San Jose - Costa Rica

San Jose didn't hold much for me so was only treating it as an initial base to figure out what to do next. Its the main transport hub for the rest of Costa Rica but for a traveller it didn't hold much excitement itself. Having checked out the options and sought advice at the hostel, i'd decided to travel on a public bus to the nicoya peninsular on the pacific coast. I'd heard good things about a chilled coastal town called Santa Teresa (thanks for the tip stevie) which sounded just the ticket for a week's unwinding. According to the guidebooks the coca-cola central bus station in San Jose is a haven for thefts / muggings so again being a newbie solo traveller I was pretty apprehensive about walking around there with my obvious milky white tourist skin !! The hostel had told me I could book bus tickets in advance there to santa teresa so into danger it was !! I ended up going there 3 times in all during the day... each time trying to find the damn place to buy a bus ticket without success (later to find that everyone bought them on the bus for this route). San Jose wasn't as scary as I had feared... just made sure I didn't flash my fancy camera around and walked around looking confident as best I could. I soon felt comfortable even though I couldn't speak a word of spanish and there was nothing practically nothing in english. So apart from sleep, check emails and plan my next move... I did nothing in San Jose.

One of the first things I had to adjust to is not putting toilet paper in the toilet. The draining systems here just can't cope with it so you put it in a bin next to the toilet. Its something i'm just not programmed to-do so constantly forgetting and then having to go fishing pre-flush......

After the second night I managed to catch the public bus at 6am headed to Santa Teresa. It was then I first started seeing fellow milky skinned travellers – mainly americans / canadians with their surf boards heading to the coast for vacation.