Day 69: Rental Car #4 and some local travels

That's it. The Jimny Cricket.

Today we picked up rental car number four. Seeing as the agent only had two cars in the driveway and only one of them was four wheel drive, our decision was made for us. We are driving around in style with the Suzuki Jimny – an “SUV” the size of a Smart Car. Matt described it as driving around in a roller skate. It does the job though and gets us from point A to point B which will be the Caribbean coast come tomorrow.


Before heading there we made one more trip to Parrita so Matt could see our first place. Fortunately, it’s been dry for the most part and the area looked better than last time when it was submerged in several feet of water. We made it to our old digs and Matt was equally amazed at the vast ocean that was once our front yard. It was even prettier than I remember (probably because when I lived there I was blinded by all the unattractive things like cockroaches and crabs). We also caught up with Clint who's on his second week of drying out his mattress.


From there we brought Matt to the tourist area of Jaco which we’d dubbed the poor man’s Miami. It’s just not a pleasant location and I don’t recommend a visit there if you are headed to Costa Rica. I assume it’s high on the tourist lists due to the number of restaurants, bars, and shops. But there’s equally as much sleaziness on each street corner as well and you can barely walk a few feet without a being asked what type of drug would enhance your visit.


The Jimny Cricket wanted us to stay in Jaco a little longer than necessary when it decided to not start. Rental cars here come with a company installed security feature - a magical fob. On our previous rental cars, you had to rub the fob on the key ignition before it would start. This one requires you to rub it somewhere along the steering column. There isn’t a specific spot, which means you just have to keeping rubbing it between the ignition and bottom of the steering column until the lights turn on. It took a good fifteen minutes with each one of us trying our luck before it worked. Maybe it knew we were in Jaco and needed some extra security.


It appears as though our rental cars get increasingly worse as we get them. Our first was awesome. Second, perfectly fine. Third had a leaky door and squealing tire. Now this one. It's the most uncomfortable, the least smooth and apparently the most stubborn. This doesn't sound like a good combination.