COSTA RICA (San Jose, La Fortuna, Volcan Arenal & an Unfortunate Event)

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Thursday 4th May
Back in Managua and after haggling with the airport taxi driver (he dropped his price by half when we told him we would just get a cab on the street!) we made our way back to Casa Verdi (Andy’s just remembered the name of the hostel) to be greeted again by the touts, who insisted on escorting us to the door despite us telling them that we already had a booking. Note to travellers they get a commission for bringing tourists to the hostel which will more often than not then be added to your bill.

We opted for an early night as guess what – we had another 5am start the next day! 

Friday 5th May
Fully stocked with junk food from the local petrol station (classy!) we settled into another long bus journey to the Costa Rican border. We had been pre warned of an extremely long wait at the border crossing and were not disappointed. Up until now an English speaking money changer or driver had usually hopped on board prior to the border and explained in English the procedure. No such luck this time and even Andy’s Spanish wasn’t really good enough to understand what was going on so we just waited patiently while a random official relived us of our passports and yet another $20 each and disappeared for a couple of hours. Not that we had time to get bored though as a fellow traveller an American retired Vietnam veteran decided to tell us his life story including a detailed report of his injuries and failing liver condition – twice. He turned out to also be slightly deaf which made the ‘conversation’ all the more frustrating.

After a few more games of Monopoly (can’t remember who won this time…..) we arrived in the wet, but more prosperous looking capital, San Jose. Having already looked out our preferred place of rest for the night – Tranquillo Backpackers – we jumped in a taxi to in search of some rest after a long day on the road.

Tranquillo was expensive for what it was, clearly targeted at genuine backpackers, rather than us more ‘mature’ travellers. It was hot and sweaty with paper thin walls and not that all ‘tranquillo’ if we remember correctly.

With San Jose being a bit more westernised than what we’d been used to, it had a fair share of restaurants and hotel bars to go to. We ate in a fab little place a couple of blocks away from the hostel and dined on fine food and wine – best food and drink in a good many weeks.

We had decided that we wished to head up to the North of the country in search of active volcanoes and perhaps some white water rafting, so La Fortuna is the place to go. The hostel provided a travel service offering tours to La Fortuna, but after some research we realised that it would be much cheaper to do it ourselves, also allowing some flexibility should be decide to stay longer in any of the places.

Saturday 6th May
So after a relatively sleepless night thanks to the heat and our ‘neighbours’ we set off for yet another bus station, which entailed walking through some of San Jose’s dodgiest areas. At one point we passed a group of local down and outs who shouted the obligatory ‘Hey Gringo’ at us as we passed by. Slightly wary we hurried past expecting to get mugged at any second, when to our complete surprise they just wanted to give us directions to the bus station!

After a delicious breakfast of freshly cooked chicken and bread we got the slow bus to Fortuna. Unfortunately we didn’t realise quite how slow SLOW meant. After stopping at practically every village en route we realised why the hostel version was so much more expensive. However on arrival to La Fortuna we were pleasantly surprised at how clean and friendly it was. Costa Rica is highly geared towards tourism; Eco tourism in particular and as a result has prospered far more than it’s Central American neighbours, even refusing to have it’s own army as a strange but effective way to avoid conflict.

Whilst Fortuna was quite touristy it also still felt very authentic and most refreshingly completely safe….or so we thought!!

We booked into a small hostel called Daisy’s run by an extremely friendly chap called Oscar who gave us a good deal and loads of information on what to do and where to go….sadly most of it incorrect as we found out over the next couple of days.

Sunday 7th May
We awoke to amazing views of the Volcan Arenal  - not a cloud in the sky. After some debate we decided to have a relaxing morning and walk to the volcano and its famous La Fortuna waterfall. After we realised that Oscars ten min walk was more like a an hour and half hike up a hot dusty track with no shade we were extremely relieved to finally arrive at the waterfall which was a stunning long thin flow into rocky plunge pools underneath. We swam in the refreshingly cold pools and warmed up on the rocks underneath for most of the day before deciding to take a taxi back (well actually I point blank refused to walk all the way back in that heat!) We had a really nice steak dinner in a local café which was excellent value for money then a few nightcaps and chatted to Oscar about what to do for the next few days. He assured us that the volcano was active and we were ‘absolutely guaranteed’ to see lava if we did the trek through the rainforest. We were slightly sceptical after having visited a few other volcanoes already on our travels, but had been heartened by seeing puffs of smoke coming out of the crater on our earlier hike, so we booked up and went to bed.

Monday 8th May
We were excited to awake to another cloudless morning which meant for sure that we would finally see some lava up close, so we spent the morning exploring the town before setting off for the hike at approx 3pm as we had been told it was best to view the volcano at dusk to make it more dramatic. Well it certainly was dramatic but for all the wrong reasons!! After about an hour of trekking through dense rainforest accompanied by howler monkeys, spider monkeys, toucans and various other exotic flora and fauna pointed out by our extremely knowledgeable tour guide we felt the first plop of rain. As the rainforest was so dense we hadn’t realised how cloudy it had suddenly become until the heavens literally opened and we were soaked to the skin in seconds. As we grew closer to the summit the heavy canopy became sparser and sparser and we got wetter and wetter until we were trudging ankle deep through sludgy lava scree and ash. By the time we reached the ‘viewpoint’ we could hardly see our hands in front of our faces let alone any flaming volcano!! Undeterred our fellow hikers took photos of each other whilst we shivered in the shelter of the van that eventually came to meet us. One couple didn’t realise my sarcasm as I asked if they would like the volcano behind them in the picture and they said yes please J

Luckily for us the tour ended in the local natural thermal hot pools, complete with 15 different pools in beautifully landscaped gardens and swim up bars – now this was more like it!! Whilst exploring Andy and I got separated so I headed back to the bar we had a tab running with and was amazed to bump into Giles who we had met earlier in our travels in Utila – small world.

Tuesday 9th May
As if we hadn’t had enough of being soaked to the skin we headed off for today's adventure – white water rafting! Having had quite a lot of experience of rafting when living in NZ I wanted to do at least a grade 5 river. Unfortunately that meant another 3 hour journey further east to the Rio Pacuare. However the long journey was well worth the effort. After a quick introduction to the techniques required (like staying in the boat) we set off through 15km of stunning scenery and grade 4 & 5 rapids. Andy definitely had the best seat as he was up front and therefore first down each rapid. At one point our guide had us push the nose of the raft back into a rapid we had just navigated and Andy had no choice but to hang on for dear life whilst gallons of water poured over his head.

We stopped half way for an excellent lunch served on an upturned raft on a remote beach then back for the hairiest half of the river. 3 hours later we all jumped out of the rafts and floated down the last gentle stretch of the river back to base camp. We went with Adrenalin tours who we would highly recommend to anyone else thinking of doing the trip. The only downside was the extortionate fee they were asking for the photos, so unfortunately on our tight budget we cannot show you Andy getting drowned J

On the trip back we realised quite how close we had already been to our next days destination the Parque Nacional Tortuguero – thanks again to the mis-information from Oscar!

Wednesday 10th May
After another night of heavy rain we packed all of our sodden clothes into one bag and our valuables into another dry bag, ready for our trip back east to Tortuguero…that was until our friendly tour guide Oscar informed us that it wasn’t possible as the shuttle bus he had recommended had broken down! We were devastated as we had planned on taking a kayak trip through the mango swamps and spotting crocodiles, caymens and manatees, so we looked at other options such as getting a private car or taking the local bus. Unfortunately the national park is so remote that the local bus only goes half way then you need to take a boat the rest of the way, and the local cars wanted a kings ransom to take us the whole way. Sadly with time against us we realised that we had no choice to head back to San Jose and hopefully return another time. Unwisely we trusted Oscars advice on bus timetables and went for a leisurely breakfast in town instead, to find to our horror that the local bus was just about to leave from outside the café! Thanking our lucky stars we jumped on and settled in for the long journey back.

We had to get a couple of buses to get back to San Jose, anything to try and avoid yet another long bus ride stopping at every single village, shop, house, junction, auntie Eva’s, cousin Jose’s place, etc., etc.

San Ramon was our half way point, a small market town just north of San Jose. We had a small wait to catch the Express bus back to San Jose and nearing the end of our time in Costa Rica. Today was Wednesday the 10^th of May, and we still had to get down to Panama City for the weekend to allow us to catch our flight on Monday the 15^th to Columbia and then to Curacao. Our bus ride to San Jose was only an hour, as the bus was relatively small and space at a premium, we had to place some of our bags in the overhead luggage rack. As we settled into our seats for the short journey, we had no idea what was going to happen to us in the next 60 minutes. Clearly the commercialisation of Costa Rica and the friendliness of its people had lulled us into a false sense of security and exposed us due to an unfortunate twist of circumstances to fall victim to a crime that we’d heard so many stories about from many travellers in many different countries along the way.

We arrived in the bus depot in San Jose and as we were in the middle of the bus we had to wait until all the other passengers had disembarked.  Picking up our bags from the luggage racks above our heads, I turned to Sadie and asked, “Please tell me that you have the laptop bag?”. Almost immediately we both realised that what we had heard so much about over the last few months had just happened to us. Someone had somehow managed to remove the bag from right above our heads at sometime over the previous 60 minutes. It is impossible to describe the gut wrenching feeling and total and utter loathing for the toe-rag who stole our bag when we knew for sure it was indeed gone. Quickly checking around the bus station for any sign of our bag and also for a policeman to help us in our desperation, we found nothing.

Totally devastated we took a seat in the bus depot and held our heads in our hands. The magnitude of what was now lost was starting to calculate in my head. Amongst the lost items were, Laptop, iPOD, camera, travellers cheques, cash, credit cards, glasses, sun glasses, and most importantly our passports and our onward tickets from Panama to Curacao……aaaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh!!!!! To top it all of we had also just bought a 7 Year Old bottle of Flor De Cana – the best rum in the area. The thief must have thought it was Christmas morning when he opened the bag.

We were now in a city, with no means to getting out of it, feeling very vulnerable and not sure what to do next. With each passing minute the list of what was in the bag was growing, all because the tour to Tortuguero fell through….all because we had to put all the wet clothes in a separate bag alleviating us of valuable space…….all because the leg room in the bus was too small for the bag……all because…..  L.

As reality started to set in, we also realised that it was now Wednesday, our flight from Panama was leaving on Monday morning, we now had no passports and our flight tickets bought in Nicaragua were also gone. We also had credit cards and AmEx Travellers Cheques to report stolen.

First step was the police, thanks to a kind taxi driver to took us to the proper authorities to sit in line with a number of other foreign tourists all wishing to report similar offences. We were a little comforted when we met a Kiwi guy in the queue, who had lost all of his luggage on his bus journey north from Panama into Costa Rica. He had no cash, clothes nor passport.  Our circumstance started to look a bit brighter. We gave him what little cash we had still on us and felt our selves lucky in comparison.

Once all the formalities were taken care of and the police report submitted, our focus was then to call the British Embassy to see what we had to do to get replacement passports before the end of the working week so we could go down to Panama. We still had a few hours to go before close of business on Wednesday, so contacted the Embassy and spoke to Vice Consul. Our luck was changing. Having explained our position – lack of any form of ID, need new passports tomorrow etc. – we were told to come to the Embassy first thing the next morning together with 2 passport photos and $140 to get a new passport. We also had their guarantee that we would get two new passports by 11am on Friday – more than enough time for us to get back on the road South out of Costa Rica and onto Panama. If only if was that quick (and easy) to get a passport in the UK!!!!

Still gutted from the events of the last few hours, we headed back to our hostel and to a series of international calls to cancel credit cards and travellers cheques. Bank of Scotland, Ok, American Express not so easy. Despite what they tell you in the TV ads, when an AmEx agent casually walks up to the AmEx customer who’s had his TCs stolen and hands him a fresh deck of cheques, while meantime the non-AmEx traveller runs around frantic with no cash and no means of refund, the reality is our situation was quite different.

It transpired that in the time that our bag was stolen and us reporting the theft to the police and then calling AmEx (no more than 3 hours), all of our AmEx cheques had been cashed through a bank with someone using my passport as ID. In this situation, AmEx will not provide an immediate refund and can only advise that they have to conclude an investigation into the case before they make a decision on payment. So much for the Ad!! Note to travellers – if you ever get your travellers cheques stolen, call AmEx before you report it to the police – you stand a greater chance of getting your money back same or next day.

After changing our hostel for a small B&B up the road, we went for a quick beer to drown our sorrows in the hope that we’d wake in the morning to find that it had all been nothing more than a bad dream.

Thursday 11^th May
Unfortunately the sight of only 5 items of luggage in our room instead of the usual 6 signalled that our TV Reality trip in Central America was indeed real. So off down to the British Embassy, photos in hand, in search of new passports. To say that the Embassy was efficient, welcoming, sympathetic, helpful and true to their word was an understatement. In no more than an hour all paperwork was completed, cash exchanged hands and we knew that good fortune was starting to shimmer. Tomorrow we would have new IDs.

So we would have passports, but now we have no flight tickets. What then ensued was a series of calls, emails, a red herring of travel agents (we think that that is a new collective adjective for their profession), more international calls, and yet more visits to travel agents. To cut what is already a long story a little shorter we eventually got new tickets with Avianca (Columbia’s national airline), through a new agent in Costa Rica, despite the agent who issued the original ticket was in Nicaragua and had no agent affiliation in Costa Rica. Things were starting to work out……….we got a fresh set of replacement tickets. 

Friday 12^th May 11:00
With new passports in hand and the knowledge that we were finally leaving Costa Rica the next day destined for Panama and our final country of this trip, we tried to chill out and relax as best we could. So in true tradition a bar was found, together with good food and wine in the restaurant we went to on first arriving in Costa Rica. To say we were glad to be going…….well.

Next stop…….the land of a mind blowing canal and no roads south into Columbia.

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