After yelling as much ‘Pura Vida!’ as our, now tender, throats would allow in La Fortuna, we hit the road south. Having to buy a bus ticket at an office was a novel way to start our journey and if anything, was a little fancy for our tastes. Let me give this cold hard unforgiving cash to the driver in exchange for entry onto the bus, no pre paid bus ticket nonsense. Nicaragua, we yearn for your hectic, off the cuff attitude when it comes to nationwide transportation.
I digress.
The bus journey to the capital, San José, was a long one (five hours) and right up there with the most picturesque journeys of my life. The first half of the journey was spent skirting large volcanoes on the flat fertile lowlands but then we slowly wound our way into the sky. Small villages clung to the verdant mountains with farmland filling the valleys that were swamped with cloud. It was incredible seeing everything through a constantly shifting misty lens. But with our relentless upward progress, we soon emerged from the clouds and were given the view of a lifetime. The mountains steeply dropped into the murky white sea whose tempestuous surface extended to the horizon. We stayed glued to the windows until the bus was swallowed by the rising concrete of San José’s outskirts.
San José
Once we had arrived it was getting dark and we walked along the main road to our hostel, Costa Rica Backpackers. We were initially impressed with it. It had a pool, a large kitchen, bar and restaurant. There was one thing missing from our Costa Rica experience so far though, and that was a beer. After the enjoyable experiences that we had had under the influence of Toña and Victoria in Nicaragua (see San Juan del Sur and Laguna de Apoyo), we were totally ready for something equally…effective… I mean…refreshing…
Imperial wasn’t quite what we were looking for. It was strangely European with its imperial eagle sticker and strong taste. That disappointed us but at least we could have a good night’s sleep and wake up fresh and ready to hit the town in the morning. Ha. No. Not quite. It turned out that the beds were a hellish orchestra of metallic screeching. Indiscernible movements from their occupants produced a flurry of spine chilling metallic creaks. Combine this with two arguing German women and you’ve got a recipe for sleep deprivation and an even less amicable James in the morning.
Once morning had finally come, my weary brain was in dire need of sustenance, this came, as on many occasions, in the form of bread. We went searching for bakeries and found one down a road that had the fragrant aroma combination of freshly made bread and human urine. Not a scent I would strongly recommend (I hope you’re taking notes Febreze). The man in the bakery was wholly incomprehensible, even to a couple of ex-students of Español (saying “Spanish” in Spanish is just the beginning of my skills, just wait until I say, “Let’s go to the library”). Despite the baker’s presumably bread-related ramblings, we did get what we came for and it was heavenly. On top of that he gave us a chocolate éclair sweet for free. Can’t argue with free stuff, a lovely man by all accounts.
Our cheesy bread was our fuel for the national museum which was to come. You walk into the big ol’ yellow building, pay your fees and you’re ready for some exhibits:
After the museum, we wandered the city for a while, not finding much to see, but enjoying the centre of San José anyway. On our amble around the centre we decided that dinner would be whatever culinary delights we could muster up at the hostel kitchen that evening. We spotted our trusty supermarket Palí and decided rice and beans would be a good idea. “You can’t do rice and beans wrong,” we thought. With such a brazen attitude there was only way this was going to go. The beans needed to soak/cook overnight and we only had around four hours. We put them on to cook and the two of us were just sat around in the kitchen chatting when, completely silently, an old man walked out of the torrential rain and into the room. Silently, he walked past us, over to the raised area at the far end of the kitchen and started doing press-ups and tricep dips before pacing around ominously. During his cat-like pacing of the area he took a keen interest in our beans and then, as silently as he had come, he slipped away mysteriously into the night, never to be seen again. Like some sort of spectre.
Time flew and, as if by magic, four hours had passed. The old man’s presence had sped up time itself. Or, equally possibly, we had been in some sort of terrified wonderment at the sinister figure who, for a phantom was overtly conscious of his physical health, and we hadn’t noticed four whole hours pass.
Let’s just say right now that Brendan was not a fan of dinner. The beans, to be fair, were tasteless while being abnormally dry, flaky and somehow also soft. I didn’t mind the beans too much and in hindsight it was definitely better than our dinner of plain rice in Bocas del Toro. After battling through a dinner that was actually a physical struggle to eat (due to the drying effect the beans had on our mouths), we reflected on our decisions. We had thought we were being smart and cheap, “Beans don’t need four hours to cook,” we thought. We believed our plan to be infallible. What we didn’t think of is that, we’d been thinking thoughts our whole life and look where that got us. A mouth full of plain rice and partially cooked beans. Disappointment in a single sentence.
Puerto Viejo
Puerto Viejo is a tiny town next to the Panamanian border and was our next stop but only for one night. It was our first experience of the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and we could quickly see the influences. We had our sights set on a certain Lionfish Hostel for our arrival. But being lazy and not having had to book other hostels thanks to blind luck, we thought we would be fine just rocking up. Turns out it was full and it also turns out the reason for this is that it’s the only cheap place in town, offering hammocks and army style beds to sleep in for some of the cheapest prices I’d seen. After wandering around town and finding nothing cheaper than $15, we decided to stay in the one we were standing outside of (Kalunai hostel), purely because it looked decent and I was knackered. It was a cool set up, with an outside kitchen area under a metal roof and hammocks around the outside. More importantly, the room was air conditioned and the shower was heavenly. Fifteen dollars was a small price to pay for a little luxury and very welcoming owners.
Food was the next priority and that was an easy decision. Outback Jacks was somewhere we’d spotted when we got off the bus and it looked interesting and the food looked good. Now, some people don’t like throwing stuff away (whether its newspapers, wooden planks or every piece of loo roll you’ve ever used… I would guess…) but not many people gather a collection of items that have no absolutely no relation to each other and then think, ‘You know what? This would make a brilliant restaurant if we hung all of this stuff everywhere’. This crazy Australian man did exactly that. It had some hilarious quirks. Actually, everything about the place was a quirk. The food was lovely but we ate a small meal each (not something I was madly keen about doing) because of the expense of the hostel. We listened to the brilliant drum band playing on the beach a few metres away and fended off the invisible sand flies with futile thrashing swipes towards our legs. After our meal and heading back to the hostel, I was left wondering if Outback Jack, the man who set up this restaurant decades ago, is a genius restauranteur or a glorified hoarder.
Note: Our one regret of this town is not going out to the Jaguar rescue centre just outside of town, where they have numerous animals from the rainforests of Costa Rica. In the centre you can see them up close, unlike on our rafting trip through the rainforest. We did make up for it slightly in Bocas with some animal encounters but no jaguars unfortunately.
The Border
The border to Panama was like maths. I didn’t get it. When we arrived to the disorganised jumble of buildings, there was a man with a fluorescent jacket looking very unofficial hanging around. He saw us and told us to bring our passports to get stamped at his hole in the wall next to a restaurant. Not dodgy at all we thought. So, fleeing the shouting man, we went up to the office where they obviously directed us back down to the man, who wasn’t best pleased that we thought he was a nutter. Thinking we were done, we sauntered across the old bridge to Panama where some soldiers kindly told us we are idiots and we didn’t have anything we needed. Back to the office then, to fill out a form and sign some things. By this point the plantain crisps we had been munching on had gone. This was the basis of my growing sadness, then there was all the signing and walking and the fact we had three buses and two boats until our next location. My plantainless sadness was being amplified with every step. We then did the bridge again, this time passing the soldiers and coming to a booth where they told us we didn’t have a stamp. You guessed it. Bridge, office, stamp, bridge, booth, stamp No.2. Done? No. We lined up for an age to reach a grumpy man in a booth where he was faffing around with our passports and checking we had proof of onward travel. But, I actually loved standing there while he decided my fate, the reason? I could get the wafts of cold air from the air-con through the slit in the glass and it was glorious. Finally, our passports were handed back to us and we were off to Bocas.
Final thoughts
Please for the love of God, don’t buy vacuum packed kidney beans. It’s not worth the hassle or the weird clammy aftertaste/feeling in your mouth. If in doubt stock up on bread and plantain and you’ll be dandy.
