Arrgh! We are so behind on our blog posts—sorry!


April 22, 2015 Back in Golfito


We arrived back in Golfito and found Serenity safe and secure. We checked everything out and everything except the generator was fine. When we started the generator salt water gushed out from the base—oh well, just another repair in paradise. We decided to move from Tim's $10/day mooring into a slip at Banana Bay Marina—at $120/day. It was expensive, but we could run our air conditioning unit and that made it worth while. Did we say that it was freaking hot and humid in Golfito?
The M/V Tramper, our transport vessel, arrived on the 28th and we were told to be ready to load Serenity on the 29th—how exciting! We left the marina and motored over the the Tramper which was anchored about a half of a mile from the marina. On our last experience with a boat transport vessel the ship was a typical freighter—about 800 feet long. Tramper was only 300 feet long and had a low free board—which means that the sides of the boat were lower to the water. We were called to come along side Tramper and soon Serenity was lifted onto the yellow Tramper. We were taken off Serenity by a panga and dropped off on shore. We had made reservations at a local hotel and we were soon enjoying an air conditioned room and maid service—very nice.
We had decided to spend the time that Tramper was taking Serenity up to Ensenada in Puerto Vallarta at Paradise Village—where we had stayed on Serenity at the marina six years ago. We had one more small airplane ride to San Jose to catch our international flight. This time we had to fly on a single engine Cessna—what an exciting ride as there are always clouds and turbulence. We had to wait in San Jose for ten hours for our 0100 red eye to Houston where we had a four hour layover before our flight to Puerto Vallarta. We decided to book a room at the airport Hampton Inn for eight hours to rest and shower before our flight—that worked out well. We were at the San Jose airport early and waited for our flight by the loading gate. As they finally started to board the business class customers the check-in desk lady came over to us and asked if we were on this flight—we said we were and she asked for our boarding passes. She came back and told us she had upgraded us to business class for free and we could board the plane—how cool was that?
Our flights from San Jose to Houston and on to Puerto Vallarta went smoothly and even passing through Mexican customs (red light/green light) was easy. What was not easy was getting past the hawkers selling time share tours. But, Gordon's Scottish keen sense of haggling prevailed and we were hooked to tour the time shares at Paradise Village (suckers).