Back in 2007, a friend and I spent 10 days in Costa Rica. It was a wonderful trip filled with wild animals, SCUBA diving, sun bathing and getting a passport stolen. I'm sorry, what? Yep, my friend had her passport (and all her documentation, camera, etc) stolen at the very beginning of our vacation.
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| The city of San Jose |
We flew in to San Jose, spent a day walking around the city, seeing what there was to see, before catching the bus the next day to La Fortuna. I had all my important stuff at my feet, while my friend had put her bag above her head with the strap hanging down so she could keep an eye on it. It was a 4 hour ride through the mountains with beautiful views. After a little more than 2 hours, we stopped for a bathroom break and my friend went to grab her bag, except it wasn't there. She searched everywhere looking for it but sure enough, it was gone.
When we got to La Fortuna, we immediately started calling the embassy in San Jose to see how we should handle this. We were told we would have to come in and apply for a temporary passport so she could leave the country, but it was Friday, we wouldn't be able to get back there until Tuesday. After calling home to have copies of her documents that she had left behind faxed down to our hotel, we decided that I would pay for the rest of the trip on my credit card and we would leave early Tuesday morning to get back to the embassy when it opens at 8 so we could hopefully still make our flight to the Corcovado Rain Forest later that day.
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| Arenal Volcano |
With that sorted, there wasn't much more to do about it until Tuesday, so we enjoyed La Fortuna, hiking the Arenal volcano (where we saw Spider and Howler Monkeys!), relaxing in the hot springs and riding horses to a waterfall to swim. Then we took a boat to Monteverde where we went zip lining and toured the cloud forest canopy looking for birds (we saw a Quetzal) and other wild life. Even with the passport situation hanging over our heads, we had a wonderful time!
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| Zip lining in Monteverde! |
Tuesday morning we got a taxi at 4am to make the drive back to San Jose. We got there right at opening and with the copies of her original documents and some teasing from the guy at the desk, we were able to get a new passport in about an hour. It was expensive ($100 or so) and definitely caused a lot of stress and lost sleep, but it was surprisingly easier than expected. We were even able to make our flight with time to spare. With a way for us to both leave the country, the rest of the trip was far more relaxing.
The plane landed on a dirt strip in the middle of the rain forest, with four sticks and some corrugated tin thrown together into a makeshift airport. A car picked us up and drove us down to the beach where we climbed into a boat that took us to the tent camp. It was heaven on earth. We relaxed on the beach, went for a trek through the woods, spent a day SCUBA diving, and even got to see a sloth and the Scarlet Macaws! If you ever get a chance to go to Costa Rica, I highly recommend the Corcovado Adventures Tent Camp. It made the stress from the earlier part of the trip seem like it never even happened.
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| Me! SCUBA diving! |
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| A Scarlet Macaw |
Overall, it was a fabulous trip, something we both said many times on the flight home, despite having the passport stolen. It's one of those things that, aside from having your self stolen (kidnapped), is kind of the worst case scenario while traveling abroad. It was incredibly stressful at the time, but looking back on it, it's really not the vacation ending disaster it seems to be, if you have taken a few easy, precautionary steps. We always make sure to leave copies of all our important documents at home, but now we also exchange copies of them with each other to make it even easier. And always, ALWAYS keep your most important stuff in your sight at all times. You just never know what could happen.
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