On the ground in Costa Rica!

We arrived in San Jose Costa Rica today!

Leaving Texas - We were up early (3 am) for a 4 am trip to the San Antonio airport.  We flew to Houston and arrived just in time to start boarding our plane to San Jose.  After 3 plus hours in the air we started seeing some amazing sights down below.  Major and obvious volcanic mountains as well as huge volcanic craters were easily seen from the air. It was truly awesome.  I have never seen anything like that. Here is one of the many videos I took from the plane (sorry about the quality).

We got off the plane in San Jose and it was immediately obvious that we weren't in Kansas (North Carolina) anymore.  We made it through customs pretty easily and left for the hotel.  Later that day we went on a walking tour of downtown San Jose.  The town is vibrant and busy.  It is also very colorful and full of plants.  We saw parrots in the trees along the streets and saw coffee growing in the city parks.

There is artwork everywhere and very colorfully painted buildings.  The people are very friendly, busy, and seem really into whatever they are doing.  We went to the bank and exchanged money.  The current exchange rate is 498 colones per US dollar.  Most folks ended up with tens of thousands of colones when they exchanged.   I got four post cards for 600 colones!

Statues of Important Historical Figures are Common

The Temple of Music

Our Hotel

Our Guide Julio and a Ficus Tree

Trunk of the Ficus Tree

Coffee Growing in the Park

The Plaza where our Hotel is

The Oldest Theatre in San Jose

This is an Art Museum

A Central Plaza

Art Museum

Stone Sculpture

Tragedy written in stone

A Renovated Section of Town

Art is Everywhere

The Our Lady of Solitude Church

Pedestrian Only Street

Tomorrow we go to the US Embassy and meet with a former Presidential Science advisor and the current Minister of Education in Costa Rica.  It promises to be a busy day!  I have pictures of all this but am having a bit of trouble downloading the pictures.  Hopefully that will be rectified soon.

More on the story as it develops!