13 January 2007 674 views No Comment Print This Post

We are staying at Grand Papagayo by Occidental in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Guanacaste is the Northern Pacific side of Costa Rica; just South of Nicaragua.

The flight from Atlanta to Liberia was excellent. We saw some movie about the Royals in England that I didn’t find very interesting. The flight was comfortable and easy though. We had a great view of the Florida Keys, Cuba and when we were landing we saw Lake Nicaragua, in Nicaragua. The lake is enormous (we heard the lake was anything between 2nd and 7th largest lake in the world. It may be, but Wikipedia has Lake Nicaragua as the 13th largest lake by surface area).

Two remarkable things I noticed while landing: there is a large mountain range buried in clouds and the land looks very much like parts of West Texas or Arizona’s hill country. There is a lot of brown landscape, but it’s obviously heavily agricultural. You can see the classic patchwork overhead while landing in Liberia.

Oh, another thing I noticed, the airport is small and the field around it is on fire. Also, the waiting area is open to the runway. There is no wall. Security is around, but it’s open air with a giant, giant fan that is not rotating.

Inside, or outside actually, we went through immigration and got our passport visas and luggage. You have to fill out some forms on the plane and show them as part of the process of entering the country.

Outside was a mob of people holding placards for rental cars and travel agencies. We were only asked once where we were going, no one really bothered us, but the sheer number of people pressing around the exit area was really overwhelming at first. Once we stepped through the crowd we noticed everyone was pretty much just holding up a sign, not shouting, not bothering anyone. It was so laid back, it was actually hard to get people to help you out. We had some trouble finding an Adobe Rental Car (Latin America’s version of Alamo Rental Car) agent to straighten out the confusion over the vehicles that were supposed to be waiting for our group. A brief stop at the local Adobe office, a six pack of Imperial and we were off on our own.

If you have visited Latin America or the Caribbean, you’ve seen the houses. They aren’t made of wood. They are made of a much more practical cinder-block construction. No termites are known to eat concrete. Also, it’s not legal to just chop down wood, even on your property. You need a permit and have to replace what you take, apparently. At least that is what I hear.

Our hotel was very easy to find and we only stopped once for directions. Everyone is very kind and relaxed. Very helpful. This experience is already much nicer than the constant drug offers in Jamaica.

On the way, we saw a Caracara hovering over the road between some cane fields. I recognized it but was unable to confirm my identification without a bird book or another birder. My wife wasn’t sure. We also saw three unmistakable horses just hanging out in the middle of the road.

The hotel seems nice and everyone is friendly. The resort overlooks Playa Buena and the Papagayo Gulf. It’s kind of windy and warm. Not too warm.

Our room is nice. It has a king size bed and a nice view over the Papagayo Gulf and a bit of the Pacific Ocean. In the fridge are only two water bottles, an Ice Tea and a Mango Juice. In the bathroom is one cake of soap, one washcloth and one coffee mug. There is cable TV with Spanish and English channels, but the room is lacking Wi-Fi, or an ethernet connection.

The buffet was really good and we plan to make reservations for the two restaurants and plan some trips through the travel companies on the resort.

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