The next stop on our Central America adventure was another long bus ride down to San Jose in Costa Rica. So far this was my least favourite border crossing. They let me out of Guatemala with no worries at all but when I tried to enter Honduras they pointed out that somehow when Nadia and I had paid and got our stamps/visas for the four countries (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicarauga and El Salvador) she had been given 90 days and I had been given only 4! This caused quite the drama as I was already 2 days over that time limit. I tried to explain that we had been screwed over as we had stood at the counter together and paid the same amount and there was no reason why I should have received only 4 days. My own fault really for not checking it at the time but hey, live and learn. The crappy part of it was that the immigration guys hauled our gear off the bus and the bus was leaving without us. No refund. No guarentee of the next one accepting our current ticket. Mean man! Immigration told me that I would have to go back to the Guatemalan side of the border to get a new visa with more days on it. I told the guy that I only needed like 2 more days as we were busing straight through and only having an overnight stop in San Salvador before getting to Costa Rica. As expected he basically said tough luck. I was told that it would be US$115 for the extension which is a joke. Anyway I will not bore you with all the back and forth that went on but in the end I paid $20 and got an extra 5 days from the guy there and then and did not have to cross back into Guatemala. As a stroke of bloody great fortune (and karma on the mean bus driver) our bus was still there! On leaving the immigration car park it has been involved in a crash with another bus and had broken a window. The drivers were still sorting out insurance details so Nadia and I quickly chucked our stuff back on and jumped in while we had the chance. The funniest part was that there was a nun on the bus and as we went past her chair she grabbed Nadia´s arm and told her - God loves you girls. Ha! If anyone it was my Nan and Pop watching over us.
San Jose itself was a dirty big city and not all that special for us but our hostel was great fun adn we met a few Aussie girls that we had drinks with one night (we only stayed 2). We again had a few laughs at the fashion sense of some of the really big ladies who again like in Tulum persisted with wearing very tight and stretchy fabrics. In the parks I saw old men playing some wierd kind of game that involved balancing steel ball bearings on top of what looked like giant wooden salt and pepper shakers. They then rolled a small rubber ball at them and I am guessing it was somehow scored by how many ball bearings fell into each quarter of the chalk circle. I have no idea really but they were taking it very seriously.
From San Jose we went to a place on the Carribean coast called Cahuita. It was brilliant. They made fantastic carribean style seafood dishes (cheap!) and good cocktails. Best of all there was an 8km trail through the forest/jungle at the edge of the bay that lead all the way out and around the point. Walking this trail we saw heaps of cool stuff. vegetation just going mad. I truly think that anything that stood dtill there for more than a few hours would sprout leaves and flowers. There were mud crabs scurrying into their holes on the side of the path as we walked by, tiny hermit crabs everywhere and the ever present sound of howler monkeys. Sadly we did not see any of them but there was a whole troop of smaller monkeys that came down out of the trees right in fromt of us to eat the fruit that had fallen on the path. It was amazing as they paid us no mind at all and we were able to get really close to take photos. We went further along the coast to Puerto Viejo which is supposed to be a great party place and surfer town but it rained the whole time we were there so not much to say about it really except that I had the most interesting meal of the trip so far. We sat down at this little place to have nachos (cheap and easy) and the waiter leaned over and asked in a very conspiritorial way...would you like to have the soup to start. It is free! So of course being the cheapskates that we are we asked what kind of soup and he said something along the lines of it being a creamy type of soup. Of course we said yes, we´ll have it. When it came out it was khaki green and had a whole bunch of tiny little crab legs sticking out of it! It was vile and we still are not sure that he wasn´t having a lend of the idiot gringo girls ;-) Considering that we had seen crabs scurrying around all over the place including in bathrooms and kitchens I am not sure it was all that hygenic either but it´s a good story if nothing else.
