Our feet have finally touched Costa Rican soil for the first time as residents… and it’s a nice! Our first two days were super tiring. We woke up at 2:30am to get on the road by 3 to head to Ft. Lauderdale for our flight. Neko did pretty well in the car, she slept for most of our 5 hour drive. When we got to the airport and began going through the motions there, we were really thinking that teleporting would be a great idea if at all possible. Airports are the pits.
Checking in went pretty well until we got right to the beginning of security and Neko decided that she was tired and hungry… and in turn, angry. So the process of stripping down and taking everything out of our pockets and backpacks was even more fun as Neko screamed. But the guys at security had a good sense of humor about it and we had to laugh about it too.
The plane ride was pretty uneventful… Neko was happy the whole time and slept a little. When we got to Costa Rica, it was a definite felling of “ahhhhhh, we’re here.”
A guy at immigration quickly earned my award for 2008 as the coolest guy in the world, as he let us go through the citizens line because we had Neko with us. The citizens line was five people long, the other was about 300.
After lugging all of our 300lbs of luggage (no exaggeration) through customs and out of the airport, we were on our way to shop for Neko essentials.
We found a crib, a high chair and a little pool… the essentials. All of our other stuff was shipped and will be here at the beginning of next week.
We stayed at the Costa Verde Inn and Neko was introduced to the hammock. In Costa Rica, many families use hammocks similar to the way we use the Fisher Price swings to lull our babies to sleep in the U.S. It was pretty cool to swing Neko in the hammock and let her fall asleep to the sounds and smells of the rainforest.
That night was met with me eating a whole pizza and some much needed sleep after our long day.
On Tuesday we headed to Quepos via a three hour van ride. Neko did pretty well, but she was pretty ready to be out of the car seat by the end of it, and although many people here ride around with their babies in their arms, I just don’t think I’m ready for that Costa Rican custom.
Now that we are here, we are getting settled in to our little apartment in Boca Vieja, a small area of Quepos that means “old mouth,” signifying that it is the oldest part of our little town of Quepos. It is the area that most of my Tico friends live and right now we are surrounded by our friends and families of our friends. Everyone here is related in some way and everyone is so nice.
This is such a welcoming and accepting country… we love it and so does Neko!
4-3 Update
We are getting more and more settled in to our apartment and have been able to take a trip to the pool… Neko’s first. She got to play with her new floatie that we bought her in San Jose and I got to play with my new underwater camera. We have seen a ton of our friends and Neko is adapting extremely well.
-Nap
