Thank goodness we’re in San Jose
Sunday, December 17th, 2006So after a harrowing bus ride through the mountains where I think the both of us were about to puke our guts out – can you say winding roads? Anyway, we ended up finding our sanctuary for the last leg of our trip at Casa Leon – within walking distance of downtown San Jose but in a quiet part of town.
San Jose ended up a very metropolitan city – I’m not sure why people give it such a bad name. I mean, what do you expect?
We started out with a huge friggin’ burger at this burger joint, had a drink at a very Americanized hotel bar and then ended at this really awful fusion place that was recommended in the Let’s Go book – it was terrible though.
The next day we wandered around the city, bought the International Herald Tribune, went and saw The Guardian – darn scary movie – do not know how the heck Coastguard people do the whole swimming and saving people in the ocean.
Cin,
originally uploaded by cirrusjohn.
That night, John started feeling kind of icky. So we called it an early night. The next day he was still feeling lousy. So we went to the Children’s Museum which was a really great museum – but he was feeling so lousy that we went back to the hostel early. He slept for a while and then went to a chinese restaurant so he could get soup. That’s when we decided to go to the hospital. We were afraid John might have caught malaria. And you just don’t mess with malaria. He was feverish, chills, achy – all the signs. We went back to the hostel and asked our Swiss owner where to go and he directed us to a hospital Hospital Biblica. After a short wait we met with a doctor that thought John had Dengue fever. After getting an IV hooked up to him and some blood taken he was negative for malaria (hurrray!), but they couldn’t test for Dengue for several days. Dengue lasts around 6 days – and it’s essentially a really nasty flu with a super high fever. All from a stupid mosquito. Ironically, I got bitten left and right and he didn’t get bitten hardly at all – but it just takes that one…We were just thanking our luck that we decided to head back to San Jose early and were not in hodinkville – well, John didn’t think he was very lucky since he was essentially bed-ridden for the rest of our trip and then had to get on an airplane while still being sick (I knew he was really feeling sick when I told him I had enough money to buy him some pepto at the airport – it was like I had just told him he’d just won the lottery). And he completely lost all of his taste-buds so everything tasted like shit.
children museum,
originally uploaded by cirrusjohn.
We were never so happy to see Houston as when we were flying in (and no, I never thought I’d say that). We figured if we could just get there that if worse came to worse we could run him to a hospital in Houston. But he made it home to Seattle (although his doctor here tried to convince him he had traveller’s diarrhea even though, hmmm, he was missing that one key thing – he didn’t really have diarrhea). But they tested him anyway and he eventually confirmed he had dengue fever.
So all in all, a pretty good trip, well, except for the end…maybe a little too long for a country like Costa Rica…but the people were unbelievably nice (even the doctor at the hospital said enjoy Costa Rica as John was feeling like total crap)…
JohnCin