First day 1/2

We have arrived !!

After a very nice tearful farewell at Aachen station, we took the train to Frankfurt, where we arrived 3 hours too early after searching for a counter for an hour - oh great.  On the plane to Santo Domingo, a few tears were shed during Finding Dory (yes, even Max cried :p) and after about 10 hours, we were already in the Caribbean. By the way, the people from Condor have a great sense of bringing you food just when you have fallen asleep, and the security checks in the Dominican Republic are clearly unnecessary and extremely slow :) So we hardly slept and Max almost left us on our trip. Fabio gave him a ring as a goodbye gift, which unfortunately was a little too tight for him.. After endless attempts, involving two flight attendants and Max's finger looking like it was about to explode, a nice student with a funny German accent finally managed to remove it with a thread (proof photos will follow!) ;) .. so we all arrived in San Jose alive after all!!

We were lucky that the sun was just rising when we reached the coast of Costa Rica - the country from above already looked so beautiful, we wanted to jump out right away! We also saw a volcano from the airplane - quite impressive :)

Directly in front of the airport at half past six in the morning, Celso (Max's half-uncle) warmly greeted us and picked us up. In the car, we could get a first impression of Costa Rica - everything very colorful, very crowded, very green and somehow with a special charm :)

The Cruz family lives a bit outside in a beautiful quiet area with many small colorful houses, and we have rarely been welcomed so warmly - they not only say mi casa es su casa here, they mean it too :) even I am 'familia' just like the little dog Lorena, who immediately made friends with Max. The great thing is: they really only speak Spanish here! I was happy about it and after half an hour, I could communicate relatively easily with everyone (and apparently they like to talk a lot here :D).

After a nice breakfast with abuela and Aunt Elizabeth, we sat down in the sun on the street in front of the house - it's really PURA VIDA after the constant grayness in Germany. And Max's biggest wish already came true on the first day: we saw a hummingbird while walking Lorena the little dog! (Yes, ONE HUMMINGBIRD!!!!) And we thought we had to go to a national park for that, but no, they apparently fly around here like Elizabeth told us :)

At one o'clock (which is actually eight o'clock in the evening in our heads), she cooked typically Tica for us, we had papaya with rice, beans and meat, which was very delicious, but then she finally didn't let us avoid a little nap anymore..