On December 31 2025, we both woke up right at 04:15 when our first alarm rang. We looked at each without saying much, mostly just smiling, knowing that today was the day we were gonna take everything we owned and begin our own way of living life. We packed up the rest of our stuff, made a quick sandwich for the road and packed the last snacks we had – we said the last tough goodbyes to some of our nearest family who was waving goodbye as Benjamins father and his friend has agreed to drive us to Hamburg, where we had our flight bound for Amsterdam followed by flight to San José, Costa Rica.
In the airport in Hamburg, Klaus (Benjamins father) followed us into the airport and we had a few minutes to say the last very emotional goodbyes for now. We were in the airport 3,5 hours ahead of our flight, and some might say that that is crazy, but we had decided that we would rather be well in advance than 1 minute too late. We used the extra time to finalize some of our social media posts we had planned for our day of departure while also trying to get our heads around the fact, that we were now alone and it was completely up to us now what we wanted to do with our time. Only ourselves to answer to.
Getting to Costa Rica went fairly smooth, and even with just over an hour in Amsterdam Airport, which especially Ditte was a little worried about, it all went well. Our flight from Amsterdam to San José was delayed by an hour due to technical error, but from the moment we went on the planed we didn’t really care if it was on time or delayed 10 hours. All that matters was that we were now on our way. And putting on the last Mission Impossible movie (sad), definitely helped pass the time.
Even though the plane ride was 11,5 hours we switched between talking, watching a movie, trying to get a bit of rest and eating and drinking a lot of food. We kept looking at each other every time the flight attendants brought more food and drinks, as we couldn’t believe the amount they were bringing. That and the fact that we had brought a bunch of our own snacks to make the flight as pleasant as possible. About 2 hours before landing in Costa Rica, we celebrated the Danish time New Year with our homemade ‘kransekage’ (a baked piece of marcipan with nougat and chocolate) and a beer.
When we arrived in Costa Rica we were stocked and incredibly happy, at first.. Unfortunately Dittes luggage wasn’t with the plane. But luckily KLM already knew this and had started their procedures, so we could get it back as quickly as possible. Although we kinda laughed at this at first as everytime we have checked in our luggage there has been some issues with it, this did later put Ditte in a bit of a bad mood also because of the room we got at Costa Rica Backpackers were a room with large plastic windows out towards the hall with only partial blinds, making us slightly visible to anybody walking past. We went to bed at 23:00 local time making us miss the New Year celebration in San Jose, but we were simply too tired to stay awake.
After a decent night’s sleep, we woke up relatively fresh and exited to get on with our first real day in Costa Rica. We had put the bad and sad mood behind us and was once again super excited for what’s to come. Our first real day in San José was very relaxed with about 20 degrees but cloudy, so not particularly warm. We spent part of the day walking around smiling all the time thinking and talking about the next many weeks and months and years to come. While exploring some of the city. We also spend a bit of time getting sunscreen, shampoo, toothbrush etc, as all of this was I Dittes luggage and we kinda needed it all with the UV being 11+. We were very happily surprised about the Christmas and NYE lights that were everywhere, they were massive and very beautiful! We ended the day by the pool and not in it, as it was simply too cold, with a large beer in our hand while watching some of the wildlife in the surrounding areas at the hostel. This included a beautiful couple of birds and a large spider. Our first wildlife encounter in Costa Rica.
We enjoyed some simple noodles and some bread for dinner, as we didn’t want to go out buying a lot of ingredients for dinner yet, as we were heading to Manuel Antonio in the morning at 6 am. Before heading to bed early we wanted to see the Christmas lights after sunset, so we went on yet another walk in the city, this time with our camera. It was so beautiful to see it all and taking a few pictures, but we quickly realized, that bringing our camera out in San Jose might not have been the smartest idea. We were stopped by a couple trying to tell us in Spanish that it would be a good idea to pack it away. We took that advice to us and decided that to should head back to the hostel. We were a bit shocked and slightly sad about the fact the we couldn’t just use our camera everywhere without the risk it involved, but also reminded each other that this is a big city and getting to the country side would be different.
Arriving back at the hostel Dittes luggage finally had arrived and we went to bed early as we had bought tickets for the 6am bus ride to Manuel Antonio the day after.
