Costa Rica 2009 - my findings and experiences

So, after a month spent in Costa Rica I am finally back in the over-populated London, which I love so so much... Here is my report, although with a severe delay (but better late then never, innit).

All my photos are in the photoalbums here.

The description of my outbound trip is already posted, so no need to repeat. However, even the return would do as a horror story with 14 hours of flight and another 14 hours of waiting at the airports in San José, Madrid and Barcelona plus two hours to get from Gatwick back home.

My stay in Costa Rica consisted mainly in working at the office and hence spending time in the capital city, which gave me the chance to meet a lot of colleagues, whom I ' ve known only through MSN so far, but I also managed to see a little bit of the country.

 

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San José is not a nice city and everyone whom I asked about it replied simply "San José is horrible, I hate it!" – no matter if that person was from California, Canada or Alajuela (a town just outside San José). Seems like everyone is there just because of work (same like me and London, after all).

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Who likes San José?
San José is dirty, noisy and dangerous at night (some places not only at night). Logic would dictate that downtown should be relatively safe compared to suburb areas, at least this is how it works in every city I ' ve visited so far, but not in San José. Downtown there is the worst part instead. Streets are full of rubbish, junkies, people selling obviously stolen stuff (which is kind of curious, though – to see a guy with a blanket spread on the sidewalk selling a coffee-machine, an old TV, a tyre, some cutlery and who knows what else. One would say mixed merchandise is good for business, but.... I was so disappointed about the pictures I couldn ' t take, but better safe than sorry and drawing out my camera with incorporated mobile (I wouldn ' t call the Nokia N95 Black mobile with camera) and waving it around is not very safe over there.

How they drink and eat in San José
In any case, not everything is spoiled in San José. While it is hard to find proper restaurants in Costa Rica, which is americanized a great deal when it comes to food (all you see along the roads are huge signs McDonald ' s, KFC, Burger King, Taco Bell, Pops, Burger King, KFC, McDonald ' s...), there are many nice bars with a few common things – they do offer good and not-that-much-americanized-yet food, good beer (which isn ' t hard at all, since tap beer is a non-existent concept and all comes in bottles) and usually nice chicks serving you. However, the greatest and most appreciated aspect of bars and restaurants in San José for a guy coming from London is the fact that they stay open till late at night! You don ' t have to rush to the pub right after work and hope you ' ll get pissed before they stop serving at ten or eleven (which is why so many English people get totally wasted before supper...). Whenever I went to a bar, it was so unusual (and pleasant) to realize it is two, three or even four in the morning and I ' m still getting beer, nobody is kicking me out and I haven ' t spent my daily salary to buy a few drinks. If they did close after all or if I got fed up with the electronic music they play in some places, I would often move to Sand, a rock bar in San Pedro, very nice place indeed, open till very early morning. In fact, I spent my last night there, sipping Pilsen – la cerveza de Costa Rica.

Hotel Del Ray
I dedicated a lot of text to Costarican bars and restaurants, but I didn ' t mention the coolest place in San José yet – Hotel Del Ray. Who knows what I ' m talking about is probably laughing their asses right now, but let me put this straight – I didn ' t buy anything worth a hundred dollars per hour there! Nor have I haggled the price to get it down to sixty, comprende? I enjoyed the drinks, the food... and the view.

Ok, I ' d better clarify for who has no clue what I ' m talking about. Hotel Del Ray is a 24/7 bar, restaurant and casino attached to the hotel and a renowned meeting place for people looking for and offering sexual services for a fee. However, it is nothing like a brothel, where you go with the one and only purpose and everything is so obvious, not at all. Here you can go to simply have a few drinks, a good meal in a pleasant enviroment hardly different from a common bar. There are pictures of fishermen on the walls, you can watch a game in the telly, play some blackjack, etc. And you can get a top-class hoe if you want. The place is crowded with beautiful latin chicks of all colours, shapes and sizes for a great choice and while they will rarely approach you by themselves, they will smile and try to make eye contact and get your interest. Unlike in some other places I had the chance to end up in, these girls are generally nice, pleasant and friendly, although the majority would not speak much English so not much chance for a chat (but chatting is not what they are they for, after all). Even without seeking sex it is real fun being in that place. Apart from my eyes jumping from one pair of titties to another in amazement and temptation (yes, the temptation was great, even if I originally wanted just a burger), it was fun observing "the game" – girls trying to attract guy ' s attention, price haggling, sometimes a couple leaving, sometimes a guy with two girls leaving, sometimes girls sitting with guys and just talking and having drinks, the rhytm with which the "merchandise" on display rotated, sometimes girls coming back and then leaving again, etc. All this being perfectly voluntary on both sides with nobody being pushed into doing anything (tempted yes, but not pushed). In closing, I really enjoyed Hotel Del Ray, especially the Philly steak with cheese!.

Costarican beer – joke or forgery?
Don ' t get me wrong, I liked beer in Costa Rica and dedicated a lot of resources to enjoy it. However, there is something about the three Costarican breweries (there are no more, as far as I know) that totally astonished me and needs to be mentioned.

As most of you probably know, Bavaria is a popular Dutch beer and Pilsen is the renowned and most exported beer of the Czech Republic, which I proudly claim to be the country producing the best lagers in the world. Pilsen relates to the Czech Republic the same way as the statue of liberty relates to the United States.

How does this relate to Costa Rica? By the fact that apart from Imperial, the two most popular beer brands in the country are Pilsen and Bavaria. So what, they ' re imported, you would say. Nope, they ain ' t, would I reply. You don ' t put "cerveza de Costa Rica" on a beer imported from Europe, or do you? When I heard that they have Pilsen, I jumped with joy about the success of our beer, until I saw the bottle with my eyes.

The biggest paradox (fellow beer lovers, please don ' t crucify me) is that I like the Costarican pilsen much better than the Czech one. As a matter of fact, Pilsen is one of my least favourite brands when I ' m home and the Costarican one tastes more like Gambrinus, my most favourite brand when I ' m home. Anyway, enough about beer, I ' m getting thirsty.

Crazy drivers on "wholly holy" roads
Until recently I assumed that Czechs are the worst drivers in the world. Now I know they ' re the worst in Europe, because Costa Ricans beat them by far. They ' re totally reckless! On roads full of holes and no painted lanes they drive from one side to another, on the highway they go so near each other that it ' s really scary sometimes (like when we met that mothertrucker with a huge 18-wheeler who probably thought he was riding a bike, running from lane to lane like a crazy motherf... Costa Rican). In a traffic jam they would do anything to get going. Also they beep all the time, often for no particular reason, but it ' s very useful at crossroads (especially if you meet someone who takes red lights just as a reference, not as a clear STOP. However, unlike Czech drivers, they ' re not mean and disrespectful of each other. They would not speed up on a narrow road just because somebody else is trying to overtake them and their ego cannot bear such a humiliation, no matter if the overtaking guy almost crashes in the oncoming car. They behave like this simply because it ' s their nature, it ' s how they are and you will never see a driver cursing at someone, giving the middle-finger or showing the slightest sign of anger.

By the way, since I ' m talking about drivers I ' d like to comment on what they ' re driving, as well. During my very first moments in Costa Rica I was overwhelmed with visual input from local vehicles. Apart from the omnipresent "kings of the road", the huge American trucks that roam the local roads, there aren ' t many American cars, which is quite surprising. From what I saw European cars are much more populars (a colleague has a Peugeot 206 and of course he has the same problems as every owner of this French crap all over the world – whenever there is a problem, which is nothing uncommon, it takes weeks to get spare parts). Strangely enough, the by far most popular cars in Costa Rica are from Asia. All taxis are Hyundais.

Weather, nature, beaches and so on
The weather was very nice all the time. It rains for 6 to 9 months per year in Costa Rica, but I got there in the summer and can ' t complain. True, it gets pretty cold at night, but during the day it ' s perfectly fine. I was making fun of the locals when they asked me about the weather in London I said it ' s quite similar – rains all the time. And when I described the average temperature in the UK and winters in the Czech Republic to Randy, who ' s from sunny California, he almost fainted. One day we went to the beach and it was 36°C... however, when we were coming back in the evening, it was "only" 25°C and people were complaining it was too cold. I was laughing my ass.

The Czech English on the American continent
I mentioned to Randy and to some of the locals how much I dislike my eastern european accent and that I dream about getting rid of it. However, Randy said that if I went to California with that accent, girls would devour me, coz I would be much more interesting. Hm, never thought about it that way – in London I ' m just another guy from eastern Europe to whom anybody will ask "Poland?". It ' s true that when I spoke with people in Costa Rica they seldom asked if I was from the US (which they assume a tall pale non-Spanish speaking person is) and instead thought I was Russian.

Ah, btw, almost every Costarican knows the Czech Republic or at least Czechoslovakia. The guy who checked my passport at the airport started naming Pavel Nedved, Petr Cech, Poborsky, Skuhravy... we ' re really famous when it comes to soccer, but try to mention hockey and they will be totally out of the picture. They never saw snow...

One thing I loved about CR is the cheap cabs (you can get across the city for ten bucks) and cheap beer, although food is bloody expensive. I couldn ' t believe my eyes when I went to the supermarket, where 1kg of chicken breast was 6 dollars, almost as much as in London.

To resume, I loved Costa Rica, they have such beautiful nature and so much to do there. Not only do they have both the Pacific (which is hot like coffee) and the Caribbean, (where I didn ' t manage to go and it pisses me off a great deal), but also a lot of mountains to do hiking, rapelling, gliding and canopying. Canopy is such fun! There are active volcanos, frequent earthquakes, nice weather, in other words a place I wanna visit again, that ' s for sure. I want to visit Monteverde, apparently one of the nicest places in the whole country, with a 2km long zipline called The Superman, where you hand face down and slide on the rope for two minutes. It must be amazing! And from the top you can see the giant Nicaraguan lake! Everything except for San Jose is so nice.

Unfortunately I spent most of my time in San Jose, since I had to go to work and being alone, I had to rely on friends from work to go somewhere – to have the same days off, to go with someone who has a car, etc., since I don ' t like to travel alone. And alas, not everyone is reliable...