June 14, 2009 It was Sunday night and our last night in SJDS. We enjoyed a lovely dinner, and Kevin and Claire cooked their mahi mahi that they had caught on their fishing expedition. We enjoyed our visit immensely and have made plans to join the Brits in Panama for a sailing boat excursion. Later in the evening there was another power failure, only this one didn’t end anytime soon. Claire brought out some candles and we had a lovely visit in our ”living room” by candlelight. This reminded me of our last night in Roatan when there was a power failure. What this means is my sleep will be disturbed earlier tomorrow morning because Cory and Elaine will have to get up earlier to get packed. I really dislike these early mornings. I was lying awake waiting for that alarm to go at 4:30. I watched as they packed everything up and we began our long travel day. First we walked to the bus that would take us from San Juan del Sur to Rivas. At Rivas we switched to the Tica bus that would take us to San Jose, Costa Rica. We were less than an hour from the border. It is really quite interesting to see how the different border crossings. First we had to go through Nicaraguan customs to leave, then it was back on to the bus, for the short drive to the Costa Rican border. There were a few moments of excitement because a sign was posted that you must have an onward ticket out of Costa Rica before entering. As we are travelling with no plan, how could we possible have a return or onward ticket. Fortunately this is only occasionally checked, so the fretting turned out to have not been warranted. Then after customs, it was back to the bus to get our luggage, open it up and wait for the customs officer. It was such a cursory search it seemed like a waste of time, he flipped open the luggage and basically looked at what was on top. Next we zip up the luggage, have the bus steward check our passports to make sure they had been stamped by the Costa Rican customs, and on the road to San Jose. Do you know the way…? Everything seemed to be falling into place. We arrived at San Jose bus station, grabbed a taxi to take us to the local bus station. (way across town. Cost $2.00) While Elaine went to the washroom, Cory purchased tickets and we went right out and jumped on the bus. It left a few minutes later. Wow, this was good. There was a bit of a traffic jam in San Jose, and an accident on route, which made our trip a little bit longer. All in all it was a good day, but boy were we tired at 8:30 when we arrived in Puntarenas. We grabbed a hostel near to the ferry terminal. It was around $40.00 and was a very clean, tiled room. Yes tiled. Everything except the ceiling was tiled. Elaine is starting to get frustrated, as tiles can be so expensive in Canada, and here they have them everywhere.
|
Advertisement
|
