Moving On

The airport hotel let us check out late so we got a good sleep and awoke ready to do errands. We got our typhoid shots, mailed a modem, toured a couple of potential apartments, and put our car into storage. We wanted to visit Bernie again but the storage lady took a lot longer than we expected: we learned that her family was Louisiana French, she missed a niece who lives in Cincinnati and looks kind of like Leia, and her friend runs a wine storage business and lets her sample many goodies like chocolates. Instead of visiting Bernie, we met two friends of ours T and G for two dinners. They then took us to the airport which was very nice of them.

A little time was passed browsing the duty-free: we both agreed the small Swarovski black swan pendant was the only decent piece of jewelry there, and debated buying it until they kicked us out. Avianca is the airline we flew with. The first plane, to El Salvador, was very dated. Dirty seats, no entertainment, and it barely stayed in the sky: it shook in fear most of the way. On top of that someone decided to eat a bologna sandwich on the flight, and we were seated across the isle from a baby, which proved to be the quietest person on that flight - certainly more than the American child who was yelling “this is so amazing oh my god!” all through takeoff. Good job, baby! Leia had been feeling progressively sicker through the past few busy days and the uncomfortable overnight flight did not do her much good. The layover in San Salvador was short and easy. We found our gate easily and the plane was really much better than the one used for the longer flight (why?!)

Arriving to San Jose we had to pick up our bags, exchange some $$ to slothbux, and buy a local SIM card. The luggage claim there is backwards from everywhere else. The regular luggage is to be picked up at a counter, and the oversized or oddly shaped luggage is found on the conveyor belt. After waiting in that hall for a while after everyone else had left, we spotted our backpacks lying on the floor in the middle of the room. Weird. The exchange desks there offer a rate 12% worse than you can get elsewhere, so exchanging $400 to get us through the first several days, we lost nearly $50 of value. The SIM cards also offer a special rip-off package for tourists but the normal 2GB internet one is not bad; much better than you can get in the USA.

We talked to some car rentals at the airport but took a quick taxi to our hostel - we arrived at noon even after such an unhurried morning at the airport, and they didn’t have a room ready for us until after 2:00PM, so we had bentos for lunch at the hostel hibachi restaurant, and tried to make trip plans. We were so tired that when our room was ready we crashed asleep for four hours. This despite the bed and pillows being pretty hard and Guy getting electrocuted a few times trying to adjust the cold shower. We spent the evening booking another hotel, looking for rental cars, and had dinner at the same restaurant.