Our Trip To Panama

At 5 am Wednesday morning a van with a driver arrived to take us to Panama. We are only allowed to stay in Costa Rica for 90 days. Then we have to leave the country for at least 3 days. I guess this helps them to keep track of non-citizens. Novel idea, huh? OK, anyway- The first difficult thing about the day was the car seats. Our children have only been in a car seat a couple of times the past 3 months and so neither were overly thrilled with the idea. The entire trip off and on George would yell “Ayudame” (c’mon all you Dora fans, you know that means “help me”, right?) He wanted OUT of that car seat! About 4 hours into the trip we came upon a long line of cars stopped in the road. We thought maybe there was an accident, so we waited a little bit. Then we noticed that people started to get out of their cars. This is not a good sign. One thing about CR is that the gas prices are so high (about $6/gallon) that any time they stop the car they turn it off! So, here we are in 90 degree weather with no air conditioning in the car! We decided it was a good plan to get out of the car too. We found out about an hour later that they were painting the lines on the roads and the road would open in about 2 more hours. Are you kidding me?? So, we waited a little longer. Thankfully, it was about 30 minutes quicker than that and we were on the road again. We had some snacks in the car and decided not to stop for lunch so that we could get some kilometers behind us. We arrived at the CR/Panama border around 3pm. After waiting in line and filling out papers we were “next” at about 3:50 pm. We read a sign that says “Border open from 8am-4pm daily”. No way! Is the border going to close right now before we get across and we have to stay here in a hostel for the night? We have a reservation at a beach resort! OH, another thing… George is pretty much wiped out by now. While we are standing in line, he is running all around and I am frantic trying to keep him close to us. He wants to roll all over the ground and touch everything that is completely filthy! I know at any minute he is going to lick the handrail and I might just come completely unglued! Thank the Lord we did make it through the border in time. We had about another hour to drive to our hotel. Well, we see a sign that directed us toward the hotel. We drove and drove through little towns out in the middle of NO WHERE! We kept stopping to ask if we were going the right direction. We were… 13 hours later, finally, we arrived at Las Olas Resorts. It was dark and we were tired and hungry. We ate a good dinner and went happily to bed.

In the morning we awoke to realize that the beautiful Pacific Ocean is viewable from our hotel balcony! And the beaches are BLACK SAND!

We spent an amazing day playing in the pool and just hanging out around the hotel. This afternoon we all went down for a walk on the beach that turned into some fun in the waves too! There is NOTHING here, but the resort, the beach and the ocean. The resort is relatively new and there are very few people here. Everything is absolutely beautiful. (There are no bath tubs L But at least there is hot water J) Oh, did I mention the temperature? It is hot around 85-90 degrees! I love it! And I hear it is snowing in Oklahoma!