Day 42: Into the great unknown
Samar Halarnkar -
Sunday, May 25, 2008 10:57 AM
It's nearing 11 at night on an unseasonably chill California evening, and we are preparing for the most uncertain part of our journey.
In just over four hours, we're going to have to shake our groggy selves awake and stuff our baggage into my brother-in-law's car for the hour-long drive to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). A United Airlines flight will take us to Denver, Colorado, another United flight will drop us in Miami, Floria, from where we board an American Airlines flight to San Jose, Costa Rica, a tiny, laidback country in Central America. Thanks to our travel agent who made this peculiar routing -- yes there are direct flights -- we get into Costa Rica after 9 tomorrow night.
Then ... ah, let's see.
As I said before, we have no visa for Costa Rica. We found half a consulate in New Delhi, placed a call and a Punjabi woman there told us if we had a 10-year multiple entry US visa, the Costa Ricans would give us a visa on arrival. The Costa Rican government website says nothing of the sort, but since visas from Delhi take three weeks, we're flying in on the authority of the woman on the phone. What's our plan B, if we don't get a visa and have to return -- to the US I guess? We don't have a plan B. We hope we can persuade the Costa Rican immigration authorities to "kindly adjust". After all, we will no longer be in the first world eh?
We have booked ourselves into a small hotel in San Jose, and we have instructions on how to get there in Spanish (for the taxi driver), provided by the hotel owner. If we do get into the country, we rest for a day in San Jose (the capital) and on Tuesday morning we head out to a little beach town called Puerto Viejo. This is the interesting thing -- we are scheduled to get there on a raft. We will be picked up, put on a river, where we will do white-water rafting, have lunch during the trip, then get off the rafts somewhere near Puerto Viejo and then drive to a little hotel called Banana Azul. We found it randomly on the net. What do we know about it? Very little.
We're scheduled to stay in Costa Rica for 16 days -- dies y seis; I've mugged up the Spanish equivalent so I can tell the immigration officer. If he asks me a question, I may struggle, but I do have a response ready for that too: "Lo Siento, no hablo Espanol." Sorry, I don't speak Spanish.
Hmmm. I think you better wish us luck.
Good night all.