After another night in San Juan (which incidentally was quite fun after I happened to meet two photojournalist students), I said my goodbyes to Nicaragua and headed on towards Costa Rica. I've had plenty of time to play around with thus far on my trip, but now that I have a flight booked out of Panama City to Havana on the 7th, time is of the essence and annoyingly I'm having to calculate and plan my stops in advance.I got a taxi to the border which worked out pretty cheaply as it was only a couple of km away. What I didn't realise was that the no-man's land inbetween the two countries was endless, and I would have to walk for a good twenty minutes, dragging my stupid bag before I reached the Costa Rican side. But it was here where my troubles began: the woman behind the desk asked to see my flight ticket out of Costa Rica, which of course I don't have... I had heard that this could happen, but had chosen to ignore it after a Costa Rican man in Nicaragua told me I'd be fine. Because this is what I wanted to believe.
When I told the woman, all the while in Spanish, that I didn't have a ticket out of Costa Rica but I was in fact flying out of Panama in two weeks, she decided that perhaps my problem was that I didn't understand her, and she stood up to shout at me in very slow English:
"I need see flight ticket! No entry!"
"I un-der-stand" I replied in equally patronising tones, "But have no ticket".
She asked to see my Panama ticket. I said it was online and I could show her on the computer. She told me that I'd have to find an internet cafe and print it out for her. I asked where I could find an internet cafe. "Just a kilometre or so on the other side of the border", she said.
"So... you want me to walk into Costa Rica, find an internet cafe and return here to show you before I am allowed into Costa Rica."
"Correct."
And so I found myself jogging along the never-ending road leading through the Costa Rican side, all the while being jeered at by the queues and queues of truckers waiting to pass through the border. After what felt like an age, I found somewhere with a printer, paid the cheeky sods two US dollars for it, and ran all the way back to the border. All the while my bus was waiting for me with my bag and a hundred irritated locals. When I did return to misery guts, she told me that since there was no evidence of me leaving Costa Rica in good time, she could only grant me a two day visa. By this point I was thinking that I already hated this country and two days to pass through would be just fine. But weirdly enough, as the neighbouring immigration officers changed shift and seemingly the woman's supervisor disappeared, she smiled at me and whispered "how long do you need? Seven days?" before stamping my passport and shooing me along. I was in.
My first stop was the nearest city, Liberia. I wasn't expecting too much from it as I knew it was hardly top of the tourism charts, and was happy enough to find an ice cream and sit in the central square watching the Saturday festivities. Festivities which turned out to be in celebration of something or other, guessing by the sudden fireworks which at first I thought were gunshots... They were lighting them from the church steps and at any moment I expected the roof to catch alight. Crazy Latinos- they party in the face of health and safety.
Party animal as ever, I was quite excited by the prospect of an early night with my book- I had a private hotel room, owing to the lack of hostels in the town, and it was quite nice (read: a real mattress, a mosquito net and my very own fan). Just as I was finishing my dinner the diner next door, a guy sitting across from me started a conversation.
"Are you Costa Rican?"
No. Of course I am not bloody Costa Rican. Do I look Costa Rican? Leave me to my solitude, friendly foreigner.
"No, I'm English... and you?"
Of course I knew he was American by the way he was failing to read the spanish menu. But we got chatting, and he got me laughing, despite my initial determination to be stony and silent.
It turned out that my new friend was celebrating selling his online business idea for big bucks and therefore had just retired at the age of 28 (I think). We went for a couple of drinks, getting caught up in a midst of hard-core football fans (which was seemingly everybody in Liberia) and had a good time pretending to get worked up over every goal or non goal scored. He was a philosophical soul (and stoned) and we made fantastic conversation before I finally returned to my underappreciated hotel room and crashed into bed in my underwear with the fan on full blast- because I had a private room and could do whatever crazy things I wanted.
The next morning was a bus to Monteverde in the mountains- a beautiful place, but one which I took a while to get used to because it was just so... organised. I think Costa Rica was just generally a shock after the rest of Central because it IS so organised and geared up towards tourism. There are signs in English and groups of Americans following guides with ribbons on sticks, and it made me feel uncomfortable at first. I wanted to be back somewhere where I had to speak spanish and didn´t know where to go all the time- I wanted the adventure back.
That said, I had plenty of adventures there. With some friendly Dutch girls from my hostel, I went on a guided night hike through the jungle. With my arrival in Costa Rica, I seemed to have finally lost the race with the rainy season, and it bucketed down with rain for the whole hike. After so many months of killer heat though, the rain was quite refreshing, and armed with my big ol´ lesbian walking boots and poncho, I felt happy as a toddler jumping in puddles on our great adventure plodding through the vegetation. We saw a lot of animals that night: sloths, armadillos, a porcupine, vipers, racoons and a tarantula. I went to bed with a stupidly big smile on my face and felt as if I had truly made up for the plasticity of San Juan.
The adventures continued the following morning when I got up at 6am to go zip lining. A good few km of whizzing across jungle canopies and mountain valleys got my adrenaline going and I was finally won over by Costa Rica´s beauty. Seeing as I was on a strict time limit for the country, I got the bus out to the capital that afternoon and made the most of brief civilisation by buying underwear and calling home to remind them that I am still alive, and would a sufficient birthday present for my dad be picking me up from the airport...? Turns out the answer is no, not really, and haven´t I heard of duty free?
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