Blogs from San José, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 77

As we mentioned, it was always going to be a short visit to Costa Rica, little more than a transit stop, but we had a whole day in San Jose before leaving on the 10pm bus to Panama. Our first task was to buy our bus tickets but when we got to the office they told us there were no seats free until Friday (i.e. the day after tomorrow). This was not an option since we HAVE to be in Panama City before then if we are going to get on a trip through the canal. Our problem was shortly resolved when we managed to get seats with a different firm, but on their 1 pm bus. This barely gave us enough time to track down some postcards and, most importantly, this week’s ‘The Economist’. But ... read more

Last week Mike and I decided it would be a good idea to check out the Serpentarium so that we would be better equipped to identify different types of snakes here in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has 135 species of snakes with 17 being venomous. The two main venomous families are coral snakes and pit vipers. Neither of which I care to run into. I had asked Mike before we left if he knew the way. He said he was pretty sure as he had gotten the address and we had a map. Off we went… Excusion #1….. A normal drive into San Jose from Barva takes approximately 20 minutes. One thing to note about Costa Rica is that having a map does not mean that you’ll be able to navigate this city. Some streets listed ... read more

Although we would have loved to stay on longer at the lovely Laguna de Apoyo, we had to get back to San Jose for our flight on saturday. In retrospect, it would have been much better to have an open-jaw ticket, flying into San Jose and leaving from Managua or something like that. We headed back to Granada, where we caught the Ticabus to San Jose. Ticabus is the top end of the buses in Central America - comfy seats, air-con, crappy Chuck Norris movies playing, etc. Since it was our last big bus ride we thought we would try travelling in style. Depsite being the most comfortable way to travel, it was only $12.50 for the 9 hour trip. They even collect up the passports and take care of getting them stamped on the way ... read more

Hey guys, I´m back at Hostel Toruma in San Jose and I have access to free internet so I thought I´d take advantage. I´m staying here over night and then heading to Cartago in the morning. Volunteer Abroad just bought a house for the volunteers to stay in, so we´re going to go there tonight for a barbeque. Meaghan is here at the hostel with me before she leaves for Matapalo tomorrow, so it´s nice to catch up on what each of us has been doing. Last Sunday I went on a Catamaran tour, which was awesome...at least when I wasn´t feeling queasy. It was this huge boat that holds around 65 people, but there was only about 15 people when I went. We headed out towards the beaches of Manuel Antonio National Park while listening ... read more

Our lawyer is located in San Jose only a few blocks away from the Costa Rican National Museum of Art. Since Mike and I don’t have a truck yet and aren’t on any real schedule, we figured we’d make the most of our time in San Jose and check out some of the museums in the area. We still plan on visiting the Serpenterium (figured it was good to know which guys to look out for) and the Gold Museum, but for this trip, we decided to check out the art museum. For $5, you can see 2 floors of Costa Rican artwork. It’s not a huge museum. Actually, we learned that the museum was in fact, the country’s previous international airport. The tower you see in the picture was the control tower and the grounds ... read more