Costa Rica: Day 1

Solomon and I arrived in San Jose around 1pm on Sunday and took an airport taxi to the hostel.  We had woken up at 2am that morning to get to the airport on time and were quite exhausted by the time we arrived. The taxis are bright orange with big yellow triangles on the side and have set prices to various parts of San Jose.  Our taxi driver couldn't find his way directly to the hostel as a street festival was blocking the way so he turned off his meter part way and we ended up paying $30. We checked into Aldea Hostel into a dorm room with 8 beds and a private bathroom ($13 pp).  There were wooden lockers to put your packs (had to supply our own locks) and a promise of hot water for certain hours of the day.  Our rooms water was broken so we took cold showers for the first time of our trip. The hostel was decorated with pop art pictures of girls with big, juicy lips smoking cigars.  A pool table sat under a chandelier in the front hall and the kitchen was in a courtyard outside.

The first thing we did was head to the Tica Bus stop which was a couple blocks away to try to get three bus tickets to Nicaragua the next day.  We figured out you could go straight to Granada (not to Managua) quite easily on the Tica bus as it was a scheduled stop, but we needed all three passports to get the tickets.  Since Nick was not arriving until 9 at night, we left and planned to get them early the next morning.  We went to Pali, the grocery store and bought some pasta to cook for the night while we waited for Nick to arrive.  The hostel staff sat around smoking while we ate dinner and took a nap to pass the time.  The sheets were clean and we didn't need sleep sacks here. By the time Nick showed up, the hostel staff had changed shifts and we had to convince the guy at the front desk that Nick was already paid for and reserved.  We decided to try our luck with the bus stop again and were happy to find it open so we could buy our tickets.  For anyone trying to go to the Tica Bus stop it is open quite late at night, if not 24 hours a day.  We went at about 11 pm and had no problems.  In fact, a bus was just getting in.  Buying the night before turned out to be okay but we could only get on the noon bus and not the 6am one.  Knowing this bought us a few more hours to catch up on sleep, we headed back to the hostel to bed.