Arrival February 8th

February 8th - Our Arrival

This is us in the Morning after an overnight flight from Los Angeles (LAX) to San Jose - Costa Rica! Theresa Painted our faces to celebrate our arrival!

We rented an awesome large diesel SUV for 3 weeks. A car rental company dove us for free to a local casino / car rental place (sketchy It felt at first, it really felt like we might be 'taken for a ride' here (a scam), this really turned out to be just my fear from being in a completely unknown place). We were expecting to pay a lot less because my Credit Card company told me the insurance would definitely be covered! But it turns out they have a very particular vehicle insurance system where liability is separate and not covered by any credit cards. So It surprised us how much it would cost, because as it turns out Costa Rica has a very independent insurance system in which no credit card could cover liability! But it turned out later after talking to other vehicle rental places that we got an amazing deal and my credit card still covered theft and damage! having a diesel car saved us a lot of money in gas as diesel prices are about half of regular gasoline in Costa Rica!

This picture was taken going towards Punterenas from San Jose, a reminder that this country is almost all catholic according to wikipedia!

On this first drive we made a few stops in some places, one little mall there was a show store where I wanted to buy sandals, but I had 3 people 'on my back', it felt like, forcing me to buy something! I just want sandals, but I couldn't get them because I had no space to think or even make a decision, so I had to leave! It was obvious that we looked rich to the locals, what a weird feeling! In this part of the country people seem to be more desperate, then the south coast area where we were eventually going.

Me and Theresa really didn't have much a plan it felt like other than to pick up Dan and Rhea at some fairy terminal near Punterenas. We just drive straight and had faith everything would work out! This crazy road we ended up going to through a ghetto style shanti town on the outskirts of Punterenas where the houses were right on the sheer edge of the 'highway', with only 2 or 3 feet of space from the highway! Weird and Bizzar feeling - this felt so '3rd world', like we were in a very poor part of a large city in India!

it just turned out that this road ended up going directly to this makeshift ferry terminal where we were to meet Dan and Rhea! We met this black old dreddy character that had a hilariously groovy glow about him who seemed to be the self appointed parking attendant! We began to really understand this strange freedom in Costa Rica where anything goes, you make the rules! Well right where we decided to make out parking spot, there was this upstairs cafe where Dan and Rhea had been looking down at us! Good Times!, we found each other like clockwork!

The First thing we Did is Jump in the ocean!!

Here I am Making a Sand Castle, and Theresa Dan and Rhea in the background!

One of the first places we stopped was the Crocodile river that happens to be the exact point where the arid dry land turns into the lush wet rain forest region of the south.

Here is a photo of the bridge with Theresa Rhea and Dan. There were Crocodiles everywhere! It was beautiful!

One weird thing was that it seems every local that drive by was a pervert or whistling out perverted degrading comments towards Theresa and Rhea. It was obvious, that at least in this part of the country almost all the guys were sexually repressed and seemed to regurgitate an 'alpha-male' media created sheepish persona of ignorance! I was figuring it was likely that there is a large sexual shadow due to the repression of sexuality and individuality from the dogmatic restrictions of a largely catholicised culture. Gladly we did not get this closed minded behavior as much as we traveled toward the more chilled out awesome friendly south!

We eventually arrived in Jaco! We found a hostile called Kangaroo and went out for the night! It was a Party town and it was Party night! We ate out at an awesome restaurant where we had out own personal musicians sing and play music for us! We then got some drinks and hung out on the beach. We gazed at the Pleaides and then held hand with the collective intention of love, freedom and liberation.

We ended up meeting some very cool people on the street where I played Hacki-Sack! We met this awesome person called Jose, who first made a heart for Theresa out of green reed grass! Then he eventually make us all amazing hats that many people would comment on throughout the rest of the trip!

We partied it up, it was a big eventful night for all of us! Some bizzar things happened that night, which in retrospect some of us partied a little too hard! :)