We made it to Costa Rica and boy is it hot here too! We somehow always end up traveling with our big backpacks at the hottest part of the day and arriving in San Jose was no different. (What is it they say? Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun?). After a stressful time being questioned by an immigration officer who must have been part of the Spanish inquisition in a past life, and collecting our baggage, where I thought mine hadn’t made it, we finally got out of the airport hours later than expected. We headed to a bus stop, after ten minutes of waiting in the sun, the bus came. However, the driver informed us we were wrong in our assumption the currency in Costa Rica is dollars (all trips and hotels have prices in USD to make it easier for the many many US tourists they get). So we trudged back up the hill to the airport, got cash out in Costa Rican Colón and tried again, this time with more success.
Once the bus dropped us off at the center of town, we decided to ignore the hostels advice of getting a taxi and to walk the 30 minutes to the hostel. It was only once we reached a six lane motorway, that we realised why the recommendation may have been a taxi. After a time consuming detour along the motorway until we found a footbridge, we made it to the other side and onwards to the hostel.
We dumped our bags and headed straight out the door again, back into the centre of town, this time in a taxi! We wanted to check out the gold museum before it closed for the day. The museum was three floors and filled with gold from pre-spanish times, along with pottery and some other sections on the beginnings of money in central America. It was an interesting museum and it was cool to see how the metal was used and shaped into various things and also to see the first coins and notes minted in Costa Rica. We also really enjoyed the short documentary about indigenous tribes in Costa Rica and how after generations of integration they are now trying to go back to their roots and re-learn lost languages and skills.
After the gold museum we grabbed some dinner at a BBQ place and it was delicious, one of the benefits of being in a much more touristy country is good international (in this case American) food. Then we waddled back to the hostel.
The hostel had a pool table so we continued our tradition of playing a very long very unskilled game of pool and then moved on to Uno. We made friends with a canadian couple and a few others and had a few rounds of both pool and uno with them before it got late and the hostel staff asked us to go to bed.
The next morning we decided to check out the Saturday morning market in town. It was super cute along a shaded avenue of trees. It was more of a farmer’s market than a local one, but we still enjoyed it. We had some toasted panini’s for breakfast, followed by some breakfast cake, because it’s never too early for cake and it just looked so good! Grace also brought herself some nice earrings. After a nose around all of the stools we decided to head into town to try and find a new battery for my watch. It’s been broken a few weeks now and none of the small local watch shops seem to be able to/want to replace the battery even though it would be a 2 minute job. So finally in a big city we found a Swatch watch shop in a mall and hoped they would be able to replace it. Unfortunately they wouldn’t either. So we spent some time shopping to replace things we’d lost or had broken in the wash or needed but hadn’t packed.
We returned back to the hostel and decided to go for drinks with the Canadian couple. We both had early buses to catch, so decided we would go for a quick drink and come home for an early night. Soon however word had spread around the hostel and we ended up with a whole group of us going to a rooftop bar. We arrived at the bar around 6pm and it was more of a open air nightclub than a bar and was pretty busy, especially for how early it was, the only place free to stand was the dance floor that overlooked the city. It was a really pretty view and after a few drinks we all ended up having a dance to music which none of us knew, but the locals were very into. After a few hours of drinks and dancing we decided to call it a night as we figured it must be getting on for past midnight, it was in fact 9:30pm… But on the plus side we’d had a whole night out and gotten to bed early. The sort of nights out I could get behind!
We said our goodbyes in the morning and got on a bus to Uvita, which I’ll tell you all about soon. Love Alice x