The Adventures of San José

Sunday, November 11

Eddie’s side of the story:

Notice:  this is an in empty bus!

Rysen and I boarded the bus to Turrialba at 7:00 am.  While riding, I got a phone call from Deanna saying that her parents were not going to make it onto their flight from Miami.  We didn’t even know if they would arrive in San José today or not.  Rysen and I wanted to explore San José anyway so we decided to take the risk and go on an adventure.

We arrived around 7:40 and hoped to board the 8:00 bus to San José, but it was full.  We had to wait for the 9:00 bus.  While we waited, we ate breakfast and experienced “Bathroom #1.”  The bathroom at the bus stop is not free… you have to pay 200 colones (equivalent to about 40 cents) and the lady gives you T.P.  I gave “puppy dog eyes” until she gave me some extra T.P.

At 9:00 we boarded the bus to San José, and we planned to get off at the mall.  We never saw the mall.  We rode the bus until we ended up in a neighborhood at the end of the bus route. 

The Mall (way better than we expected)!

We ran to catch another bus to get to the mall.  That is where we experienced “Bathroom #2.”  This one was free, but had motion-censored lights that were on a timer… after two minutes, I was sitting in the dark thinking, “Ummm… Hello?”  Thankfully, someone else came in and triggered the lights for me.

We ate lunch at the mall, where Rysen got his fill of fast food (Pizza Hut and Burger King).  Soon, we experienced “Bathroom #3.”  This time, the cleaning lady came in and started mopping the floor under our feet while we were using the bathroom. 

The market in San José.

Check out these sweet action figures we saw!

After confirmation that my in-laws would be landing around 2:30, we took a taxi to the airport.  We had a little miscommunication with the driver.  We were asking if it took 20 minutes to get to the airport… he thought we wanted to be there in 20 minutes.   He was driving like a maniac and seemed pretty agitated at the traffic.  I said “We are not in a hurry. It’s okay.”  That is when it was clear we had mis-communicated.  We arrived safely and waited for 1 ½ for Deanna’s parents to arrive.  Unfortunately, their bags ended up on the 9:30 flight, but American Airlines promised to deliver them to Tuis. So we took a shuttle to the rental car company.  Once we had our rental car, we turned on the GPS and started driving home from San José. It was getting dark, the traffic was bad, and the GPS wouldn’t work.  We had no map, no directions, and no GPS.  We encountered many one-way streets along the way, but we learned to “follow our hearts.”  Thankfully, everyone was a good sport, patient, and we actually had fun on our great adventure.  

We arrived at our house at 7:30 to pick up Deanna and Jaden so we could go to our 7:30 dinner reservations at Rancho Naturalista.  We didn’t know how far it was from the main road, but we knew it was “close.”  We ended up driving up this steep, dark, mountainous, rocky, muddy road for 10 minutes before finding the hotel.

Our reward: Filet Minion, potatoes, corn on the cob, salad, and dessert.  We left mom and dad to settle in, took Rysen home, and went to bed.  What an adventurous day!  There were some scary moments, but God kept us safe through it all!!!