Recovery in San Jose

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Day 197: The second leg of the journey and my eventual arrival in San Jose

The saying "Getting there is half the fun" became obsolete with the advent of commercial airlines.
Henry J. Tillman

The plane landed in Miami at about half-five this morning, and although tired, I was soon actively engaged in the faff required to pass through an American airport (despite just being in transit). After filling out my green card to confirm that I was not wanted for acts of genocide in connection with events in Nazi Germany, involved in drug trafficking, or trying to snatch a child (who declares any of that stuff?!), I queued up to be finger printed and photographed, before being allowed to pass on to the next level, where a big queue for security awaited. Although I did have to remove the majority of my clothes before being allowed past, they let me through without too much ado (not that I had anything to hide, except for the tube of lip gloss that I've since discovered in my rucksack), and then I had a few hours to kill before my flight left.

Worried about falling asleep, I went on a general wander about the airport, looking for mosquito repellant and sunscreen ready for my travels around more tropical climes. Although I did find a small cheap tube of factor thirty, there wasn't anything resembling a chemist at the airport and so I had to skip on the malaria/dengue protection again. To keep myself semi-occupied (and semi-conscious) whilst waiting for my flight, I stocked up on coke, sweets and magazines, and struggled to stop myself falling asleep for a few hours before they called my flight. Despite having been at the gate for a couple of hours, I was slightly irritated when I tried to board, to find that LAN in Santiago had given me the wrong boarding card. Fortunately, the problem was easily fixed, and I soon got another one printed, but it was just one more thing to add to the catalogue of errors that had occurred over the last twenty-four hours.

Finally, on the rather undersubscribed American Airlines flight to Costa Rica, it was a bumpy take off and I was finally off, heading towards San Jose. The plane was nowhere near as nice as the last one had been. Being quite old and grubby both inside and outside, I kept trying not to think about something engineery that Nick had told me a while back about the metal in plane wings eventually failing over time (I don't really understand it, but took it to mean at that moment in time, that both wings were imminently going to drop off).

Two-and-a-half sleepless hours later and we touched down in San Jose. I was just making my way to immigration when I happened upon a tourist shop that had a 'pharmacy' at the back of it. Having located some mozzie repellant containing DEET (toxic but effective), I tried to get some antimalarials. Despite a number of other pills that they were dishing out like smarties (I resisted stocking up on zopiclone), they didn't have any of the required doxycycline. I was told however that I should be able to buy it elsewhere over the counter in Costa Rica, which is reassuring given my limited supply, and desire not to catch malaria.

I got a taxi into town twenty kilometres from the airport, where my chosen hostel thankfully had a spare bed for the night. First impressions of San Jose when passing through were a bit mixed. It was certainly a lot more lively than other latinamerican cities are on a Sunday, with lots of people milling about all over the place, but despite the country's booming tourist industry, it doesn't seem like the rest of the country's infrastructure is equally matched. We certainly seemed to be driving through some run-down parts of town, and I'm glad I didn't get the bus and try and walk with all my things.

Not ready for the big world outside, I spent the afternoon and evening at my barbed-wire lined, armed-security guarded hostel, having dinner in the onsite cafe, watching an impressively bad Jim Carrey film, and catching up on sleep.

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