4:30am alarm clock. Did I mention I am not a morning person? However, the morning of March 5th, I didn’t complain too much.
I even managed to zip my backpack closed. Yes, I’d procrastinated packing until the last possible minute, and yes, I fell into the trap of packing too much. I was improving on that score with every trip, but there was still work to be done. My ultimate goal is to travel for months out of a carry-on sized bag. I’m not quite there yet.
Quick-step into Cathy’s parents’ car in my running shoes and sweatshirt, since I didn’t want to have to carry a winter coat with me. Arrival at the airport by 5am. Miraculously, our flights were on time, and we were at the gate on time to board.
The first flight departed for Miami at 6:15am and it even arrived a bit early. The second flight departed for Costa Rica on time too. I craned my neck to look over Cathy and out the window to get my first glimpse of Costa Rica. My impression was that it was… browner than I’d thought.
The flight arrived about 15 minutes early in San Jose. American Airlines is so much more pleasant than Air Canada, I kept thinking. But… nothing is quite that simple, as we were quickly introduced to Tico-time – because there was another plane at our arrival gate. Apparently, the San Jose airport has not been able to grow fast enough to accommodate the burgeoning tourism industry, and overcrowding was frequent. We waited on the tarmac for a half hour, getting our first view of Costa Rica: a restaurant across the runway with a hand-painted welcome sign.
After a fun taxi around the runway, the other plane departed and we pulled into the gate and stepped off the plane… straight into a lineup that spanned the entire length of the airport. “This can’t be the line,” I remember saying. But alas, it was. Even the Ticos in line were marvelling at how crowded it was.
The lineup for customs and immigration took over an hour and a half. In that time, we window-shopped for souvenirs, discovering a yummy-sounding line of flavoured liqueurs, and of course, coffee-coffee-coffee. We also noted, much to our dismay, that every American fast-food chain was represented in the San José airport. On the bright side, we got what I suppose we can refer to as the Costa Rican advertising experience. Three-dimensional, creative advertisements lined the hallway near the gates, for everything from coffee to rum or liquor to a promotion for a zipline canopy tour featuring a 3D full-sized human dummy harnessed to a wire.
“That looks like so much fun!” I exclaimed to Cathy. She and her fear of heights disagreed, but I was mentally adding a canopy tour to my “to-do” list of activities.
After what seemed like forever, we cleared customs and made our way to the exit, where we found a taxi stand that took our money and gave us a coupon for a cab to our hotel in San José. Unfortunately, it was somewhat unclear what one was actually supposed to do with this coupon. Outside the airport, someone official-looking took the coupon and spoke rapid-fire Spanish to us. Confused, we made our way to the nearest taxi, only to be waved off by the driver. In the meantime, another taxi pulled up and asked us for our ticket, but the person to whom we had given the ticket had momentarily disappeared. We did eventually get things sorted out and settled back into our cab ride into the bustling metropolis of San José.
Billboards and chain stores dotted the roads, but somehow they looked different surrounded by trees and plants, the likes of which we would never see at home in Montreal. It was wonderful seeing palm trees, knowing that at home it was cold and snowing and that we were in the tropics.
“You know, the first time I saw palm trees as a kid, I was convinced they were fake,” Cathy commented. I assured her that these palm trees were as real as it gets… and continued to point out the authenticity of palm trees for the entire two-week trip. I think Cathy quickly regretted telling me that story.
We arrived at our hotel – Hotel La Amistad, in the Barrio Amon – by mid-afternoon. The first impression I had of the hotel was that it, along with all the other buildings in the area, was surrounded by a gate of metal bars. Since their decorative value was fairly low, I assumed the reason was security. I’d heard that Costa Rica was relatively safe, and was somewhat dismayed to see that clearly, San José had something of a problem with crime. At any rate, we unloaded our bags and went to check in.
The hotel itself was nicer than I’d expected on a budget tour. The owner was very nice. He changed traveller’s cheques for us into colones. Then, when I discovered that Canada Direct (or any 0-800-number) doesn’t work from public phones in Costa Rica, he kindly let me use the hotel’s phone to access my calling card and phone home. The phone system is a major headache, and I never quite figured out how to efficiently call home. But anyway.
We saw a note posted by our tour that we would be meeting for dinner later on, so in the meantime we changed into shorts and decided to go explore San Jose. The hotel owner warned us to lock valuables in the safe and take only essentials with us, so we locked up our passports and extra money and set off.
Weaving through the streets around the hotel was a bit tricky, but eventually we found an outdoor plaza. It was bustling with a market, music, street performers, outdoor vendors and lots of people.
Even the city parks had exotic-looking trees with interesting birds that a naturalist could probably name but that I just will refer to as a “cool bird” (the first of many).
We browsed in some souvenir shops but decided to leave the shopping until the end of the trip, so we wouldn’t have to carry around anything bulky with us for two weeks.
Another park had a live concert going on. After stopping to watch for a few minutes, we realized that it was a fundraiser for some sort of political action group. My Spanish is extremely rudimentary, but even I caught the unflattering references to the USA and to George Bush. We waited for more music but things were rapidly turning into a political rally, and so we decided to move on.
One of the things we realized about San José was that the drivers are crazy. We’d seen evidence of this in our taxi ride from the airport, and saw even more when we attempted to cross a street. Red lights seemed to be taken by most drivers as mere suggestions; stop signs were ignored altogether. I never saw evidence of a speed limit. It was as though Ticos spent so much time of every day conducting all other aspects of life slowly, and then tried to make up for all lost time by driving like maniacs. But then, being from Montreal, it didn’t seem all that unusual to us.
The weather was breezy and the clouds were ominously threatening rain. We opted to go back. Returning to the hotel without getting lost was an accomplishment. Back at La Amistad, we met Julie, our fearless GAP leader, and some of the members of our tour group. These were the people we would be spending the next two weeks traveling with, but remembering names was completely beyond me at that point, let alone matching them to faces. Our group had a wide age range, and we had members from Canada, the USA, Denmark, Germany… even Malta. A diverse and energetic group.
Julie suggested a nearby restaurant for dinner and everyone agreed easily. So we made our way down the street to the Café Mundo, where we had an excellent dinner. I mistakenly assumed that portions would be reasonable in San José, and ordered two appetizers in lieu of an entrée. Big mistake. I had about enough food for four people. Oh well, at least there were plenty of people on my tour willing to take some of the extra tempura off my hands.
After dinner and an exhausting travel day, we packed up and went to sleep.
Next: Caribbean Coast: Puerto Viejo de Talamanca.