Oct 25: time to shut this place down and get on the road. We are heading to MSP today, overnight at the Hampton Inn in Bloomington. Looks to be a nice day.
it all fits into the small car! hopefully the pink suitcase will come back with only half of its contents!
3 suitcases for 6 months! I even had a bit more room in one of the suitcases but did not need it! Hopefully they all make it to Costa Rica!
Turned out to be a cool, misty, rainy drive to the cities. We did get a good walk in right near the airport before checking in to the Hampton Inn. Dinner at MOA, at Cowboy Jacks. the food and service were wonderful. MOA was jam packed! Lots of people carrying bags of purchases..
Sunday October 26: we left the hotel by 9:45, Eric dropped me and the luggage off before dropping off the renal car.
We checked in and got through TSA without any issues.
good flight to ATL. shuttle to the HGI (which was a yucky hotel).
dinner at the hotel which was not so good. good nights sleep before heading back to the airport for our 10:00am flight to San Jose, CR.
Cuba
San Jose
We arrived at the airport at noon, got through immigration and customs by 12:45, shuttle picked us up at 1:30. Checked into our Jr Suite, walked to the grocery store then, We sat by the pool for a bit, listening for birds and enjoying a beer.
pool at night:
We went to the Executive lounge for snacks and a beer, meeting a guy from the East Coast, who is here for work.
Tuesday October 28: our first full day in CR. Woke up way too early but there is a door to the bedroom so no issues with lights and making coffee!
After Eric got up we headed out for a walk around the hood. We seen lots of birds along the road we walked. weather was perfect although it could have been sunny. We got back to the hotel at 8:00am. Had a wonderful breakfast with the best coffee! No rain yet, so we headed out the opposite direction that we went earlier. Was able to walk to the river, although we could not see it. Ended up with 2 new life birds! Back at the hotel we hung by the pool, enjoying a quiet morning.
We mostly hung by the pool all day, dinner at the hotel was wonderful.
We did get answers to some of our driving questions and exchanged a few dollars for colones. we need a few coins for the tolls on Saturday when we head to Tamarindo on the West coast.
Oct 30: Well the long awaited day has come, will the rental car show up? We went for our morning walk and found a few new year birds and MY street!
YES it did, it was 40 minutes late but they did call me when it was 20 minutes late to say they would be late. I suspect they did not realize that they were delivering the vehicle and I was not picking it up. All Good...
We took a test ride (6 miles) to Walmart! The Garmin worked great, not too much traffic at 10:00am and we picked up some items we could not bring down for lack of space. Whew..
Picked up lunch at the sandwich shop by the hotel, then spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool, hot tub and relaxing by the pool. Dinner at the pizza place right by the hotel, was actually pretty good. But a Thunder storm kept us from leaving for about 25 minutes. as soon as we were ordering our pizza the storm began! It was very very loud with a bit of lightening. We stopped at the executive lounge for a beer and sat and talked with our friend from the other night. Fun evening, fun day...
Thursday October 30: After a great morning walk and breakfast we headed to Hotel Bougainvillea for some birding. We had stayed there in 2023, so know the area for birding. We waited until after 9:00am to drive there, it is about 10 miles and 45 minutes to get there! lots of traffic but mostly no direct route and we went through lots of neighborhoods. We found the Mottled Owl by ourselves. not an easy feat.
stopped at McDonalds drive thru for lunch, again not an easy feat but we did it! Lunch by the pool, nap and then hung by the pool for the afternoon. Dinner was at a CR restaurant, we both had street tacos. pretty good food, great service and close to the hotel.
Friday October 31: our final full day in San Jose. after morning walk and breakfast we headed out to Puente Mulas, about 4 miles from our hotel. It's an old dam that we were able to walk up and down the road looking for birds. We spent about 2 hours walking and birding, no one else was there. Except for the noise of the dam it was pretty nice place to hang.
Pool and Jacuzzi time in the afternoon.
We met up with our only friend here at the hotel, Michael, in the bar before we went for dinner at Moose. Conversation was entertaining and our dinner was very good.
Birds so far: 80 in Costa Rica. 13 new country birds. World count 527 year birds, up 48. added 4 life birds to 997
Heading to the coast Nov 1
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