Richard Marx: Right Here Waiting (By now I had been given a frontal lobotomy and was rather enjoying the selection of adult contemporary tracks)
So San Jose, Costa Rica here I come....and yes another journey through border and migration posts that would see me arrive in San Jose at 10pm that night...another day of ferry, taxi, 8 hour bus and finally another taxi to take me to my bed in San Jose. The ride across the border from Nicaragua to Costa Rica was like leaving one world and enetering another. You left behind roads strewn with litter replaced with rubbish bins. Five, six and seven children families were replaced with 2.2 children. Potholed roads where buses travelled at slow speeds were replaced with modern highways, fast food outlets and shopping malls. And the price of everything headed upwards, from accommodation to food to travel. Welcome my friends to Costa Rica a country with more protected land and national parks than most others on the planet and where ecotourism is a way of life, or a great exercise in propoganda by the government.
I was in Costa Rica purely to attend to business, that of getting my clothes washed and getting my haircut. Due to the cost I decided to save my pennies for further down into South America so I cannot say one way or another what CR is like, besides the fact that the capital San Jose is as the LP says 'a necessary evil'. In fact I can list my time in San Jose as follows:
Hot showers, first time in weeks that the water has been boiling hot, therefore I also managed a shave that did not risk removing a layer of skin in order to remove the hair.
Clothes washed, coincidentally for the first time in over three weeks, some returning to their former glory with others destined for the scrapheap, as they were too far gone.
Hair cut by a Costa Rican flamer (not that there's anything wrong with that) called Estaban, who did a great job with the cut, spent an uncomfortably long time on the head massage as his mates all giggled in a high pitched kinda way (easy there tiger) and who told me in broken english that on weekends he loves to dress up as Beyonce. And given that Beyonce graced his business card I do not doubt him at all. Although Beyonce with man-boobs would be a sight to behold!
Subway for the first time since Canada (yep all tastes the same) and walking down a pedestrian mall after spending the past 3 months dodging street vendors, chasms in the sidewalk and local traffic was a unique experience.
Leaving my sunglasses in a cafe and returning 3 hours later to find the owner had kept them waiting for me to return..sweet!
Reuniting myself with large kick ass supermarkets and taking a trip down memory lane to eat for dinner tinned herrings in tomato sauce, beetroot salad and heavy brown bread, circa Munich and Heidelberg, Germany 1996.
Having the distinct displeasure of meeting a drunk London girl whose photo would grace the dictionary under the word 'obnoxious'. Drunk or not she would lay claim to this title and in case she gets this email I will say it again nice and slowly for your, 'I do not give a shit that you think Marmite is so much better than Vegemite and that all the prisoners were shipped from UK to establish Australia.' What I am immensely happy about is that half a world separates me from you and after I get this out my system right now I will never be seeing you around again.' Amen to that!
So after a quick two day pit-stop in San Jose it was off to the bus-station for my 10 hour journey to Bocas Del Toro in Panama....and a long-awaited return to the clear blue turquoise water and white sand of the Carribean.
San Jose Hotels
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