Punta Uva, Costa Rica: The Arrival

We arrived at our little cabina in Punta Uva, Costa Rica at about 6:30pm on 10/12/15. Punta Uva is a little beach town on the Caribbean Coast about an hour south of the port town of Limón.  After landing in San José, we retrieved our bags and stood in line to buy a sim card.  Most U.S. cell phone users under contract will need to have their phones internationally unlocked in order to switch sim cards.  If it is not unlocked, you are stuck either turning your phone into a wifi only device or paying the extortion level rates if you make local calls and more importantly use wireless data (T-Mobile and Google Fi have a great international options for short trips under 5 weeks).  The downside to using the local service is that it inhibits our calls back to the states, but with wifi calling options we can still make calls when needed.  For $22 we were able to purchase a sim card with 60 minutes of talk and 2GB of data. We needed to be able to contact our host at the cabina we rented for the month so that he could meet us there with the keys.

Picking up the rental car in San Jose proved to be quite the headache.  **HEED OUR WARNING: read the fine print. Costa Rica requires supplemental insurance above and beyond the insurance you might be carrying.  This mistake cost us an additional $400.  We chose to rent a car because of my knees (will the knee saga ever end?).  It is a good decision, I can’t be walking everywhere as we initially planned but man, we were not anticipating this expense.  It is causing us some stress thinking about how this ding will impact us in the long run.  But, our saying for the last two days as been “what are you gonna do, can’t change it now.”

We finally worked out the car and got on our way.  Because it took more time than anticipated, we both wanted to get on the road to try to minimize how much driving would be done in the dark.  The sun sets at 5:30pm right now and our expected arrival time as about 6:15pm.  The girls fell asleep almost immediately despite jostling and jerking of the car in the crazy Costa Rican traffic and detour we took because of a wrong turn.  Once we found the right highway, we were climbing into the clouded mountains which were covered in vegetation.  Jacob is a brave man.  He is willing to tackle driving in different countries and does it with such grace.  It was raining and the two lane, if you can call it that,  highway was twisty and full of slow trucks transporting their goods.

The road into Limón quickly changed from lush jungle to banana plantations and fields of storage containers.  We reached Limón just as the sun was setting.  By this time, the girls were awake and we all needed to find a bathroom.  There are not many “towns” on the road from Limón to  Punta Uva.  The next biggest is Puerto Viejo about 7 km north of Punta Uva.  Perhaps it was our fear of the unknown or trying out our Spanish skills, but we hesitated to stop at the little shops what dotted our journey.  “We’ll find a bigger store” we kept telling the girls.  I think this is evidence of our rusty travel legs.  Finally, there was no choice as we were about to pop.  Jacob stopped at a restaurant that was about to close and in broken Spanish I successfully asked to use the bathroom.  Whew!  now we could focus on driving the rest of the way to Puerto Viejo where we would pick up some dinner.  The drive was treacherous.  There are so many people riding their bikes on the “shoulder” which is no bigger than a foot wide, in the pitch black, no helmet or reflectors.  I wonder what the statistic is for bike fatalities on these roads because we came awfully close to killing more than one.

With a basic dinner in hand, we finally arrived at our cabina that we booked through airbnb (if you haven’t tried it before, here is $20 off!).  It’s definitely rustic.  We have an outdoor kitchen and dining area. Inside are two “bedrooms” (no door between them) and a bathroom.  I will say it is very clean and the host, Mano, who came to meet us is very nice.  We knew it was going to be rustic I just don’t think I was completely mentally prepared. Arriving at night made me feel like we made a terrible mistake.  What did we do? Am I going to be able to live like this for the next month?  There are little tiny ants crawling on the wall (and this morning they seem to have found a home in my computer as they keep crawling over the screen of my laptop. Where are they coming from?)  It is so humid here. I have the words of my friend Kim in my mind “dry everything on a line, nothing flat. It will immediately start growing mildew.”  Yep. I can see that happening very quickly.  We crawled in bed underneath our mosquito nets and fell asleep to the sounds of something falling from the trees onto the roof of the patio. 

This morning I feel refreshed and hopeful about our journey.  The accommodations are rustic but comfortable.  The outdoor living area is surrounded by the jungle and I am not being bothered by any flying bugs. Ants, yes but they seem harmless.  As I sit this evening finishing this blog post I am filled with gratitude and love for the life we are choosing to live for the next year.  To quote Brene Brown from an interview she did on the Tim Ferris radio podcast (highly recommend listening) (questioning how she is living her life) “Did I choose courage over comfort?”  “I am choosing to live in the arena (her metaphor for vulnerability) and it almost guarantees that I’ll get my ass kicked)

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