Costa Rica Journal - Tuesday, 4-14-09

We arrived in the San Jose Airport at 5:30 am. It was possible that I got in maybe an hour worth of sleep on the plane, but my rest wasn't very comforting. Luckily, the airport wasn't busy and customs took hardly any time, even with Shardul. The poor cat started yelling at us the moment he saw us. It looked as if the pills had worn off, and he was not impressed with this traveling business.

Our hired driver was waiting for us outside the airport, so we loaded up the minivan and set off for the 3 hour drive for Cabanga. Joe and I both got a bit more sleep in for that ride, but exhaustion was taking its toll mentally and physically. I could hardly concentrate on much anything Fred and Amy said to us once we got to their office. Amy made us all coffee at their house and that helped a bit. Finally, it was time for us to go to our rental house, only 2 miles away!

It was a bit nicer than I had expected, except we all discovered that there was a water leakage and our half of our front room resembled a small lake. I quickly used a sheet I found in a room plus one of our few towels to soak it all up. Amy and Fred Morgan had a bed set up for us with a makeshift "King" mattress made out of a flimsy 2" twin and similarly sized foam padding.

With all the lack of sleep even this funny bed looked good to us and after taking a very cold shower (there was no hot water), we slept for at least 2-3 hours. When we awoke, we did some unpacking and realized just how little we had. There was no shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, toothbrushes, food or any appliances, save the washing machine that we had previously arranged for.

What we did have, was our instruments, so I got out my little backpacker guitar and sat on the front porch and played for a little while. A young tico man sat close by next door at the community building and listened as I sang "Poor Man". I think he was impressed because he pulled out his walkman and starting playing the Titanic theme song as I was putting my guitar away. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if that is exactly complimentary, but I was too tired and shy to talk to him about it.

As the afternoon wore on, we were unpleasantly surprised to see that Shardul had chosen our bed to use as a litterbox. This was the first accident he's ever had and I know its probably because of the stress and confusion of traveling. And he also didn't have a litterbox anywhere in the house and didn't know where else to go. I cleaned up the mess the best I could, but it didn't do much good.

When the Morgans came back over to have dinner with us at Alfonso's, they brought an air mattress that they thought might suit us better, so we changed it out and gave it a try. That night, we regretted making this change. The mattress slowly leaked out all night long and by morning, we were laying in a painful, twisted heap almost right on the boards.