We made it to Costa Rica yesterday afternoon. We spent the night in San Jose. I knew not to expect much from San Jose. I'll just say that I'm glad we only spent one night there. We left at 7AM to come to La Fortuna. The drive here is no joke! It's a lot of winding roads. When the winding finally stops the road is really bumpy. We finally made it though and we're so excited to have 3 nights here. There are a few restaurants nearby and we got to have our first authentic Costa Rican meal today. I've heard that some people don't really like Costa Rican food as it can be bland but we liked it. It's very flavorful. We had no plans today so we decided to go to the waterfall at the suggestion of the guy who drove us here from San Jose. We went and it was beautiful. There are tons and tons of stairs. I'm glad we didn't know about that before or we might not have gone. :) It was pretty brutal trying to climb back to the top. I would still highly recommend it though. It's very stunning. I'm super out of shape and once the pain fades I'll be left with just memories of a really stunning waterfall. Tomorrow we're hoping to go to some of the hanging bridges and on Wednesday we're going to Tabacon hot springs. That will be perfect after two days of hiking!

The only small hitch in our vacation is that the bank froze our accounts (both our ATM cards and one credit card). I told them that we would be traveling in Costa Rica but the first time we tried to use the card it got declined. We tried again today...same result. Luckily I did bring one credit card that's with a different bank and it has been working so today we paid off the entire card and are hoping we can keep using it throughout the trip. We will need some more cash at some point and we're running low. I emailed the bank so hopefully they can unfreeze it because I really don't want to have to buy a phone card to call them. Since the other card is working we're just trying to stay in the moment and enjoy things and not worry too much about the money situation.

It's been rainy but it's not too bad. There was a downpour for a few minutes this morning but other than that it has been a light sprinkle all day. The weather is great. It's cooler than I expected but not cold. Today has been great because it's really been the start of our vacation and the first time we've gotten to see some of the beauty of Costa Rica. We'll spend the next three nights here and then it's off to Jaco to spend some time at the beach.

We really like our hotel. It's just outside of town but there are lots of restaraunts nearby. There's a grocery store right next door and a shared kitchen here. We plan on buying a little bit of groceries so we can have some snacks and things here. In Jaco we'll be in a condo with a full kitchen so we'll do more cooking there. Well we're off to try an authentic Costa Rican lunch.