It's Six AM, Where's My Caffeine?

The flight to Costa Rica kinda sucked.  The trip started out great, but once we got to the airport it went downhill fast.  Fortunately that was my attitude and NOT the plane.

It started out great because we used our favorite local airport shuttle service operated by Deb Foxen, The Foxen Shuttle.  We hadn't seed Deb for a while, because, covid, so it was great to catch up.

As I am sure I have mentioned many times in my travel pages, I hate lugging our big, fat suitcases around.  But we've got to take them, because, you know, clothes.  And of course we always want to be appropriately dressed.

I also hate long term parking. I really hate airport shuttles.  And I really don't like imposing on friends or family.  If it was a twenty minute ride, that's one thing. But a two plus hour round trip is imposing in my world. 

I also always book a transfer from our arriving airport to our hotel. The last time I didn't do that was our arrival in Amsterdam.  We got to lug our big, fat suitcases in and out of trains, up and down bus steps and through crowded sidewalks. So besides having Deb drive us down and pick us up, there was going to be a guy at the Liberia airport with a sign with my name on it to greet us. Completely stress free.  

Ah.

Our flight was leaving our local international airport at Sacramento, CA, at 10:30 PM. We'd arrive in Charlotte, NC around 6:00 AM. Then our flight to Liberia, Costa Rica would leave Charlotte around 11:00AM. We'd have a few hours to kill once we got to the East Coast, which is great because I usually don't have a spare ten seconds to kill. 

We like to get to the airport a couple hours early for check-in. It's usually stress free. Notice how those two words keep coming up?  We like it that way.  Especially me.  I can be a little OC/AC/DC at times.  Especially at an airport.  

Strange humans sometimes want to touch me and how do tons of metal fly?

Two hours ahead of time is usually stress free.  But not if you're leaving Schipol in the Netherlands on a Sunday. You'd better arrive the day before you plan on leaving stress free.  I think we had to get through six football fields of people before we got to the gate. Good thing Amsterdam had the items I required at the time to be chill.

All day long I was envisioning my lovely wife and I having a sandwich and drink at a restaurant at the airport after we got through security. Since dinner's kinda my only meal of the day, I was hungry and really looking forward to a cafe made anything. Guy Fieri surprise me.  

Imagine our surprise when every single restaurant and bar at the terminal was closed once we got through security.  The only place open was the magazine and snack place.  I paid eleven dollars for a three day old wilted lettuce and turkey sandwich. Condiment free. 

It reminded me of a condiment free salami on crusty french bread sandwich I had in Madrid one time.  With that extra bulky and incredibly firm crust I might as well have been gnawing on a bottle. It felt like the roof of my mouth had hosted a pro football game, with everybody wearing spikes.  

Or it could have been a bunch of lumberjacks in high heels doing ballet.  Why would lumberjacks be in high heels doing ballet?  I have no idea, but when there's time to kill at an airport my mind can kind of wander to some rather inconceivable places.

I got a little sleep on the red-eye to Charlotte and when we arrived at 5:30 AM EST I was ready for a quart of caffeine.  Maybe two.  But talk about surreal.  It was like a ghost terminal. 

As I began my caffeine search, which should have been easy anywhere at 5:30 in the morning, I noticed a pattern.  And that pattern was nobody was open.  There were a total of eight Starbucks in and all around the terminal where we were.  None of them were open.  Not one of the eight.  

Coffee?  Morning?  Anyone?    

"Aargh," I screamed.

Probably to myself.  Cause I don't like to cause scenes. 

Right next door to one of the Starbucks (and believe me I tried every one, twice even) was a Spanx store. They were open.  I could get a pair of Spanx at 6:00 AM if I wanted, but I couldn't get a cup of coffee.  Had we landed in an alternate universe?

I finally found a little out of the way cinnamon roll place that served coffee. That held me over until 8:00 when one of the Starbucks finally opened. 

I guess the covid shortage of travelers caused many of these places to open late and close early. Or close all together. Except for the apparently 24-hour Spanx store in Charlotte. God knows you don't want the relatives to see how much weight you put on while social distancing in isolation.

The rest of the stay in Charlotte was uneventful, except for all the wild, sometimes spectacular and generally deviant thoughts that ebb and flow while I my mind has the leisure to wander and wonder.  while I watch all the silly humans.  Fortunately I usually keep my mouth shut, thereby avoiding arrest, assault or institutionalization. 

We finally took flight, thankfully, landing at Liberia International Airport, one of four international airports in Costa Rica, three hours later.  Liberia is the largest city in the Guanacaste Province in northern Costa Rica.   It is about one hundred fifty miles north of the national capital, San Jose. 

Once outside after customs, which is sometimes edgy (I always travel with THC) but ever uneventful (except for that time in Cabo) I found the guy with my name on a sign quite easily. We did have to pass a barking horde of cabbies, but pass them by we did without having to negotiate a thing.  

Ah.

He grabbed my lovely wife's suitcase and we were off in a nicely air conditioned van, all by ourselves. 

One thing I have learned in my travels, tail gating in foreign countries is the norm, especially south of our border.  I get ticked off if someone gets within a hundred feet of me here, and that's when I'm going twenty-five. But if you're not five to ten feet behind the guy in front of you while driving in Costa Rica, you're not doing it right. I don't care if you're going twenty-five or sixty, ten feet is the proper distance. 

My first word of advice when traveling by car in Costa Rica, by the way, is wear your seat belt!  And maybe bring a Nascar approved helmet, portable roll bar and elbow pads.

Costa Rica is not that big. I think you could fit about seven of 'em in California. So as the crow flies, it's really not that far to get from here to there. The problem is, I think, the width of the roads and the quality and quantity of the drivers.  A scenic site that may only be one hundred miles away can take half a day to get there.

And then there's the fresh-squeezed orange juice peddlers. When I say they set up a roadside stand,  I mean roadside.  The two we passed were about an inch off the pavement, passing their fresh squeezed juice right in through the passenger window while the car is still on the pavement.  Sometimes moving.  Slowly.  This, of course, invariably slows other cars and sometimes stops traffic altogether. 

We started our journey on a reasonably decent two lane highway from the airport, and then a few turns and towns here and there later we were on a rapidly dwindling down to a one lane road through the jungle. I was beginning to think of Kate Hepburn hacking at the brush in The African Queen, as the leach-laden Bogey towed the boat behind.   

"Would I have to get out and hack at the jungle brush in order to proceed?" I began to wonder.  "I didn't bring my machete with me...or my flame thrower..."

Fortunately, as we neared the coast, the lane widened and suddenly we were, wallah, at the Riu security gate. We were waved through, drove past the Riu Guanacaste Resort (next door) and a string of shops before finally coming to the large, circular entry to the Riu Palace.  

Ah.

My lovely wife and I discovered quite a while back that we are unabashed resort lovers, especially in a lush, tropical locale. We also enjoy active exploration vacations, but when we want R&R, we're resorters.   And when it comes to resort'n, a Riu all-inclusive is simply a dandy way to go. 

We were allowed to check-in early, got the magic plastic wristband key to the highway and were bell hopped to our room.  Fifth floor, ocean view.  

Ah.

We unpacked and changed.  Ain't nothing worse than resort exploring in your airplane attire. Pants, socks and shoes?  Nah, got to get into shorts or a swim suit and flip flops. My lovely wife needed a cocktail and I need a dip in one of the pools.  Hell, maybe all of 'em.

Like every Riu we've stayed at, the grounds were impeccably groomed and quite lovely. Here's the view from our room: 

 Here's the sunset/evening view:

 Ah.

After grabbing a couple drinks and long before sunset, we explored the grounds and meandered out to the beach.  There we were immediately accosted by local purveyors of ware, from travel guide services to jewelry.  To cocaine. WTF?  How did we sixty-somethings exude that much cool to invite a want some cocaine inquiry?

We smiled and said no no no no, we don't sniff that no more.  We're long ago tired of waking up on the floor.  After dipping our toes in the central Pacific Ocean we meandered back to the safety of the resort, where purveyors and cocaine were not to be seen.

The buffet that night was sumptuous, with an endless array of tantalizing options.  The only difference from before was a server had to serve you whatever you wanted.  Which was kind of a bitch.  I couldn't just grab eighteen desserts on the sly, a very polite Costa Rican had to serve me each one.  So, you know, I didn't want to be seen as a complete glutton, I had to limit myself to ten.  But even then some of them, kind of looked at me funny.

Actually, that's not really true.  There's some pretty large people that frequent all-inclusive resorts.  I mean, endless food.  Endless.  And the Riu's spread is a heck of a lot more tantalizing than a traditional smorgasbord.  Trust me.

After dinner we strolled the grounds then headed over to the theater, where a fairly decent show was queuing up...