Because we had an early night yesterday, we also woke up early, but feeling well rested. After a nice breakfast, we began packing everything and sorting two piles: one for “Stuff to take” and “stuff to ditch”… The latter pile was pretty small. Once done, we decided to walk to town and drop off the postcards at the local post office – along the beach again of course. Somewhere along the line we saw this cute little woodpecker.
The “Post office” was unspectacular – a tiny little booth with a post officer in it, accepting mail and money. Luckily for us he spoke English too 🙂
With the postcards sent, we walked past a place we had seen on our first day here and wanted to try out, so we decided to spend a few minuted to try out a smoothie and play a couple of rounds of Uno. As it turned out I accidentally ordered the nicest smoothie we had on the trip, a combination which I would have thought I would hate: Coconut water, Ginger, Mint, served in a coconut! Even better: No plastic straws! Totally worth it 🙂
We had luck with the weather and walked back in the morning sun along the beach, making it back juuust in time for our 11 am check-out. During check-out the host accidentally charged us Colones instead of US Dollars, meaning that we would have paid the equivalent of about $1.50 for the accommodation… Luckily he realised just before we drove away. We corrected everything and he paid us back in a deck of cards of Costa-Rican animals, which we had been eying elsewhere but always found too expensive. Score!
Today’s drive would take us right back into San Jose – something we both dreaded a little. The city is terrible for driving. As it turned out, the drive was okay – not great but not as bad as we imagined. Along the way we ate some of the foods which we still had left over, including one very large banana. It was quite tasty – somewhat different to the type I’m used to, and was utterly filling, meaning we had no need for lunch. Along the drive we once more saw the massive container harbours which export tropical fruit from the island, and Manja was fascinated by the old-school trucks driving around. Crossing the mountains was okay too, a bit of fog but not too bad.
The hotel meanwhile was very central, right across from the park where we took the wing photos on day one! One slight problem… we had no idea how to get in. We found the gate, but it was just closed and I was sweating bullets as traffic started to queue up behind me. Just as I was about to keep driving, the gate suddenly opened. Turns out there is a security guard inside monitoring it the whole time. We parked our car, checked-in and brought our stuff to the room. Tonight we would have to sort everything ready for the flight tomorrow. We had spread into about 8 bags and had to re-contain this into a suitcase and 2 backpacks. We managed to do this quite quickly and then went down the street for some dinner at a place called “El Stiefel” which is the German name for “Boot”. Turns out it was a craft beer place, which also served snack-sized food.
As we walked back Manja started to seriously itch on her legs. We put on the anti-mosquito-bite-gel we had, which was awesome the entire trip. Unfortunately it did very little. When we returned to the hotel we did some research – turns out that sand-flea bites itch 48-72 hours AFTER the bite. Damn! I’m lucky to have genes or blood type or some sort of genetic defect, because most biting insects don’t itch on me. Manja is not so lucky. We walked down to the nearest pharmacy, but the place was already closed. The internet suggested cooling, so we tried some Aloe-Vera which allowed her to at least get some sleep.
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