Moving to Costa Rica: July 22, 2025
- Bre
- Jul 26
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 22
Well today was pretty busy.
First up was our meeting with the representative from the bank, but that was not till 10am, so I had breakfast first. This is the complementary breakfast provided by the hotel.
It consisted of a variety of pastries, fruit, eggs, fried plantains, and Gallo Pinto, which is black bean and rice, with some other things.
Overall it was good. I had a banana, a cinnamon roll sort of thing, Gallo Pinto, eggs, and plantains. The plantains were a bit too oily, and it tasted like the oil was old, so I did not eat too much of them, but everything else was good. I also had coffee.
We knew where to go, but we wanted to set off early just to make sure we got there on time. The front desk let us store our bags with them while we were gone, since we checked out that morning, which was very nice of them.
We walked the way we did yesterday, and this time it was raining. I grabbed my rain jacket before we left, but Sophie decided not to grab hers. A while into the walk, she said this was a mistake, and said the joke was on her, but she was ok. We went to the place where google maps said the location was, and looked around, but could not find it. We then asked someone, who said that Citibank was not there, but at a totally different area, about a 15 minute walk away at a place called the Multiplaza Escazu. This was kind of frustrating, but we had time to get there. The problem was that, at this point the rain was picking up, but we trudged on. We had to walk on a busy road (luckily, there was a sidewalk). It was pretty miserable, but we finally got there. Sophie was soaking but this point. However, when we got there, the guard asked if we were employees, but we were not. We tried to tell her that we had a meeting at the bank branch there, but she said we could not use that entrance. We then showed her the address, and then, much to our frustration, she said it was actually back the way we came. This was a different branch. We were wet and tired by this point, but we went back the way we came. This time I used Waze which I had heard was better, and did see two branch locations, one of which was back the way we came. We walked back, but it turns out this was where we had been to begin with!
We were about to give up, but as a last resort, I called the representative on Whatsapp (which is used here instead of texting). She then said we were at the right place, and that she would come down to meet us near the Starbucks.
We looked around for the Starbucks, and it was actually a bit south of where the google maps said it would be, and we had passed it on the way to the original location. In our defense, there was no sign to be seen, so I am not sure how we were supposed to find this place without calling the representative, but at long last, we were there. And right on time! It is a good thing we left early, because wow, what an adventure.
After this, we headed back to our hotel and grabbed our bags. Sophie had arranged for a driver to come pick us up, and we just barely managed to fit all of our bags in the car.
About an hour or so later, we finally arrived! It felt really good to get here after everything. We are now settling in. We’ve unpacked our things, and added a few more things to the list of things we forgot.
Some family friends, Chaia and Alan are going to be just two houses down from us, and we were looking forward to seeing them at some point, but then Sophie got a text from them inviting us to dinner! This was wonderful, and we were really excited. They dropped a pin for where to find them, but they were a 40 minute walk away! We were confused,. Because we thought they were just a short walk away. Turns out, they were staying somewhere else, while some other people were using their house, and they thought we had a car, which we did not. But with the misunderstanding straightened out, they kindly came to pick us up, so we took a drive through the jungle to their house and had a lovely dinner!
It was a lovely time, with delicious food and great conversation, and we were so grateful to have such a warm welcome. After dinner, we had dessert, Chaia cut up this strange yellow fruit for us, and she asked us to guess what it tasted like. I thought it tasted a bit like cantaloupe with some candy notes, but it did taste very familiar. Turns out, this was jackfruit, and it is the flavor used for Juicy Fruit gum! I thought that was neat.
Chaia and Alan also gave us lovely wedding gifts, there were Brazil and macadamia nuts, honey, and a lovely Hamsa that Chaia painted herself. And the nuts came in the very nice hand-crocheted bags!
Tomorrow, we plan to go down to San Mateo to get groceries, so we are looking forward to that!
Great pictures! The soggy trip to the bank sounds extremely frustrating, but glad you both hung in there. And yay for welcoming friends! Dessert looks lovely-- who knew that Juicy Fruit was based on an actual fruit?? Ha, that's cool. ❤️