The Big Guanacaste Tree

After a great breakfast of fresh fruit at the Aloft Hotel, we strolled down to an ATM and loaded up on Colones - the Costa Rican money. At about 500 colones per USD, it was fun to get thousands of colones from the ATM. To make matters slightly more interesting, a MIL in Spanish is a thousand, so a 10 Mil colones note could be mistaken for a 10 Million Something note by English speakers.

Then we set out in a cab to pick up our Avis rental for the week - a three row four wheel drive SUV. The cab driver was a chatty young man who also appeared to work as an analyst for HP. He explained how addresses in Costa Rica were in meters and compass directions from the nearest landmark. The hotel we stayed in on our way out from Costa Rica a week later was a very nice Marriott which had it's own coffee plantation. It's address was: 700 m east of the Firestone. But the hotel itself is a landmark, and the Avis car rental's address is: "Marriott Hotel in San Antonio de 500 mt east and 400 mt south, next to, Burger King processing plant, Heredia Province, Belén". Sometimes, the cabbie explained, directions may involve distances and directions from "the big guanacaste tree".