We flew American Airlines from San Francisco, Los Angeles and Minneapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth where we all met for our American Airlines flight to San José, the capital of Costa Rica.
We stayed overnight at the 4-star Marriott Costa Rica Hotel and were picked up the next morning by a driver and guide in an 18-passenger van from Destination Costa Rica Travel Services for the two or three hour drive from the high central valley down to the coast.
The premium coffee-growing Central Valley, although in the tropics, has a very agreeable climate similar to Coastal Southern California but due to the summer rains the seasons seem to be reversed. Our early morning sweaters and jackets were shed aboard the van and not donned again until we were back in the highlands. The country is dominated in the north by its eleven volcanos of which several are active at the same time and dominated in the south by a granitic range of mountains. It has both tropical dry forests and tropical rain forests. The flat plains on the east coast get more rain and are somewhat warmer and more humid than the more mountainous west coast. Most of the tropical forests were burned off in the 1980s to make the country more suitable for raising beef to satisfy worldwide burger mania.