Daily, I get an absurd amount of airfare deals sent right to my inbox...so, when I saw $360 airfares to Costa Rica AK & I were sold and quickly booked our flights. We invited several of our friends along, but Adam was the only one that jumped onto the trip, so we booked a rental car and before we knew it - vacation time was here!
Adam flew out earlier in the day from Orlando and we would be meeting up with him later that night at the San Jose airport. He apparently had an adventurous day hanging out with some ex-pats and being offered various illegal substances. Well, Adam was already having interesting adventures south of the border, AK & I made sure to enjoy an especially large margarita to get the trip kicked off right! Our flight got in around 8 in Costa Rica and after making our way through customs, where all employees were adorned with face masks since the poor piggy flu scare and where I had to do my darndest to not cough since I was recovering from a cold which might have resulted in me being denied access to the country - we finally met up with Adam.
At the rental car agency, we gave the employee Ivannia's telephone number (a local couchsurfer) and he proceded to argue with her on the phone that we would never find her place. Ivania was amazing and told the employee that she would meet us at Office Depot downtown San Jose and that we could follow her out to her apartment from there. The employee than explained to us several times how to get to this alledged Office Depot and feeling more than a little hesitant we set out from the rental agency to find Ivania. After numerous wrong turns, turn arounds, a KFC for directions, more wrong turns in the closed down streets of downtown where only people who looked like they were up to no good were standing around (San Jose one of the leading cities in prostitution) we magically drove upon what we assumed was the "fountain" that the employee had told us about and I screamed "Office Depot" with excitement when we found the out of business store.
We were pretty worried that this wasn't the right Office Depot and sat there worried what we would do if we couldn't meet up with Ivannia when a car pulled in up in front of us! Hallelujah! I got out of our rental and hopped in with Ivannia and the boys were going to follow us girls to her apartment which is located in the one of the suburbs of San Jose. We would up hill and out of the the main downtown and Ivannia made a couple of random turns to give me the optimum tour on the way to her house. Her apartment complex is barbed wired in so you can tell that the crime rate is even high in the burbs, but it was a nice cozy place.
Ivannia excitedly showed us many of her souvenirs from her travels that she has primarily done through her work at SOS Kinderdorf International. She also served us some delicious Tres Leches Cake which I believe she still owes us a recipe for! We talked about our plans for our trip and got her advice. She was such a kind host and I hope to meet up with her again one of these days!
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