Named in honor of Joseph of Nazareth

Arriving to the next country, Costa Rica, making it number 77 on the list of countries I’ve been to this date. To be honest, full of expectations and very excited to finally come here, yet as I will explain later on, it ended up in being a total deception. In this occasion we made San Jose, the capital city our base for the next 3 days, in order to visit Cartago, Monteverde and Arenal; then for another 2 days we made the base in Cahuita by the Caribbean coast, and finally, one last day back in San Jose to rent after 3 intense weeks of travelling non-stop before heading back to Europe.

This was a short flight from Managua to San Jose in one of the smallest planes I’ve ever flew. That was fun! Really fun. I love the experience of being in a plane never been before, and specially if this is a tiny one. It was a Costa Rican airline, Nature Air, on a LET 410 UVP E20. Everyone in this flight was excited to fly, all of the 19 tourists including myself. The only major downside are the super high costs of flying through Central and South America in general. We had no other option, unless to lose an entire day and travel by bus instead, something unfortunately we could not afford due to our very limited time.

So, San Jose. How to start. A city of mixed feelings, or two different cities in one. At one side you have many very nice and beautiful old buildings, although scattered through the entire city mixed with many other horrible buildings all over. The reason for such a great loss on architecture is like anywhere else in Central America, earthquakes and volcano eruptions; but gladly, a lot have survived in the case of San Jose, as opposed to Managua or San Salvador, the most seriously impacted. And in the other hand, it is a city full of beggars, overall insecure feeling, and where everything closes super early leaving you stranded even without restaurants where to go nor shopping centres opened! (more…)