2015 Nov 16

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Made it to Costa Rica.

We left this morning at 4am and made it to Costa Rica without a problem. We were worried about finding the AirBnB place but the instructions that we were given were good. There was a lady here to meet us and she took us to the local supermarket for provisions.

We were talking to the cab driver on the way in and he was impressed with our smart phone’s GPS app. Maggie pointed us to a Wired Magazine article that had a list of GPS apps with offline maps. They suggested NavMii with it’s offline maps. We downloaded the Costa Rica, Cuba, and Canadian maps. We used it for our trip from Oromocto to Sussex just to try it out before we got to Costa Rica. We liked the interface and it was a little off in Sussex but it got pretty close. We were a little more worried about them. It took a little while for the GPS to find itself but once it did it was able to get us to our AirBnB place. So that bodes well. The fact that it works completely offline is good as we have no phone service here. We are thinking about getting a phone card but there is WiFi here and we have been able to get Skype and email to Maggie and Nicole.

The only problem with the place so far is the train tracks are close enough to feel the trains go by. I’m not sure it will bother us as both of us are pretty tired. We have cable TV and Bonnie is going to stay up to watch the Dancing show she likes if she can stay awake for it.

Other than that we bought our supper at the supermarket and had a couple of very authentic dishes from the deli.

We heard the exchange rate should be about 530 Collon for every $1 US dollar. The airport exchange rate was 462 for exchanging $200 US so we decided to try for a bank downtown when we were in San Jose. The grocery store gave us an exchange rate of 528 for the dollar so tomorrow we’ll try for the bank. There are a number of ScotiaBanks we passed on the way in.

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