Luckily, we did our online check-in today. We found out that we’re flying from Gatwick rather than Heathrow. At least we found out today rather than tomorrow when we fly.
Let’s hope some of our other planning has been better. Have we booked the car hire at the airport where we’re actually landing, for instance? Yes, San Jose has various airports, but only one international one. Phew, that should be right then.
There have been other things to check. Jenny, our daughter, is joining us for the first two weeks. She decided that after we had booked all the accommodation. That was fine. Booking.com allowed us to upgrade the accommodation. The AirBnB place was already spacious enough since we’d booked a cabin. What happens if we turn up and they don’t have enough beds, though? More checking and more messages ensued.
Our first phase of planning started months ago. We decided how long to go for (a rather excessive five weeks) and then booked the flights. In fact, we booked so long ago that we lost our booking reference. That entailed a frustrating morning trying to contact British Airways using a chatbot (what is stupid artificial intelligence called?). We couldn’t remember which of us had made the booking, and when we got to chat with a “real person” on the chat, they wouldn’t tell me the booking person because I’d said I was the wrong one of us. You clearly can’t convince someone on the other end of a chat that your wife is sitting next to you even if she does start typing, “It’s me, really it is!” to persuade them. Anyway, we finally got our booking reference. That allowed us to check we had actually booked our flights. Another big relief.
The next phase of planning was to get some maps and guidebooks. We had to arrange the trip ourselves, but I still looked at the itineraries offered by the big operators. They were all very similar. Clearly, there are some highlights of Costa Rica that you have to see. I found myself putting together a five-week itinerary, going from place to place, taking in the highlights and some off-the-beaten places.
It was too much to get my head around. I stuck a load of post-it note strips onto our map. This was great but only illustrated how many things there are to see in many different places. Even five weeks began to feel like we would be rushing around like mad things to see it all
In the end the only way I could think to plan it was to break the trip down into five mini-holidays. So that is how we came up with our plan:
- Central valley highlights
- Carribean coast
- North west camping
- Ranch stay for horse riding
- Penisnular del Osa – Pacific Coast
All this went onto a spreadsheet, broken down day by day. Gradually, we found places to stay, trying to make it a few days in each place to make it manageable. But it will be hectic. We’ve done trips before, going from place to place, so we think we’ll cope.
So everything is booked. We even know which airport we’re flying from. Tomorrow we go!