| Central America - The Journal |
A New Adventure Begins
Day 1 - London to San Jose (Costa Rica)
After saying the goodbyes, Laura and I donned our packs and took the short walk to London Bridge station to catch a Gatwick bound train. In typical fashion, we arrived at the station about 6 minutes before the train was due to leave. Nothing like starting how you mean to go on! "No problem", we thought, no queues at the ticket machine meant we should be able to just grab our tickets and jump onto the train. If only it was that easy!
There are about 3 or 4 train providers from London to Gatwick and none of them are compatible with each other. We hadn't checked the provider for the train time we wanted, so we stared uselessly at the choices in front of us. The queue for the manned ticket gate was long and unmoving...so if we wanted assistance we'd miss the train we wanted to take...In the end, we just picked one and made a run for it. Of course, with the odds against us, the tickets didn't match the train that was waiting, but we just jumped on hoping the ticket would be transferable.
When the ticket inspector came, it turned out the tickets weren't transferable but 4 other people in the carriage had made the same mistake...some had even bought their tickets from the manned offices...what a messed up system! Luckily, the inspector realised we'd made honest mistakes and let us off but warned us for future purchases.
Check in went pretty smoothly, the only interesting point was when we reached the front of the check-in queue. After queuing for ages, the staff promptly tried to let everyone behind us who was due to board an earlier flight skip ahead...and there were at least 2 dozen of them! So, the policy is to tell people to get there 2.5 hours early to check in but to let anyone who arrives late skip the queue?! Hardly seems fair for those arriving on time! The attendant asked us if we minded them skipping ahead of us, and even though our mouths said yes, our faces clearly said otherwise, because she quickly ushered us forward after only 1 queue jumper had checked in.
The first leg of our flight, London to New York, went pretty smoothly and after about 7 quiet hours we stepped into Newark airport. Transferring in the USA is pretty straightforward, you need to actually enter the country, even if you're just transiting, but the border control officials are quick, if a little cold. After transferring our bags, we passed the time with the obligatory drinks and cards before boarding our flight to San Jose, Costa Rica.
The flight to San Jose went smoothly, the only thing of interest was the guy sitting next to us who was heading out for a week of partying. He seemed keen to get started as he went through no less than 10 "bacardi and diets" (coke) during the short flight. Not really a problem until his inhibitions got low enough to ask me the time literally every 5 minutes, ask why we were late every 10, ask how much longer to go every 15 and make us move so he could go to the toilet every 20 minutes! The air crew eventually stopped serving him when he began to only be able to mumble-slur his requests.
It's worth mentioning briefly how good the service generally is in America and in American companies. The air crew of the Continental flights were exceptionally friendly and attentive to the needs of the passengers. Unlike our flights to China a couple of years ago with Alitalia where the crew appeared to find the existence of passengers a mere annoyance and they generally stayed hidden for most of the journey, neither helping, watering nor feeding the passengers!
Anyhow, back to now...entering the country was really straightforward and much easier than I'd anticipated. No questions about onward flights, money supplies or anything else. The only small hitch was that they'd run out of customs forms on the plane (actually enough for everyone except Laura and me, or so it seemed). No one in the airport seemed to be interested in getting us forms so we began to get a bit concerned when they started closing up the customs desks, which would have effectively locked us in this no man's land of the airport. Luckily, I found exactly 2 forms lying on the side of an unmarked desk, so we grabbed them and filled them in, finally getting into Costa Rica proper
As we were getting into the country late, and aware of the notoriety of the taxi drivers for making it very difficult to (a) get to the hostel of your choice and (b) at a reasonable cost, I'd booked our hostel in advance and arranged for a pick up. For $15 for the 2 of us, it was comparable to a taxi and much more reliable. (Although, since then, I've found that $6 per person shuttles can be arranged with Inter Bus).
As we left the terminal building, I was glad to be met by a short, wide, leather-faced man with a big smile waving a "Tranquillo Backpackers" sign. He quickly confirmed that I was Simon, then welcomed me to .Costa Rica and directed Laura, me and 2 other girls to follow him. He told us that San Jose was only about 20km away and we could walk it in 6 or 7 hours, following his statement with a mischievous grin to make sure we knew he was joking. He'd actually parked his small car just outside of the airport, to avoid paying for parking/entry, but it was only a short walk so it wasn't really a problem.
He somehow managed to squeeze all of 4 of us and out bags into the car and after a lot of protesting from the engine it finally decided to pull us all up the road and onto the highway towards the city.
Our friendly driver, who looked much like a Costa Rican Robbie Coltrane, introduced himself as Roger, in English, or Ro-her, in Spanish, or Ro-ger, in French. He was a very friendly guy, jumping into broken conversation with his pretty good English and the drive went quickly.
The hostel was down a quiet side street and Roger helped us take our bags inside. The hostel was nice enough, pretty typical of any hostel, clean dorms, shared bathrooms, big common areas and tourism info plastered all over the walls. The staff very friendly if VERY relaxed, doing every task at a snail's pace. However, for $9 for a dorm bed and breakfast, compared to the $200 at the Holiday Inn down the road, it suited us fine!
By the time we'd checked it it was pretty late in Costa Rican time and ridiculously late in English time, to which our bodies were still tuned. So as soon as the essentials were unpacked and the beds made, we called it a night...
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