Costa Rican Adventure – Day 1 – Detroit

 Entomology, Life as a Grad Student, Travel  No Responses »
Aug 022010
 
All my work has been finished, paper submitted, and websites complete! Time to head down south for some fun in the jungle and the largest gathering of Dipterists this grad student has yet to see! I figured I’d try and make a travelogue of short entries for this whole experience day-by-day (including the days when I have no internet, so expect some days with multiple posts) and include some of the highs, lows and miscellaneous stories each day.

Flying out of Detroit this time to save some money ($400CDN for roundtrip to San Jose? Yes please!) means a longer car ride and an extra night away from home. Bummer.

We got the friendliest US Customs agents I think I’ve ever dealt with, with all 3 being really friendly and helpful, and no sign of a power trip! The guy doing our paperwork was especially great, asking a bunch of Diptera questions and breezing through the paperwork with no trouble!

Of course I realized 45 minutes down the road that I wore my good shoes and not my field shoes, and that I left half our supply of nail polish remover (it’s our method of choice for killing insects) sitting on the kitchen table, but if that’s the least of the mistakes then things will be just fine!

Free wifi in hotels = awesome.

Not having to get up at 0-dark-thirty to catch a flight also = awesome.

That pretty well sums up day 1 (who knew Detroit was this much fun…), but we go international tomorrow, and a day spent in airports should make for some more interesting stories. See you from Costa Rica!

MTC…