Nicaragua to Costa Rica

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Thursday 26th Jan - Granada to San Jose, Costa Rica

We were forced to extend our stay in Granada as surprise, surprise, all of the buses out of town had been fully booked until today. Our previous transporters Ticabus were still full so we had to go with the Nicaraguan national carrier TransNico who were far more latin and we represented the only gringos on the trip. The standard was again very good and comparable with Ticabus as was the nice slow border crossing into Costa Rica. At first there seemed little difference between the countries but as we neared the capital San Jose you realised the contrast or gulf is huge. The roads were excellent and safe which featured fantastic bridges and flyovers over valleys and rivers which you don't often see in Nicaragua. The addition of many toll booths is a little annoying but acceptable given the improved quality. As we arrived in the outskirts of San Jose, the proliferation of big American and international outlets and shopping malls represented a very different appearance to the rest of central america we'd visited. Walking through the city centre brought back memories of New York given how busy it was albeit obviously no way near as wealthy. Back to arguing with Hotel Managers shortly after our arrival at our new hotel as this time our bathroom had no hot water as promised. This time was a slightly more relaxed discussion and resulted in a straightforward $12 discount. It felt a bit of a sell out but I encouraged us to take advantage of one of the many McDonalds outlets in town for the 1st time since arriving in Latin America and the last one of which was Alabama.

Friday 27th Jan - San Jose

We were advised and it was proved to be right that there was little else to do in San Jose other than shopping. Before we managed to get to that, possibly fortunate for me, we wasted 2 hours trying to retrieve a debit card from the cash machine of the particularly unhelpful Banco National de Costa Rica. Keeping with the theme of fast food and me clearly suffering from withdrawl symptoms we this time made an outing to Wendys!

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