I ended up in Costa Rica after meeting a Costa Rican guy on a course I attended in Fribourg Switzerland last year. The conversation pretty much went “you should come to Costa Rica”; “okay, that seems like a good idea”; and here we are.
Anyway, the guy in question is called Guillermo, and he lives in San José. The Dutchie and I had floated the idea of leaving a bunch of our stuff with him prior to heading down the Carribbean coast, and so we planned to catch up with him in San José in the evening. As it turns out, it was a holiday in San José and he had the day off work, so I wanted to head down earlier; also as it turns out, Anouk lost her phone, so there was no point in her sticking around in La Fortuna to make her WhatsApp date. As such, we had our clothes laundered (sorely, *sorely* needed), then caught the bus out of La Fortuna for San José at 12:45.
I’m ahead of myself, though: I haven’t actually spoken about La Fortuna as a town. I liked it, it had a good feeling to it, and lots of cute little nooks and things to explore. It was definitely a bit of a tourist town, but not in the same was as Tamarindo was: for one, where Tamarindo was an American enclave, La Fortuna was more European (many Dutchies and Germans); for two, La Fortuna was less trashy, and generally had way more chill.
In the morning before catching our coach (no apologies for the non-chromonological order of this post), we went for breakfast at a reggae bar called something along the lines of ‘Lava Lounge’, which fundraised to take care of stray local dogs. We had some delicious huevos rancheros–and the waiter, Max, was hilarious. At no apparent prompt, he tapped me on one shoulder while walking off in the other direction, and I started giggling hysterically. It was so ridiculously unexpected.
Leapfrogging ahead in time once more, our bus to San José took quite a while–some 4.5-5 hours–though glady I managed to get some sleep for around an hour of that. Upon arrival, we found a really nice hostel: Van Gogh hostel, near Terminal Mepe. It was clean, spacious, quiet, and the owner was a lovely guy. We’re going back there this upcoming Sunday.
Our next movement was to try and find somewhere to buy the Dutchie a new phone, because she is a legit addict. The hostel owner suggested we catch an Uber to Walmart, which we did. We then failed at finding anything at all we were looking for: Anouk found a phone she liked, but neither that store nor any other had the actual item for sale. Then we couldn’t find an appropriate daypack for the Dutchie either, and we couldn’t find a needle and thread for me (as my pack has lost a strap). Also, our blood sugar was getting pretty low, so things were getting somewhat silly.
At this point Guillermo came to our rescue, picking us up, and taking us to an Irish pub for dinner. We then went to a cool little bar, Casa, where I had some delicious sangria. Anouk was also in heaven, as both the Irish pub (the Craic) and Casa had huge beer lists. There really seems to be a cool craft beer/indie-type bar scene going on in San José.
Today, the phone/pack mission continued. We headed to a nearby mall, failing to find a new phone for Anouk or a needle for me. We did get some thread, though, so that was halfway there. We also stopped by a bookstore, so that I could get some more books with which to practice my Spanish reading comprehension :). The Dutchie, meanwhile, found herself a travel neck-pillow, which folds up to be a soft toy elephant.
I asked lots of people in the mall, and eventually someone suggested that we go to the central market in town to get a needle. We were starting to run a little short of time, so caught a taxi, and not only found a needle almost immediately, but had time to continue the phone mission! A lady who assisted with my Costa Rican phone number recharge gave us a place to head towards, and we started ducking into each and every phone store on the way, finding the phone the Dutchei wanted, and comparing prices. And finally, success!!
San José I think has a bit of a bad rep. It’s not really tauted as a travel destination, but our feeling is that you have to dig below the surface a little. Yes, it’s gritty–my ‘danger danger!’ signals were going off in the areas around the bus stop, for example–but there’s a lot of life around, and a lot to discover.
We also saw reflected what the Tico from our ex-Tamarindo bus had been talking about, with many immigrants and a lot of economic disparity. This is something our hostel guy expounded upon at breakfast time, too. He’s an interesting guy who has travelled a lot and lived in quite a few places, and he sees the same trends occurring in Costa Rica as in the seemingly rest of the world at the moment. He said that there were huge issues with refugees and irrendentism, pointing at Nicaragua taking land from Colombia, for example, and making a play at Guanacaste in the north of Costa Rica (where Liberia is located). There’s a wall that has gone up between Costa Rica and Nicaragua to assist with issues, and he said that there are similarly hot borders across Central and South America, narcotrafficking, money laundering (he said this was 90% of Panama’s national income, for example), and deeply antagonistic relationships. Coutnries such as Costa Rica and Colombia are pointed at as debauched capitalist societies, against the interests of countries such as Nicaragua (which, as you can tell, came up a lot). There’s a lot of xenophobic scape-goating taking place in Costa Rica and Nicaragua alike, and these sentiments are mobilised by politicians and media for instrumental purposes. The Costa Rican middle class has its taxes raised to pay for the poor, while the rich get richer. Diatribes in the region take an economic left/right slant rather than the more conservative/liberal slant you see in left/right arguments in Europe, for example: but the issues are the same. Our poor hostelier couldn’t see any future that wasn’t bleak, that didn’t result in war in the next 15 years, in the region or more generally: with lack of education, inequality, corruption, exploitation, and mobilised xenophobia, he sees it as a powder keg.
The Dutchie and I are now on a bus to Puerto Viejo, on the south-eastern coastline of Costa Rica. We’ve ditched a lot of our stuff at our San José hostel, partly beacuse there’s been a rise in dangerous drug trafficking-type people in the area, and partly because why would be schlepp it around?! We actually only managed to get one seated ticket for this bus, so we’re together in the baggage/disabled area, which I honestly don’t mind. We have WAY more room than in the seats,a can get up and stretch etc, and I can whip out my keyboard and type out our adventures of the past few days. 3.25 hours down; one or two to go.
