Today was a travel day for us from Punta Arenas to San Jose through Santiago and Panama City. It was fairly uneventful and we managed to get through customs much easier this time around. When we got to San Jose it was a quick ride to our hotel where we were hooked up with a honeymoon suite, complete with "congratulations" written on the wall for us! Click the title to read on....
Today was a long travel day for us. Thankfully, our cab showed right up on time at 5am to take us to the airport. We chose to use hand carts all day as we didn't feel like using all our energy hauling our heavy bags around like we did on our way to Patagonia. There was a huge line for dropping off baggage when we arrived but thankfully it went quick and we had time to also grab a drink and some snacks before getting our our LAN Airlines flight to Santiago. This flight, unlike the first, skipped stopping in Puerto Montt and flew directly to Santiago giving us a good 3 hour block to catch up on sleep and grab some food they brought for us on the plane.
In Santiago we changed airlines to COPA so we once again had to grab our bags and head through customs as we were leaving Chile. The hand cart and our prior experience made it a much easier experience this time around and we made it through very quickly despite a little confusion at the ticketing booth when the woman asked us for our final flight information back to the states to process our tickets to San Jose. We had some time to stop at a restaurant for some food and a beer in Santiago to use up the remaining Chilean Pesos we had with us. I had a turkey ham sandwich with palm hearts and golf sauce - pretty good and they even cut the crusts off. Emily had a quiche. 
The flight from Santiago to Panama was 6+ hours and the plane was brand new and amazing with wide screen headrest touchscreen monitors with games, tv, movies, etc and even a usb charging port. Em and I spent the flight watching Rush, Red 2, and the Butler while also catching some more rest at the end of the flight (with the help of several rum and cokes I ordered for free of course).
In Panama we just had enough time to find deodorant for me (I left the one we bought in Puerto Natales at Dittmar by accident... and after flying for so long was smelling a bit ripe...). I also waited in a crazy long line at Dunkin Donuts of all places to be told they were out of everything vanilla so ended up getting two boston cream donuts (little slice of home) for the plane. We also made sure to eat all the pretty good food given to us on our flights so we didn't have to worry about finding dinner in San Jose.
The flight from Panama was super quick and we were able to watch a bit of the 2nd in the Matrix series before we had a very windy and shaky landing. Customs was again super easy and upon exiting were greeted with about 20 eager cab drivers looking for a job. The guy coordinating all of them knew where we were headed and got us a cab in minutes. I'd say the whole process of landing, finding our bags, customs and the cab ride took all of about 30-40 minutes and we were at our hotel.
In my email communications with Mike Robinson, the General Manager of the Adventure Inn I got a feeling like they really cared for their guests but when we were shown to our quiet and private honeymoon suite complete with hot tub and a banner on the wall saying congratulations I was amazed. We were given a card for free US calls, free wifi, free breakfast and there was fresh fruit on the table for us in our room. Already Costa Rica was impressing us. We spent a little while organizing our gear and then leaving two bags behind the front desk for pickup when we return in 10 days - mostly camping stuff and warm clothes we definitely wouldn't need in hot Costa Rica. Then it was a relaxing night in the incredible room we were given with the alarm set for 5:15am to get us up for our rafting trip.
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