November 27, 2005 Arrival in Costa Rica

We made it to San Jose safely. The ride to Houston was touch and go because of my illness and sobbing fit. We watched Road to Perdition en route and found our driver from Hotel Brilla Sol in the madness after dealing with a few crazy phone offerers and ended up at the little refuge of the hotel. We showered and went to bed around midnight. I slept hardly at all but no big surprise there. We woke up and had breakfast -- scrambled eggs, black beans and rice, and fruit, and got picked up by Tricolor Car Rental at 10 a.m. We got our mighty, intrepid blue Suzuki Ignis and jack shit for directions and ended up circling in the comedy of errors that was our attempt to find the Interamerican Highway. It was a truly spastic endeavor. By some miracle, we finally found it, only to be "ticketed" 5000 colones because of some "expired" tag of Tricolor's on the windshield. WHATEVER. The ride was long but beautiful. Then we finally got to the turn for Monteverde and lo. LO. It was as treacherous and heinous as all the guide books described. There were times when I thought our heads might fly right through the roof of the ole Ignis, when we seemed to be careening right off the side of the mountain, when we were driving through the clouds, and when I thought all four tires would simultaneously explode. Thankfully they did not. We arrived in Monteverde and stopped for cream of tomato soup, a turkey/gouda sandwich on homemade herb bread, and a damn fine chocolate milkshake at Stella's Bakery before arriving at the Fonda Vela, a mighty fine hotel. We sat out on chairs overlooking a fountain, green rolling hills, and a beautiful sunset. Tonight we're going on a night walk where we'll hopefully not encounter too many bugs with hard exoskeletons. Everything else I think I can handle! ::: About this time in ... 2004 11/27: Like the ride back from Thanksgiving with my brother and sister, singing soundtracks a capella while we shielded our eyes from the blindingly bright afternoon sunlight and seeing the way my sister hit the steering wheel to the beat and hearing my brother guffaw into his collar from the front seat when I would attempt and fail miserably to harmonize properly. 11/24: I swear to God that there is no one on this earth who can tell a story like my father, with the possible exception of my older brother, and I wish I could tell some of them here, but they're mostly top secret and I could never tell them as well as he can, anyway. get notified. journal archives © Copyright 2005 elb

Transcribed from paper journal.