We did pretty well! Especially me, who has a tendency to over pack! I ended up with 1 hoodie, 3 tanks, 2 tees, 3 skirts, 1 pair of shorts, 1 pair of capri's, 1 pair of pants, 2 swim suits, 1 sports bra, few pairs of undies, 1 pair of hiking sandals, and 1 pair of flip flops. Pretty darn good I say! All packed into a 45L bag along with my camera gear, toiletries, small first aid kit and meds.
Onwards to today. What a way to start off our trip...with a nice early morning flight! We got our morning wake up call, had what could possibly be our last hot showers, packed up and headed to the airport.
It's hard to show excitement at 6:00 in the morning! Inside we were, I promise.
First stop, Kalispell to Salt Lake City (pic 1). Then onwards to Atlanta, Georgia.
As we approached Atlanta, and entered the landing formation, we noticed how busy of an airport this must be. Two parallel runways landing planes back to back to back. Here's a picture of two of them, plus us, out our window. There was a third behind our wing as well. The control tower runs this place like a machine!
Here's a picture of what I believe is downtown Atlanta...the city where Coca-Cola was invented! Oh I wish we had more time here to tour the head office, and such.
Here we are in the Atlanta airport waiting for the final leg of our trip. We're almost there!
We soon found out that 2 days ago (November 3rd), Costa Rica was hit by Hurricane Tomas. This was very unexpected, as storms usually hit the Caribbean side, and even more so, usually miss Costa Rica and hit the Caribbean side of Nicaragua.
One of the flight attendants informed us of the storm, and was showing us photos. We were thinking of going to Jaco first, but supposedly it was Jaco and south (Quepos, Manuel Antonio and Dominical) that got hit the worst. He said it is really bad. Landslides all over, highways in shambles, parts of the country were impassable, buses weren't running, and so on. The storm has since passed, but Costa Rica is still getting hit by heavy rains.
At this point, we were not sure what to expect. We were expecting the worst, but hoping for the best. Gotta stay positive. And this is why you don't "plan" these type of trips. Book your flight, and go with the flow. Don't "plan" for first stop, 2 nights, second stop for 3 nights....cuz it's not gonna happen! lol.
We discussed our plan of attack a bit. It can't be THAT bad if they are still flying us into San Jose and haven't cancelled the flight. And if buses really aren't running, and roads are impassable even if we rented a car, well we'll book a flight from San Jose to Managua, Nicaragua for the morning. No biggie.
It's an adventure!!!
