The importance of preparedness

Or the complete lack thereof...  We felt really quite proud of ourselves yesterday.  Not only did we stay up and enjoy every possible second of 'nawlins the night before, we also managed to wake up when our alarm went off (despite only an hour and a half of sleep).  We managed to not leave anything in the room, to get to the airport with plenty of time and to smoothly making our entrance into costa rica.  We even chose the right cab driver on the way out of customs.  Not only was Randy a friendly and helpful driver if ever there was one, his english was also great.  Somedays everything just seems to fall into place.  Today however...was not one of those days. In the mayhem of finishing up the garage and booking travel and trying not to leave without things like keys to the bus (yes, we thankfully remembered those last minute); we kind of just decided that we wouldn't worry about planning anything in costa rica.  We would have the bus after our first day and could pretty much camp our way through as needed.  Yes, it would be semana santa, and we know well from last year how crazy that could be...but worse case scenario we'd head for the mountains instead of the beach or we'd simply stealth camp on the side of the road.    If we learned anything from our time on the road it was clearly resourcefulness.

We did actually go as far as to give our mechanic a heads up just in case we couldn't get E started after all this time, but we kinda just figured after we reunited with E everything else would work itself out.  We'd simply fall back into the old "lets see where tomorrow takes us" mode.  There's a chance the part of the plan we should have focused on a tiny bit more was that bit about reuniting with the bus...

We left the airport feeling great about our cab driver.  We explained the steps we needed to take (insurance, aduana then back to get the bus) and he agreed to wait for us in between each stop assuming things went fairly quickly.  It was only upon pulling into INS (insurance and our first required step for getting the bus) that things started to go a hair awry.  They had closed just before we arrived and wouldn't be opening again until after semana santa is over. Semana santa being a weeklong celebration, that means we cant get E until the 21st!

That one took some time to sink in... we just landed in costa rica with almost no clothing and no supplies, no accommodation and no transportation arranged.  Why would we when all those things are covered by the bus?

We tried going behind the scenes.  Randy tried to pull some strings with friends in INS.  We even tried to drive illegally for a week, but the customs warehouses are apparently pretty strictly watched by the government.  It became pretty clear we wouldn't be driving away with the bus this week.  Just a tiny little shift in our trip itinerary.

So...here we are.  We're livin' it up in alejuela, costa rica.  Nope, that's not on the beach.  It's a slightly less than picturesque suburb of san jose built up around the airport.  We grabbed the first room with wifi started the search for options to kill 7 days of semana santa (meaning we're looking for a way to the beach).

Oddly, 2 years ago this would have been my worst nightmare.  Not that i ever would have flown into a foreign country without every detail planned mind you...but today would have made my head explode.  Instead, we simply laughed it off.  "Es la vida".  It's not like we have an expensive room reservation waiting for us that's racking up our credit card.  Not like were in a hurry to get somewhere...or to meet someone just across the order.  Seriously, whats the worst that can happen anyway?

So...i guess in the morning we'll start over with seeing what tomorrow brings us tomorrow.  Just like we planned all along.