I think I found paradise

October 03, 2018

I think I found paradise

I have just come back from a week in Costa Rica with some friends from England and I think I can say it's probably the most beautiful place I've ever been to. It looks like something out of the brochures. As soon as we landed in San Jose the green was everywhere. There were mountains, trees and just a lot of general greeness. Also, the mosquitos here didn't seem to like me (fast forward 1 week, back in Guadalajara for 2 days and I already have about 15 new bites) which was heaven. However, they did have other creatures you had to be careful of. One day we rented bikes to explore the neighboring villages and we came across beautiful beaches just up the road. The ocean was slightly more choppy but still clear so you could see right to the floor. A particularly exuberant wave hit us, I took my hand out of the water and I was holding a fish. Granted, it was tiny but it was completely clear and in my hand. I hate to admit, I may have screamed a little bit. Five minutes later I look down to see a crab like creature crawling up my armpit. I just seem to attract weird animals. We then cycled back down the road in search of food and we found a little supermarket. We bought food and then sat outside. Halfway through I looked up and about 5 metres away hanging over the other table was a humungous black spider and once you see one you start seeing them everywhere. We saw two more at the supermarket, luckily none seemed to follow us home. A couple of days later we went back to the same beach in the evening. It was already 100 times creepier because it was pitch black. We saw a hermit crab, and then a normal crab and then a lot more normal crabs because the beach was covered in them. When you're in flip flops (shoes that offer no protection from things getting to your feet) not ideal. The most incredible thing we saw were two spider monkeys the day we rented bikes. After the crab/fish beach we moved slightly further down the same beach. I heard my friend scream and I turned around and there was a black spider monkey clambering through the trees. My first thought was it was going to steal our bags (it didn't, I looked like a moron when I shouted 'protect the bags!'). 30 seconds later a second monkey followed it's friend (again, no bag stealing occurred) and we saw it leap from one tree to the other. It was just wow.

The beach right next to our hostel

A shipwrecked boat (furthest away) that people swam to and climbed over.

*Insert cliché blue skies, blue water photo*

A lot of cliché swing photos were taken on this swing. Our hostel was right behind.

So the actual holiday was incredible, however, the traveling was an absolute nightmare. We had been traveling for quite a while with a 5 hour overnight transfer in Mexico City, so we were pretty tired when we arrived. We had to get a bus to a seaside town about 5 hours away from the capital. We'd done our research, we knew we had to get a bus from a station (a station we thought was at the airport but was actually in the centre of San Jose). We were swiftly ushered into a cheap taxi and taken to the bus station. When we got there however, there were no buses because there was a strike and no more buses seemed to be running that day. So, we were promptly ushered into another taxi. The driver said he would take us to another bus station. We got in his taxi, which in hindsight was a very bad idea, where he made a phone call to another bus station and gave me the phone. Now, I struggle when it's face to face Spanish, on the phone is near impossible. However, I managed to reserve tickets at a station called Guapiles. The taxi driver assured us that he could take us and it was only a 1/2 hour drive away from San Jose. We decided, seeing as we were in his taxi this was probably the easiest way. This is where things started to go downhill. As we started driving I saw a sign that said 'Guapiles: 54km'. Now, I'm no maths whizz but I knew that the speed we were going and 54km did not sound like a good combination. So, I asked him again, very aware that we were on a meter how long the drive was (in my defense I did ask him before we got in the taxi if we could have a fixed price but he just kept saying meter, meter). It kept going up, 45 minutes, 1 hour. 1 1/2 hours later and (Mum, please look away, you are not going to be happy with this next number) 210 pounds down we arrived at Guapiles bus station. Yep, 210 pounds. He had basically taken us halfway to our destination.

It got dark at 6 o'clock

I thought we had reserved tickets so we went to the ticket window and I said to the lady we need to go to Puerto Viejo and I had reserved tickets in San Jose. That was not the case. She rudely informed me this ticket office had nothing to do with San Jose, you couldn't reserve tickets and there were no direct buses to Puerto Viejo, we had to change in a town called Limon. I was past caring, I was like, just give me the tickets, that's great, gracias. So we got on the bus to Limon and arrived, it was finally going okay. We went to the ticket window, asked for Puerto Viejo and it turned out the had to go another bus station in the town. This doesn't sound to bad, but it was incredibly humid, we'd had approximately 3-4 hours sleep and everything was in Spanish. We dragged our suitcase onto the street, asked for directions from a very helpful stall tender and made it to the other bus station. Luckily there were signs for Puerto Viejo everywhere and I ate the best rice and beans of the whole holiday here. So, finally on the bus to Puerto Viejo, we just had no idea when to get off. Luckily, my friend recognised the hostel we were staying at from photos. Recounting it doesn't actually sound too horrendous, living it on that Saturday was a very different story. Especially when we found out that one of my friends had been charged twice by the taxi. He said the payment hadn't gone through and I saw the receipt which said it hadn't, but it had, and we had no way of contacting him.

The beach up the road

The trees we saw the monkeys in

Coming back was not as stressful because we had done our research properly and found a bus that went straight to San Jose and only took about 4 hours. We got out tickets for 1 o'clock so we would arrive in daylight at San Jose, find our hostel and everything would be simple. 7 hours later, we arrived in San Jose. We were literally in standstill traffic for about 5 hours. The reason for this was the people striking had made a blockade a lot further up the road and were only letting a few people through at a time. So we arrived back at about 8 o'clock, by which time is was fully dark. In Costa Rica it was fully dark by 6 o'clock in the evening which was super strange. None of us had internet on our phones, and very wary of taking another taxi, we asked for directions to the hostel. We were told it was about 800m up the road, so we started to walk. After about 200m and quite a few strange looks, a car slowed down next to us and rolled down his window. He said, 'You do know it's really dangerous here, how much further do you have to walk ? It's really dangerous'. We assured him it was fine, out hostel was close. Another 200m and a taxi pulled up and basically said the same thing. I didn't think it was too bad; there was a lot of people around, businesses were open and our hostel was only 800m. I think we must have just looked quite out of place in downtown San Jose dragging our suitcase up a hill, with no idea where we were going. But we got there, everything was fine, and there was a restaurant in the hostel so we didn't have to venture out again. Now, when I say the meal here was probably the worst meal I've ever eaten I'm not exaggerating. I ordered pasta with tomato sauce which said it would come with crusty bread. When I asked the cook what it was like (because I was uhming and ahring between two things) he said I should have the pasta because he put onions and other assorted vegetables in it. He talked quite passionately, so I was like sure, you can't screw that up. How wrong I was. It came and was quite literally spaghetti with what tasted like Tesco basic domlio sauce and 1 slice of the cheapest white sliced bread, that was lightly toasted. We ended up in slight delirious hysterics about the whole situation.

And when we finally made it back to Guadalajara the next day, our luggage didn't (to be fair, they got it back to us the next morning). It's just the tummy dropping feeling when your luggage does not swing through the magical luggage gate.