Backpacking Trip 2010

We are leaving San Jose today and headed east to Puerto Viejo! Contrary to what we had heard about San Jose, we have thoroughly enjoyed this busy city! It has similarities to Miami (the driving) and NY (the hustle and bustle). Yesterday Katie and I ventured out, we decided to just keep walking until we didn´t want to anymore. We found so many beautiful parks, art, mercados (markets), and local hang outs. We managed to navigate the city on our own without asking for directions, which we were very proud about! We came back to our hostel briefly and then took a 15 minute bus ride to San Pedro, a close neighboring city. The receptionist at the hostel, Vinzente, said he was going to San Pedro to meet his girl friend at the Universidad de Costa Rica and he would show us how to get there. So, we got great advice from this friendly tico about La Fortuna (where he is from) and got recommendations (getting advice from the locals has been the BEST!) and had a great time just talking and learning. We got to San Pedro and followed him to the Universidad, the we went our separate ways. Katie and I decided to walk the campus, which was basically a school in the middle of a gorgeous and lush forest. We explored the city, then decided to find a spot to stop and eat. We kept walking until we found just the right spot; a local hotspot called Bufalos. That was when & where we experienced our first prejudice. It is also where I had the best veggie nachos I´ve ever eaten and also where we discovered malfado, a green colored kind-of-like-a-beer drink. We hung out there for longer than we had planned (because of the prejudice, it took about 3 times as long to order, get our drinks, then our food) and by that time it was dark and we needed to head back to San Josue because we had plans to meet up with our new roomies, Bibi and Shannon, and one of the employees at the hostel, Jonathon, to go out dancing! So, we bused back to San Jose, navigated the city again, this time in the dark (it gets pitch black here at 5:30pm) and found our way successfully (we´re finally getting a hang of things). When Katie and I got back, one of our original roommates, Veronica, had gotten back from Monteverde and she was going to come out with us, too! So, me, Katie, Bibi, Veronica and Shannon all went out! We were going to be meeting Jonathon at a bar close to the hostel, called Poas (like a volcano here), and then he was going to take us out dancing! When we met up with Jonathon, he had brought a friend, Paolo, to come out too, so it ended up being seven of us! Paolo spoke VERY little english so it was difficult trying to communicate with him but luckily Shannon speaks fluent spanish as well as Jonathon so we were all able to communicate well. Me and Katie have been wanting to go out at night since we got here but we didn´t weren´t going out by ourselves and we´ve ended up going to bed before 10pm every night because we´ve just been tired. So, we finally got to go out and see San Jose at night, with some ticos, and we knew they´d take us to a cool place. We all ended up taking a bus back to San Pedro to a district called Calle 3, basically a strip of bars, and went to a place called Terra O, a total local hot spot. We hung out there until around 11pm and the girls (Shannon, Bibi and Veronica) were tired and wanted to go back to the hostel (Bibi is flying out today, Veronica has a job interview, and Shannon was just tired). The last bus was at 11 and they had just missed it so we all walked San Pedro until we found a cab terminal. It was sooooooo much fun, all of us walking the city, talking, laughing, taking pictures. We had a blast! We all rendevoused back at the hostel but Katie and weren´t ready to turn in yet, after all, it was our first night out in the city and we are leaving today. So, me, Katie, Jonathon and Paolo went to a place by the hostel to play pool. By that time, all of the prostitutes had come out. Prostitution is legal here and I was kind of disappointed I hadn´t seen a prostitute yet! lol. Well, we saw plenty last night, it was insane! And probably the most insane part about it, is that they are all transvestites!!!!! The guys here say it is so wrong they are men because they are so pretty! lol. They call them ¨pretty men.¨ I tried not to make eye contact! lol. Anyway, we went to this hole in the wall place and played about six games of pool. What we think is a bad pool table and pool stick in the states is nothing close to a bad pool table and pool sticks here! lol. We switched partners for the first two games, then the guys said, ¨guys against girls.¨Katie and I won the last four games and the boys ended up buying all of our drinks because we kept winning! haha. Then we called it a night and the guys walked us back to the hostel, passing about ten more transvestite prostitutes on the way! We had such an amazing day, walking and exploring all day, then going out with our awesome roommates and dancing, then going out with our new tico amigos and playing pool! Yesterday was the first day it hadn´t rained in a very long time and everyone was excited about it! As much fun as we´ve had in San Jose, we are greatly looking forward to moving on to a new city. We´ve been here three nights and today is our fourth day and we have already been fully exposed and emersed in the culture here. It feels like we´ve been here two weeks already, based on how many (AMAZING) people we´ve met and things we´ve done and things we´ve seen! We´ve met and made so many new friends, ticos, ticas and gringos and gringas! We have to check out in a few hours and then we´re taking a five hour bus ride to the Caribbean coast to the hippy/rasta surf town of Puerto Viejo. We´ll be staying at a hostel called Rockin´Js where we can sleep in a hammock for $5/day or a tent for $6/day (I´ll be doing the hammock thing!). We´ve heard from many people that we will love Puerto Viejo and Rockin Js is the place to be! We´re not sure how long we´ll be staying there but after that we have a loose plan to go to Monteverde. We actually know people who are going there or are there or will be there and we´d like to meet back up with them there. We´ve got a loose plan to go to Monteverde, then Arenal, La Fortuna, Liberia, then the Guanacaste region, then traveling down the coast. Again, it is all tentative because if we meet people and they recommend a place to go and convince us, we will go, which is how we found out about Puerto Viejo. So, I´ll keep in touch and let you all know when I know! My spanish has improved greatly and I have already grown as a person in just the short time we´ve been here. I could get used to this!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 18th, 2010 at 10:04 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.