Due to overeager and poor planning on my part, less than 3 weeks after coming back from our 2 week long road trip, we are heading out on another summer trip. It feels too rushed, and we all wish we could have another month or two between travel. The schedule ended up partially like this due to how summer camp schedule ended up. It is what it is at this point, so let’s do it.

We actually started the trip one day early at a hotel next to Bush International in Houston. Tickets to Costa Rica from Austin connecting through Houston were twice as expensive as flying nonstop from Houston, not to mention, the flight from Austin left at like 7am while the flight from Houston left at 10am. It made sense to just drive to Houston, get a hotel for the night and catch the nonstop straight from Houston.

This is what $202 gets you in a ghetto part of North Houston right by the airport. Seriously shady area, but at least it was close to the airport.

At least we have two separate bedrooms and a living room.

And two bathrooms.

Took a short drive to the gas station to get some drinks and saw this cool sunset. Homeless guy in picture to show all the homeless in this area. I thought I was going to get jumped at the gas station while filling up gas, no joke.

Early next morning, someone left their trash in the elevator. We woke up a little bit after 5am even though our flight isn’t until 9:47am. They are doing construction at the Houston airport and I hear it can take 3 to 4 hours sometimes to get on an international flight. Not taking any chances.

Our short overnight stay hotel.

Parked our car at FastPark and got a a shuttle to the airport. CL had been asking to ride a bus since our road trip to DC. We didn’t get to ride a bus then, but we are riding a bus now.

That was pretty easy way to get to the airport terminal.

They love escalators.

Nice, Clear puts us into the same line as the first and business class security line. Easy peasy. Though, PL was appalled to hear that we were flying Economy instead of First Class. Yes child, it’s normal to fly Economy.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. She saw this statue of HW Bush at the airport, ran up, pointed and said, “Butt!”

And of course we checked in our bags and got through security line in less than 30 minutes. That was too easy, and now it means we’ve got more than 2 hours to kill before our flight starts boarding. At least better than stressing out over possibly missing a flight.

First, coffee.

Everything is better after coffee.

Found our gate

Cheers!

Can’t sit still.

The forks are real, but the knives are still plastic.

Breakfast.

It takes 4 plastic knives to cut through steak.

Lunch. They won’t serve lunch on the plane, and we won’t have a chance to eat immediately after landing in Costa Rica. Panda Express to the rescue in that they are actually serving lunch food before 9am.

2 hours to kill before boarding means we go shopping for mama in the airport. We surprised RL with a swim suit throw cover.

Flight leaves on time, they are excited to get on an airplane.

Traveling with kids is stressful.

Yum. Haters gonna hate, but I like Panda Express.

That’s a pretty short flight, not too much longer than a long movie.

Cloudy and rainy. It’s the raining season right now, so we expect it to rain almost daily, and especially in the afternoons.

Immigration line, it wasn’t the longest line we’ve seen. Come on kids, hold it together while we wait.

Out of the airport and following the rental car rep to the shuttle stop to take us to the offsite rental car lot.

It’s really humid out here. Now we wait some more.

Finally the shuttle is here.

And of course, someone riding earlier had spilled tons of trail mix with nuts all over it. Good thing PL isn’t sitting in this seat since she’s allergic to nuts.

Kids, please calm down.

I had reserved a Toyota Fortuner, basically a Hilux in SUV form.

Let’s see, how do I work this.

I think they are excited.

It’s raining and it’s trafficky and I’m driving for the first time in a new foreign country. Kinda stressful.

Still excited.

Yes, it’s nice that it has Apple Carplay. What’s not nice is that the volume control on this interface doesn’t actually change the volume for the navigation in Google Maps, so every single voice direction is a MAX volume. We tried all the settings to try to quiet it down but nothing worked. So finally, we just put the maps on mute. I just realized as I’m typing this that maybe if I used Apple Maps the volume could be changed?? Either way, frustrating that I’ve got nav but I’m constantly having to look at the screen to see where I need to be going.

No big deal, just selling stuff in the middle of the highway. I guess at least it’s stop and go traffic here.

Lol.

Kids were surprised to see people living in shacks. They asked if we were glad that we are not poor, yes. They then asked if we were glad that we are not rich….well..that’s a more complex question to answer.

So lush. Finally less traffic after getting out of San Jose.

Driving in Costa Rica isn’t too bad. For sure easier than driving in Morocco.

Lots of heavy rain.

They’ve got all these junkyards around here.

Stopped at a gas station, which are far and few in between, surprisingly, to stock up on snakes and use the bathroom. Also, despite dramamine, the kids are complaining about motion sickness.

Might as well get a bottle of this at the convenience store for our hotel room.

And some coffee. This is the only cold coffee that they have, and it comes with a lot of cream, unfortunately.

Lots of narrow twisty roads on these mountain passes.

This was cool. Fence posts that are living fence posts. They probably cut these plants down, stick them in the ground as fence posts, and then they sprout leaves and keep on growing. Cool.

Lots of these living fence posts everywhere.

Lots of rain means some landslides.

One of many one lane bridges. The car ahead of me actually pulled too far forward and had to reverse for the cars on the other side to pass first.

Finally here! After almost 2 and a half hours of driving.

Front desk building. It’s a rainforest over here alright.

Had to come back to get the passports.

Property map.

Staff showing us to our room. It’s been such a long day of traveling, basically 12 hours from the moment we woke up this morning. We just want to put our luggage in our room and go eat some dinner.

Of course, Little KL jumps on the hammock first.

CL immediately sees a tree frog outside of our room. Very cool.

Let’s go to the hotel restaurant and eat.

Open air restaurant, I hope the mosquitos aren’t bad. They aren’t at the restaurant, surprisingly.

We are hangry.

Let’s eat. The kids complained nonstop about the food and about everything. Everyone’s really tired. I think we just need to put the kids to sleep.

Back at our room. A little bit of ipad time, then time to sleep.

The outdoor shower in one of the two connecting rooms. It was really cool for about 5 minutes, then we realized that because this restroom is open to the outdoors at all times, it’s always filled with mosquitos therefore making this whole bathroom terrible in practice.

Our “backyard” with our own pool. Nice.

Not bad at all.

This hotel being literally in the middle of the rainforest means we’ve got bugs coming into our room.

Look!!! More red eyed tree frogs, so cool.

They are so cool, you can get up so close to them and they won’t move one bit.

Kids are asleep. Adult swim time.

After that long day of travel, some drinks.

It’s because we’ve had drinks.

Time for shower, oh look…a centipede, or is it a millipede in our open air outdoor shower.

Nope, you are going back outside. We did use the outdoor shower, but the moment we got out of the shower, we were running around trying to avoid the mosquitos.

To be continued at Chachagua Day 2 Part 1.