On Thursday night/early Friday morning, Erika, Wade, Stephanie (another teacher) and I left Denver a little after midnight and arrived to San Jose, the capital, around 6:30am. Of course, this was perfect timing for morning rush hour. We finally arrived to the awesome Hotel Vesuvio. Our rooms weren't quite ready so we walked around a bit. We found an ATM to take out colones (the exchange rate right now is around 523 c to $1US-- imagine that math) and we had our first introduction to gallo pinto (amazing rice and bean dish) at Cafe Britt. We spent the rest of the afternoon napping and watching the local Denver station on their cable (very odd, but a pleasant surprise.) We explored some of the downtown parks, then decided to have a drink to welcome the weekend. Let's just say Sportsmen's Bar in San Jose isn't really like the one in Flagstaff. And, the guidebooks are correct: prostitution is alive and well in Costa Rica (it is also legal!) Wade must have made the other men jealous as he entered with two blondes and didn't have to do anything but by our ginger ales. Once we figured out what was going on, we paid the check and left. It was a strange introduction to the culture, to say the least....
We didn't have a game plan for Saturday, so we decided to take a tour to Tortuguero. Jungle Tom was quite a character, but very knowledgeable. We stopped and had breakfast along the way (gallo pinto again!) and learned about banana production and packaging at a planatation. That is serious manual labor in the HOT sun.
Finally, we made it to the canals where we had a boat tour of the park. We saw a lot of crocodiles, small turtles, Jesus lizards (that walk on water), numerous birds and monkeys. We took a small walk through the "jungle" to reach the beach where the large leatherbacks come to nest. Unfortunately, we were a bit early in the season for that....
The trip to Tortuguero was the only chance we had to see the Carribean side of the country. We returned late to the hotel and with Stephanie and Douglas' help, decided to head to Monteverde. (He works at the hotel and was so amazing!)
