SAN JOSE
Do YOU know they way to San Jose? Do you really? Because apparently I struggle.
Sitting on our veranda in sunny Jamaica I started on booking our move to Costa Rica, which incidentally wasn't even on the list of places to visit the day we set off. I was within a spit of booking a really cheap Jeep Wrangler as our wagon of choice, great price. Thought it was a bit cheap so just checked a couple of details and it transpired I would have had to travel to San Jose in California to collect it and drive 3,758 miles to our San Jose to begin our trip. Ditto when I was within a gnats whisker of bringing the hammer down on our flight from Jamaica to San Jose - you guessed it. Apparently I don't have a flipping clue as to the way to said Costa Rican capital city. And my goodness that song is an ear-worm and a half. Sara came down hard on me if I even hummed it - claimed she could not get it out of her head all day.
​
Costa Rica, as I said, was not even on the itinerary back in good old freezing Blighty. To be honest I could hardly place it on the map. But in sunny Jamaica we were struggling to get over to Cuba, which was the original plan. No access at all from the USA (banned by Trump) and no direct flights from Jamaica. Sara gently eased an idea into the 3 day shaped hole this created by inserting a 14 day trip to assuage an apparent lifelong wish to visit Central America (although she too could not point to Costa Rica on any known map of the world). Apparently EVERYONE had told her that C.R was THE place to go - so we went.
​
Talk about getting a quart into a pint pot. But by judicious switching things around, and remember we don't book anything more than a couple of days in advance, the administrative team (me) managed to slot it in. Shave a day or so here, cut a budget there, add in goodness knows how many extra flights and cars, and bingo! We knew the way to SAN JOSE!!!
​
Landed on time, our pre-booked driver had waited 3 hours for us (cock up on flight times at their end, not me I hasten to add) but took it with good grace. Our first indication that Costa Ricans are great people. We drove to our hotel which was a book you don't judge by its cover. But once inside it was a lovely room in real Costa Rican style. Bit of a rough area. Dingy looking cafe opposite, but Mrs H said Google said it was the best restaurant in town - a likely story. We set off to walk round the town........
​
Busy and pretty typical Central American town with lots of bustle, but no hassle. Not many obvious tourists but very friendly helpful people everywhere we stopped. Back to the hotel by 6.00, the dingy cafe apparently opened at 6.00, bit of a queue outside (being a Monday I suppose you'd expect it?), speculatively we joined said queue and when the doors opened we were as near as turned away! That bloody well got our attention - now we really wanted in! The owner finally relented and offered us a table in the corner for a limited time, and within minutes the place was full to the rafters, and let me remind you this was a Monday. Amazing Argentinian steaks, amazing prices, high quality wine, we went through the card and manged to spend 60,000 Colones, which may sound scary but comes to about £60.
​
The next day was sightseeing, car renting (a lovely 4WD Suzuki Grand Vitara, great service and nine days at £60 a day including all the bells and whistles), art gallery, shops for bits we had forgotten, and then back for another bash at our favourite restaurant for a planning meeting to decide our nine day drive around the country and book at least the first hotel in Manuel Antonio...............
​
​
​
​
​
​
.jpg)
Our hotel did look a bit on the rough side, in a bit of a rough area, but look at that room. Proper Costa Rica. And my lovely is posing at our restaurant table, don't look at her! Look through the window, that's our bedroom over there, talk about convenient. Great choice.
.jpg)
(1).jpg)
.jpg)
The captioned shots are what got me into trouble with Bethany, apparently I am not supposed to caption all my photos. Huh! I'm 5,000 miles away, try and stop me. The fact that there may now be fewer captioned shots is entirely irrelevant I promise you.
.jpg)
SEE! I don't scare easy, another caption pic. Take that censors!
​
However, I have included one street scene from San Jose just for balance.
​
To be fair San Jose has limited appeal for tourists (unlike the rest of this amazing country) but we wandered around aimlessly anyway and mixed the rough with the smooth until we came upon a trendy little Haight Ashbury like backwater entirely due to Sara insisting on tracking down this restaurant 'Silvesters'.
It was closed - but next door to a brand new hotel, The Dunn Inn, open just one day, locally owned, so we booked straight in and got a full tour of all the art installations. In what seemed like a moment Sara had us booked in to the said Silvestors for a 7 course Degustation with accompanying wine flight, no care for the budget that girl! That comes next week when we get back from the countryside.
​
.jpg)
I wonder if the play on words of 'done-in' escaped the translators employed by The Dunn Inn, or, just maybe, they have an even more ironic sense of humour than me. We must ask. In any case we are off on the road so I thought this might be a good time to show you our luggage for three months. I need to give FULL credit to Mrs Henslow, credit where credit is due is my motto. Below is a pic of us with everything. Two rucksacks weighing around 17kg (37 lb) each and one backpack each. End of.
My heavy items - a bundle of electronics to charge 2 iphones, 1 ipad, 2 Apple watches, 2 Kindles, 2 Laptops, three powerpacks (9 screens in all). Sara's heavy items - cosmetics........ And she is so beautiful she probably doesn't even need them. Which is useful as we have just realised one of our flights only allows 15kg!!!!!!!
Yes, you are right, the pic of us posing with our luggage was not taken in urban San Jose, way too much jungle.
​
Equally the pic of our lovely Suzuki Grand Vitara 4WD was not taken outside the Payless office in downtown CR either. Not much gets past you. Nice enough car but talk about under-powered and a bad choice of gear ratios. but cheap at £60 a day incl CDW.
​
Off on the road to the Pacific coast and beaches!!
.jpg)
And along the way stopping off to see a very unfair attempt at a sodding great croc trying for about 20 minutes to make a snack lunch, because for sure that ain't no main course for that monster, out of a very cocky little white stork. That stork sure knew his onions! He was right taking the piss. I don't actually speak fluent stork but trust me, that is what he was saying and no mistake. He (she? you have to be so careful these days) took the mickey out of that big dumb croc for a full 20 minutes. Before the croc ate him (her?).
Only joking. So ever onwards towards..............
.jpg)
_PNG.png)
Above is an example of the bigger of the two types of vehicle on Costa Rican roads. It really is two tribes. Our vehicle and its ilk, and these big bastards. And the numbers are not far off equal! On the main roads they are literally everywhere, but as I said earlier, driven really well. And only a few police on the roads. Loads in town, but all on push bikes and all in male/female teams. So sweet and so reassuring.