News item: The Earth has had two near-misses with large asteroids already this month.
Add to this the idea that the Mayans predicted the world will end on 21 December 2012 when a “planet” strikes the Earth, and, well, why not be there for a front-row (or at least balcony) seat?
So we landed in Costa Rica today for a two week vacation.
¿Donde está Costa Rica?
Our sweet neighbor dropped us off at the airport this morning at 5:30 a.m. (We have really nice neighbors; in addition to this favor, they are also taking care of our cats, while hosting another friend’s puppy for the holidays). We had a layover in Charlotte, and ate breakfast there at Beaudevin, a real restaurant in the middle of the airport. I can highly recommend Beaudevin if you’re in CLT and need a meal. It’s in the main atrium area.
I had some fun with CVH after breakfast: she asked which concourse our Costa Rica flight was leaving from.
“D,” I said.
“D?” asked CVH.
“Sí.” I replied.
“C?”
“No, D.”
“D?”
“Sí.”
She hates that sort of thing.
After breakfast, it was off to Costa Rica. On the way there, we flew over Cuba. I was able to see the island from the airplane. Not a particularly exciting sight, I suppose, but it is intriguing to someone of my generation how such an unprepossessing spit of sand has caused so much controversy in the last sixty years.
We got through immigration and customs at the not-over-air-conditioned San José airport without problem and taxied to our hotel, the Barceló Palacio.
- Taxi Aeropuerto
We had a very pleasant taxi driver on the way in from the airport. We chatted about the plants and trees that we saw along the way. It was such an unusual pleasure to get a airport taxi driver that could speak the language and knew where he was going. (I’ll never forget the time I returned home to Houston and had to give the driver directions on how to get out of the airport.) However, despite all the many signs in the airport that indicated that the official orange airport taxis all take VISA, our driver would only take cash. We found this aversion to credit cards to be common throughout the country; they haven’t yet accepted the theory that the fees are made up for by increased volume.
The view from our room was just paradisaical:
After dinner, when we returned to our hotel room, I told CVH that I’d try to get a nice telenovela on the TV so that she could practice her Spanish. She said no, she didn’t really care for telenovelas, but if we could get Law & Order in Spanish, that would be a help (I think she has seen every Law & Order episode twice). Well, I couldn’t quite get that, but we did get Law & Order in English with Spanish subtitles, which she got a big kick out of. There was also a big fireworks display going on over at the giant soccer stadium. Apparently people everywhere like fireworks, even in a country so pacifist that it doesn’t have an army.
Across from our parking lot, there’s a small cemetery for the Institute containing hundreds of graves marked “Unknown”. Lately advocates for the disabled have been maintaining the long-neglected markers.
How can they possibly be comfortable like this?
We went through the “Pride of the Counties”, where almost every county in Kentucky has a tourism booth set up. We discovered that Smuckers Uncrustables are manufactured in Kentucky.
One county had a huge watermelon.
We got to meet Dave Shuffett and his dog Toby, the stars of Kentucky Life, a public TV show that has been invaluable to introducing and orienting us to our adopted state. I was starstruck. Dave seemed a little nonplussed at my enthusiasm, but graciously arranged for this photo.
By now, CVH was getting hungry for a corn dog. We stepped outside to wait for the shuttle to take us around to the Kentucky Proud Producers tent (so named because the Kentucky Corn Producers, the Kentucky Poultry Producers, the Kentucky Pork Producers, and so on, have their cooking trailers there). But the shuttle never arrived, and we ended up walking all the way to the tent.
On the way, we passed the judging for Kentucky’s largest pumpkin.
We saw the pumpkin that ended up winning the contest.
I got to meet the 2012 American Honey Princess.
We went to the health exhibits. Here we see CVH getting her blood pressure checked before we entered the giant heart model.
