Do you know the way to San Jose?

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San Jose was the next stop on the agenda, and the only real reason for coming here was that it seems in order to go anywhere in Costa Rica, you have to go via San Jose.

So, we had left behind out trusty pooch at Granada and had taken the 7 or so hour Tica bus journey into the capital of Costa Rica. On route, there was yet another border crossing of course, and it all went fairly smoothly to be honest. Although there was a moment that did baffle us when they made the 40 odd people aboard our bus lug our bags and belongings off, stand in line for 30 mins or so, just to be told to get them back on again without even attempting to look in a single one!?? I suppose this made it look like they were being pro- active, however the bus could well have been carting 4 immigrants and 20 kilos of illegal substances for all they knew! But hey, we were through not long after this, and back on track for San Jose.

When we finally pulled into San Jose, we were organized in the sense that we had already booked a hotel for the night. This organisation was however short lived, as we still hadn’t made our minds up where we actually wanted to go next in Costa Rica.

The beach was always our intended destination after a night in San Jose; however which one to choose was becoming difficult. The weather in Costa Rica in October is generally dire (constant rain everywhere) and the ups of downs of each beach town just got massively overwhelming and we really couldn’t decide where to go. Eventually after much debate, we chose Montezuma on the Nicoya Peninsula. Job done. This was of course until the friendly receptionist at the Tica bus station randomly asked where we were off to. We told him that we had decided to hit Montezuma, and unfortunately, that’s where his face changed from a friendly smile to a face that looked like we had just told him we were going to sleep on the streets for the next week! When we asked why this was clearly the wrong answer, he basically said that there was no real issue with the area, although it would take another 7 hours from San Jose to reach, plus, everyone seemed to call it Monte’fuma’ as everyone there smokes a shed load of pot, and although bliss for some, this wasn’t really our scene. We therefore asked him for an alternative beach as he had scuppered our plans, and he said that Quepos would be a good place to go in order to get to Manuel Antonio national park. This was fairly welcoming news, as this was the initial place we had settled on before we started constantly changing our minds! So, we hopped in a cab to our hotel, and got checked in.

As it was raining (obviously), we asked the receptionist at the Hotel if there was a place to eat that was local. He directed us to a little place round the corner from the hotel, so we got the rain macs on, and headed there. The place was pretty much empty, all but for a couple of girls at the bar. After completely by-passing them the first time, Donna pointed out that they were the same girls we had shared a tour with way back in Guatemala! What are the odds!?

It turned out that after a few beers and a good old chin wag with the girls (and a guy from NZ that was on the same bus as us too…small city!) they had left Guatemala around 2 weeks previously, and headed for Costa Rica where they had been ever since. When asking them how they enjoyed Costa Rica, the response wasn’t ideal. It seemed that they had been North, South, East and West of the country, and had nothing but constant, unrelenting rain since being there! They also suggested it was especially bad in Quepos…..where we were headed! We could have again changed our mind about where to go, however it seemed that our time in Costa Rica was destined to be a rainy nightmare, so we sunk the rest of our beer, said our goodbyes to our fellow travellers, and decided to leave the weather in the hands of fate.

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