San Jose Costa Rica Day One

I am so tired of eight hour bus rides. I thought the ride from the border of Nicaragua to San Jose would take five hours for some reason. When i looked at a map, I realized 8 hours makes more sense. the bus stopped once for a break about 2 hours in, then non-stop to San Jose. There is nothing I hate more than arriving in a big city in the night with all my belongings and having to catch a cab in the rain in a sketchy part of town. Plus the only thing I ate that entire day was a plate of gallo pinto (traditional rice, beans, cheese and egg breakfast dish)and a large roll on the bus. I believe a war was fought between Nicaragua and another country over bragging rights to who invented gallo pinto and how it is properly perpared.

the 1km long border crossing between Nicaragua and Costa Rica was pretty interesting, as all the guidebooks and people I've met said. The Nica side is full of wooden shacks and people trying to sell you things. You cross through a little door along the concrete wall and then go to the concrete building to your right to get your exit stamp and pay usd$2 exit fee. Then, ideally, you get on one of the first class buses right in front of the Nica immigration office. I paid usd$10 for the ride to San Jose. You get on the bus, it drives down the border for about 500 yards, then you get off and get your Costa Rica entrance stamp. then you wait around for an hour, take your luggage out of the bus, line it up on a wooden table and let the costa rican custom officials "examine" your luggage. Then you get back on the bus and go. On the bus, you watch movies such as The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith (in spanish) as the miles go by outside the window.

The hostel i am staying at is pretty nice. It's a converted house, it has a small pool table that is too close to the wall so you can really only play on two sides of the table. The place itself is really nice and clean, they have a full kitchen which i will probably utilize because san jose is so (relatively) expensive. they have a nice living room with TV and movies and computers with internet. San Jose itself is the nicest, most modern, most western city I've seen so far. it has lots of traffic lights, tons of KFC's, Subways, burger kings, McDonalds, etc... Although it is kind of expensive, you can still find smaller eateries with pretty cheap food which is what I did today.

Protip: Rough Guides is a superior guidebook to Lonely Planet. Lonely Planet sucks.

Did I mention the hot showers at the hostel? Heaven.

I really don't want to spend weeks in San Jose, as nice as it is. What I really want to do is head out to the WWOOF farms as soon as I can. I have to see how the Krav Maga thing works out.