When in Quepos...

... do like the locals do.

Okay, maybe not all the locals take regional flights, and not sure how many can afford or would take such a trip. But on our last morning in Costa Rica, we had two choices to go from the coast to the capital: take a shuttle or an airplane. The shuttle would take three and a half hours, while a flight would last about 25 minutes.

I opted for the flight and convinced Mrs. LB on it about a week before our trip. I found pictures of the airplane we would fly in afterward, and I think it helped my cause to have saved those pictures for after.

This is the plane we ended up boarding and flying from Quepos to San Jose.

It's kinda small. It seats 12. It has a propeller. It makes a lot of noise. My wife called it a cropduster. As it was pulling up to the, uh, airport, I joked with my wife that it had a load of pesticides underneath and that we would fly over a field of crops en route to San Jose.

Mrs. LB didn't laugh.

Actually, she was terrified about the whole ordeal. Here's the Quepos Airport.

It didn't exactly do much to calm her fears. I was never worried though. I'd done some research on their safety record and was pretty calm about it. Still, Mrs. LB had me ask several locals about the flight and if it was safe and the cabbies and waiters I asked all assured her that it was quite safe to fly from Quepos to San Jose.

Oh, check out the rest of the airport.

Once on the plane, the propeller whirred to life. Our small plane, which did not feature a pressurized cabin since we wouldn't be high enough to require one, skirted down the runway and took off. We got a good view of the coast.

We were barely in the air 20 minutes when the pilot announced that were descending upon San Jose's main airport, Juan Santamaria. We landed without any problems, and even Mrs. LB admitted that it was the smoothest landing she'd experienced on an airplane, in recent memory anyway.

Here's the plane that took us to the capital, and it got there in one piece and in right around 23 minutes.

Hurray for regional airlines!