Thumbs down for San Jose!

It's 1.30 am and have just made lemon and ginger tea in the cafetière; I went to bed soon after 6pm in preparation for my early start, so after about 6 hours sleep feel fit for another day, another experience. Flexibility is the name of the game.

I arrived back at the hotel at about 11.30 am, after a good journey on Linkbus. There were three passengers part of the way and two of us for the remainder. I got chatting to a lovely lady whose husband is a scientist and comes to Cambridge sometimes. She is a Costa Rican teacher. There was  fantastic scenery on the way until we hit the city! Unfortunately check in was not until 2.30pm but no one arriving was actually told that, just that our rooms weren't ready and could we wait. It was 3pm before I was able to go to my room and I forewent the offer to leave my luggage as I wanted to decant my valuables in the safe before venturing into the city again.

Having discovered some of the local recommended restaurants were closed Sunday, and the hotel restaurant had TV blaring out a football match, I set off in search of a meal, having breakfasted at 6am and had only snacks I had brought with me since. It didn't look very promising, then I spied a Pizza Hut at the end if the road. It is a bit like going to Europe and finding M And S! I decided it was probably reliable so had a pasta and cup of tea. The tea looked very soapy and luke  warm and tasted little better! The restaurant was just as noisy as the hotel... But I did get a nice glass of wine on my return, the first for several weeks!

So I think my memory of San Jose is noisy and busy and not a patch on Monteverde. Still it was only a transition stop and I visited all I had wanted to when I arrived here. Not somewhere I need to come back to. But I have done all my conversations with hotel staff in Spanish, so a sense of progress since I was here a month ago.