Day 1 - Arrival in Alajuela

On previous trips we either left at the crack of dawn or a red eye flight - this time we had the "luxury" of sleeping in and catching an 11am flight with a short layover in Houston and then arriving in Alajuela at 9:45pm. We whizzed through customs and immigration but after leaving the airport were couldn't find our driver who was supposed to take us to Orquideas Inn. This will have been our seventh time staying there and never had a problem so we were a bit surprised that the driver wasn't there but it was a forewarning of things to come with their transportation services (more about that later). We quickly got a taxi at the booth - paying in advance $9 for a ride to the hotel. This turned out to be a bit better deal since the hotel charges $12. After getting to the hotel we saw our friend Lucy who works the front desk, dumped our luggage in the room and quickly made our way to the bar for some Pilsens with chips and salsa before calling it a night.