating!