{"id":1001,"date":"2023-07-11T08:06:05","date_gmt":"2023-07-11T14:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/syfrenchkissinglife.com\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2023-09-27T18:21:47","modified_gmt":"2023-09-28T00:21:47","slug":"we-have-a-visitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/syfrenchkissinglife.com\/?p=1001","title":{"rendered":"We have a visitor!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We sailed down to Quepos, Costa Rica, and spent a few nights in Marina Pez Vela (means sailfish). The single most expensive marina we have ever stayed in, $3.50\/foot plus utilities and taxes. But it was also the nicest marina we have ever been in in terms of restaurants and stores on site and just overall incredibly attractive. They even have a concierge that helps with everything: in our case getting a rental car, getting laundry done ($65 for 26 pounds!) and the paperwork cha-cha with the local port captain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This area is really interesting as they have vast palm oil plantations. In the 1940s, the United Fruit Company was dealing with a major banana disease so they switched all of the bananas here to palm oil which turned out to be much easier to transport and better suited to this area.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our daughter Paige came to visit for a couple weeks. She flew into Costa Rica and will leave out of David, Panama. Costa Rica doesn’t like the idea of travelers not having a return ticket out of the country so Paige was pulled aside at the boarding gate in Mexico City and had to explain how she is sailing to Panama and then returning to the US. In addition to her return ticket issues, she was also pulled aside at security and told she was not allowed to bring the paddle board tie down straps in her carry on. Frustrated because LAX allowed it, she unwillingly had to watch them take the item from her. We had loaded her down with two bags packed full of boat goodies, the most important being a Dometic freezer. Our built-in freezer just can\u2019t keep up with the load in this heat and it gives us more cold storage overall. Power consumption should go down as the new freezer is so much more efficient and the old one is now an extra fridge on low power.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all piled into the rental car (Bella too!) and headed up to La Fortuna\/Volcan Arenal in the northern part of the country and spent a couple days at the wonderful Arenal Lodge. The bartender found a green eyed tree frog that decided to jump onto John’s shoulder and then Paige\u2019s head!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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