The Silver Bullet

I stayed up way too late. I think I finally turned off the TV around 1:15. I was thinking about the whole car rental thing. Part of me wants to save money, but another part of me wants to visit a few of the sites that I’m writing about in my book. My only chance to do that is if we rent a car.

Despite my late night, I woke Cristina up early. If we were going to rent a car, we needed to get started. We called every ad in the Tico Times, and over the course of the morning, had a few deals we were considering. I was very close to renting a Suzuki Alto, which we’d never heard of before. A quick search on google revealed it to be a teeny little 3-cylinder car, something vaguely similar to a Mini Cooper, only not as cool. The guy assured us it would make it up the mountains, but I had my doubts. After lumbering slowly up mountains in the Blue Bomber, I was ready for something a little peppier.

Wito looked into the Avis car rental company that Fujitsu uses (he works for Fujitsu). He found us a good deal, only slightly more expensive than the Alto, on a more reasonable-sized sedan. We sealed the deal over the phone and the car was delivered to our front door about an hour later. We were mobile yet again.

Our next step was the make a plan for what exactly to do with our new mobility. We still had some people to visit in Alajuela, we wanted to do the thermal waters with the Sheridans on Thursday, and I had some places to go related to my book.

Finally, the plan formed into this: We would pack up, drive to Alajuela and visit whomever we could, then drive to the Sheridan’s house by dark, spend the night there. Thursday morning, we’ll drive up to San Carlos to the Termales del Bosque thermal waters, spend all day there, and spend the night there. Then Friday morning drive to La Virgen de Sarapiquí, a whitewater rafting town and a key location in my book. From there I’m not sure where we’ll go. We’re at the mercy of the condition of the roads, so we have to go by advice from locals rather than the map. As long as we’re back in Pavas by dark, I’m happy. Turrialba would be nice, but that may be asking too much.

While we packed up, I took the rental car for a spin to get some money from the ATM. After the big clunkiness of the Blue Bomber (God love ‘er), the little Nissan Sentra felt like a Mazaratti. So fast! Such a tight turning ratio! I’m not into cars at all, but this one felt great. And it had working A/C! And a stereo system with an auxiliary jack for our iPod! Bliss! I think I’ll call it the Silver Bullet.

We loaded the car, ate a haphazard lunch, and headed off.

Cristina had been able to contact her Godmother Teresita so we went to her place first. We had a nice little visit, close to an hour long. She served us fresh pineapple juice and cookies. Her husband David had a broken toe, so we sat upstairs on their balcony and visited so he wouldn’t have to come downstairs on his bum foot.

Cristina hadn’t been able to contact Lida all day, but we drove by her house just in case she was home. She was, so we spent about an hour there. The kids were much more entertained at Lida’s, because she has three tortoises in her backyard. Sofia took over 50 pictures of them.

We wanted to be at the Sheridans’ house by 6, but the impromptu visit to Lida pushed us a little off schedule. Plus, we stopped at Sr. and Sra. Ese’s souvenir factory to hopefully get some good deals on some wood items. This factory supplies beautiful handmade wood items to gift shops all around the country, and the factory has its own gift shop that is usually a bit cheaper than everywhere else. They seemed a little pricier than before, but we bought a few things. The highlight of the stop for Bella was a momma cat with four suckling kittens on the back porch. She was in heaven.

We wound up driving in the dark…and rain. Not my favorite. But it sure is nice to be able to pass people going uphill.

By the time we got to San Ramon, we were all hungry. The Sheridans had eaten already, so we stopped at a little mall just off the pista to find something quick and easy. The food court had a McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Church’s, Papa John’s, and a Chinese place like every food court in America has (though no one offered us samples of the chicken). Since we’d just had Papa John’s on Monday, we opted for fried chicken. Church’s only had 6 pieces left, so we cleaned them out and got a few more pieces from KFC. Church’s had these great honey biscuits that I thought would be too sweet for my liking, but they were yummy. I never eat at Church’s, so I don’t know if the ones in the states have those biscuits or not. They were like drop biscuits with honey squirted on them before they baked, so they had an almost caramelized light honey coating on the outside.

The Silver Bullet

The Sheridans only live about 10 minutes from the mall, so we took the food to their house and ate it there. It was past bedtime, so after eating, we got Alex and Bella bathed and in bed. The Sheridans are early to bed-early to rise type folk, so they turned in too. I updated my journal while Cristina took a shower and then hit the sack around 10:30.