January 17-18: San José, Costa Rica
Trip Start
Jan 13, 2009
1
3
26
Trip End
Apr 09, 2009
San José,
Costa Rica
Saturday, January 17, 2009
He had called the hostel to assure that they had vacancies but once we got there it was suspiciously full. ¨Here we go,¨ I thought. Now he´s going to offer to take us to another hostel...for a fee. But, to our surprise, he turned out to be a decently nice guy. He said he would take us to another place free of charge, which he honored. We ended up at a place owned by a woman named Mary Helen Philips. She is getting on in years and loves to talk. When we came in, it at first appeared that we´d be staying in a crazy cat lady´s house, but then she took us to her rentals which were very nice. Two queen beds in a lovely room with a tv and bathroom for $45 for all four of us. In Costa Rica that´s not bad (but still over our budget...hence our mad dash for Nicaragua). The place was like our own apartment, with a living room and a kitchen complete with refrigerator and microwave (luxury!).
We slept like babies so it was hard for Joseph and I to drag ourselves out of bed the next morning. We had to go to the bus station early to try to get out of lovely, but money-sucking, Costa Rica. One negative I´m finding to being the only one who speaks Spanish is that I have to go everywhere to do the translating!! Ticabus was very expensive ($21/each) to go to Rivas (the Nicaraguan town 30 min from the border) and all buses for that day were full already. We´d heard of another company called Transportes Deldú that was cheaper so we decided we´d stay one more night with Mary Helen and go with them at 5am the next morning.
San José was very nice. Being at a higher elevation, the weather was more like Quito in that it felt like Spring and you could even need a long-sleeved shirt at times. Andrea had been having trouble with her lips swelling and being irritated so we took her to the hospital and the visit and medication were FREE!!! Unbelievable. Not to mention the doctor saw here within 10 minutes and determined she had had an allergic reaction. Must have been right because she took the pills and now she is better.
We went to a very nice and huge park run by the city that offers all kinds of free activities for families...horseback riding, zipline, sports, etc. We had an overpriced lunch (about 3.50 each) with delicious guayaba juice. We discovered we could get wireless in a little food court near out hostel, so were able to write some emails. All in all it was a good (though expensive) day.
