When
considering our travels in Costa Rica, it is important to remember that
the total cost to the students for 21 days was under $2,000 American
($870,00 colones) each. That included airfare, bus, taxi, etc. plus
meals, hotels, taxes and the like. Everything. Dr. David
Brown, who organized the trip, had scouted things out and used the size of
the group and some tough bargaining to keep the costs down. This
also meant, however, that we traveled on public buses rather than simply
renting a van or small bus and driver to take us where we wanted to go.
We flew out of Columbus airport to Newark on a regional jet. Normally, I prefer to fly out of Cleveland, mainly because my wife works at NASA across the runway from the terminal. To make the trip a bit easier we got a Marietta College van and recruited a driver, Nat Miller ('05) to take us to the airport on May 10th. Most of the students traveled to the airport with their parents, and the group met up at the ticket counter. It was a good chance to meet some of the parents, and, for me at least, to make some side deals with some of them to "misplace" their students (sorry Mr. "X", the pool room will have to wait; he was smarter than we gave him credit for). Before the flight I met our pilot, who seemed to be a level-headed guy; he didn't get upset at all when he dropped his bottle of Scotch on the way to the plane. By now you realize that this is a not entirely factual account of our trip....
