Honeymoon

We arrived in San Jose at 11pm after a very long and annoying flight that had to be redirected, land, and fly back. Since the rental car office had closed, we had to find a cab to our hotel, Gran Hotel Costa Rica. It was a great old hotel. Not the most modern of places, but it was in a great location and very historic. The next morning, before checking out we walked around the neighborhood and checked out the "tourist sites". San Jose was just a typical city, and not that exciting. Although, i really wanted to go to the central market, we decided to save that for our final day in Costa Rica. After checking out and taking a 20 minute cab ride(for $4-how amazing), we got to the rental car company. They gave us a detailed map with all street names on it, and drew in directions to get out of the city and on the highway. The only problem we discovered with this was that the streets are not marked! We started out down the street looking for Paseo Colon. At every intersection, i(as the navigator) searched for the street names, but I couldn't find any. I cant believe that in everything I read about Costa Rica, no one mentioned that there are no street signs. Luckily, we found a man that was able to direct us back to some major monuments that were marked on the map. From there, I counted the blocks so we would know where to turn. After getting out of San Jose, there weren't any problems at all. I speak enough spanish that we were able to get through the small towns. It is very different driving through a country like this after only being in the US and Europe. The poverty was very apparent, and life was quite different. Most people lived in metal shacks, and there weren't really small towns, just a string of houses and businesses all along the highway. We very easily found our way 5 hours southeast to our little house outside of Manzanillo

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