Sadly, my friend Rick Morse couldn’t make it to San Jose for a visit as he got called into work early. Our plan was to bring him to his boat, the Crystal Symphony, after a couple days of touring Costa Rica. So instead, he brought his boat to us!

Isaac and our massage therapist, Jahsun Handy, piled in the car yesterday and drove down to the port town of Caldera to where the cruise ship was docked. We had provided our names to Rick a week in advance so as to have all arrangements made for our easy access to the boat when we arrived. But sometimes I forget that I’m in a 3rd world country where everything has to be difficult.

The drive, which is normally about an hour and one-half, took us almost three hours because the one-lane “highway” was backed up with traffic. Then when we arrived, we found that our names were not on the list at the port entrance. It turns out there are two lists. One for the port, and another for the boat. Oops!

Port security was made up of three older, worn out Tico (Costa Rican) men who took their job very seriously. There was no way they were going to buy our story that we knew someone on the boat and that our name was on the “other” list. Thankfully I had taken the telephone number for the port agent in San Jose.

Forty-five minutes later we had found another boat security agent who agreed to be our escort, brought us to a woman who filled out our paperwork and tracked down the three people who needed to sign the paperwork. We were issued passes and escorted by foot the quarter mile to the boat.

The difference between how we were treated by the people on the boat and the people at the port was like night and day. That blaring contrast probably stands out to me more than anything else from the whole day.

The boat itself was amazing. I myself have only been on one cruise before, a Norwegian Cruise ship. Neither Isaac nor Jahsun have cruised before. So it was lots of fun getting the VIP tour of the boat. The employees, and especially Rick, went out of their way to make us feel like royalty.

We lunched and really made an afternoon of our time. It was nice to see how such a “city on water” really operates. Crystal Cruise Line has an employee-passenger ratio of 2-1, so they take their customer service very seriously. If I were to take another cruise, you can bet I would consider going with them.

And spending time catching up with Rick, of course, was the best part of the trip. I had not seen him for many years. He’s been living in London for the last 7 years. He looks great and seems to be doing fantastically. Seeing him yesterday makes me realize just how much I miss him. I hope I get to see him again soon.

The craziest part of the trip though – that none of us expected – was that we had just as much trouble leaving the port as we did getting in! Our instructions were to give our passes back to our escort in a building directly across from the boat, which we did.

Then we walked the half mile back to the port exit. But when we arrived, the crabby and mean old security agents refused to let us leave without returning our passes. They insisted we return to our escort and collect our passes. Reluctantly, we complied. However when we returned to the building, it was locked and our escort was gone!

When we tracked him down, he no longer had our passes – of course! Unsure of what to do, he went off in the dark to track them down. At this point I started to get pretty upset. It had been a long day of dealing with Costa Rican bureaucracy. But about 10 minutes later he returned with our passes and we made our way back along the half mile to the exit, “thanked” the guards and crawled back into the car.

Oh yeah. Did I mention that the car’s headlights weren’t working properly? Yup. So I had to drive 3 hours back to San Jose along the winding mountain roads in near darkness. I was exhausted by the time we finally made it home. But we made it…and it was all worthwhile!