THE MOUNTAIN OF DEATH!!!

Wito wanted to get up early, like 6:30, and be on the road early, but we knew better. I think we got up around 8. After showering, eating an egg breakfast, and packing up, we left the house close to 11.

Heading to Cartago, we made a new friend. Sitting at a red light in heavy traffic, I needed to cross three lanes to be behind Wito, who we were following. We gestured to the lady in the car to our right to let us in front of her. I guess she didn’t see the gesture; she was fumbling around in her purse. I nosed into the space in front of her, and she went ballistic. She gunned her car forward and filled the gap and said something nasty to us. Cristina shouted something back. The lady shouted something about us asking for permission to get in front of her. Finally, traffic moved and she went by. The next car let us in and we got to our lane and passed the lady. Touchy, touchy.

The drive to San Isidro went fine. We had the usual slow-downs behind big trucks going over Cerro de la Muerte, but we made decent time. The rain fell pretty heavily (“We could have avoided that if we had left at 6:30,” Wito would say). At one place the fog was so thick that visibility was reduced to maybe 100 feet, which was kind of freaky. Wito nor I like to drive in Costa Rica at night, but especially over the Cerro de la Muerte, which means (pause, and then say it loud and dramatically) THE MOUNTAIN OF DEATH!!! (And when you write it, you must write it in all caps, with three exclamation points. Any land feature with a name so dramatic deserves as much.)

We ate lunch at a nice open-air restaurant with an excellent view of the valley west of San Isidro. The only thing Bella wanted to eat was gallo pinto (with sour cream, of course).

The rain continued to fall as we arrived at our hotel. The hotel consists of 9 suites. Each suite has two bedrooms with a double bed, a bunk-bed, and bathroom. The shared area has a full kitchen, living room, and balcony with a view of the swimming pool. The hotel isn’t within sight of the beach, but the beach is just a short drive away.

The kids got in the pool (even though it was raining) and we got settled in our suite. Wito and I drove into town to put gas in my car and buy some groceries. I’d heard that the grocery stores here have all kinds of cool stuff that you can’t get in San Jose because they bring things up from Panama. So as we shopped, I looked for things that seemed unusual or unexpected. The only things I really noticed were Nature’s Path brand breakfast cereal (we eat it at home, but I hadn’t seen it here before) and a gigantic bag (10 lbs!) of Krusteaz buttermilk pancake mix. Sure, you can get pancake mix in San Jose, but I’ve never seen a 10 lb. bag. That’s like Costco-sized. And it was only 6000 colones (about 12 bucks). I paid 2500 ($5) for one 2-lb. box of Betty Crocker pancake mix in San Jose.

Back at the hotel, I made some mini-pizzas for the kids and got the two youngest to bed. We watched a little bit of TV, and ate some rice and tortillas (and avocado). Sofia was bored and asked me several times what she could do (obviously she had not brought a book). I suggested she go to bed, and she took me up on it. She’s sleeping in the room with Wito and Maritza.

Sofia pointing out how incredibly tall our shower was.  It must have been 8 feet up.

I got caught up on my blogs, though I unfortunately could not upload them because the hotel’s router is not working. So it’ll have to wait until I get home Monday.

The plan for tomorrow is to get up relatively early, eat a nice breakfast, and get to the beach. Play for a few hours and then come back for lunch. After that, who knows. Hopefully I can work on my book a little bit.