Jacó Bound - Our Life in Costa Rica

Our house, San Luis de Grecia Costa Rica

 Saturday morning at 6:15am

We've got visitors from the San Francisco Bay Area. They are here for a week and it's their 1st visit to Costa Rica. On Friday we took them up to the hanging Bridges in the Monteverde Cloud Forest (pics and video to follow) but on Saturday they headed down to Playa Jacó (beach) by bus.

To ensure that they have a successful trip, we gave them a few lessons. 

1. Use the Itranslate App. You can enter in words and phrases in Spanish (or your preferred language) and the app will convert it to Spanish in text or audio. We use it all the time and find that it comes in very handy. 

We also use 

2. Google Translate  

and 

3. Spanish Dict

Since they were taking the bus, we checked Costa Rica By Bus (this is a Facebook site created by Rob Evans where "like minded folks can join me in documenting their travels and provide help and tips to others. I also created photo albums for bus schedules, bus stops, and buses and a file section for PDF's people collect."

I use this page anytime I want to find out how to get around Costa Rica on the bus.

We also created a cheat sheet of Spanish phrases that might come in handy on the trip

Our friend and taxi driver, Randall, picked them up at 6:15am and dropped them at the Grecia Bus station. They took a bus from there to San Jose. In San Jose they took a short taxi ride to another station where they caught the bus to Jacó.

Understandably they were a little worried when they left because they are in a new country and do not know any Spanish -- but as luck would have it, (after I posted on Facebook that they were on their way to Jaco) a couple of friends of ours (from Grecia) saw the post and contacted me. 

Turns out they were staying at the same hotel. 

While the travelers were in route to Jacó  our friends left a message at the hotel desk introducing themselves and leaving their contact info.

And.....what a surprise when they arrived!!

Here is one of our happy travelers when she met up with our friends Shannon & Pat

Thank You Shannon & Pat!

They are having so much fun that they texted us today that they are extending their trip an extra day.