Playa Tamarindo and San Jose

Playa Tamarindo,as I had been warned,w as VERY touristy. I felt more like I was on a foreign holiday than travelling as they were expensively dresses Americans averywhere,s eemingly spending all theirm oney in very pricey souvenir shops! It was a great place to hang out for a few nights before my flight though. I had been reccommended the Botella de Leche hostel which turned out to be a brilliant choice. Obviously the owners have a thing for cattle because the entire hostel was deocrated in a bovine theme with cow print on most of the walls and small herds of model cows dotted around the shelves.
As I only really had one whole day there, having been travelling for most of Wednesday, I just walked around the shops and lay on the beach for most of the afternoon reading my book. I cooked for myself both evenings as Costa Rica is very much more expensive than the rest of Central America and I was trying to conserve a bit of money. The kitchen in the hostel was brill thoughand was open to the common area with big bean bags and sofas so all very sociably stuff really.
I was tempted to stay another night at the beach, but in the end stuck to my original plan and caught an early morning bus on Friday to San Jose which took the best part of seven hours but was pretty comfortableso not too bad really. I´ve got to get used to long bus rides as you can hardly get anywhere in South America without sitting on one for about that long anyway. I checked into my hostel, which again was very nice, and a perfect base for seeing the city. I explored the area near to the hostel in the afternoon and wandered round the Nacional Park which is small, but very sweet.The temperature is noticably different here in the capital, and actually, walking through the park I felt like I was at home somewhere. I cooked for myself again that evening and then just had a very relaxing night in front of a film.
The next morning I got up early(ish) as I wanted to walk around as much of the city as I could in one day. The boys said that they had hated San Jose, but I found a sort of charm to it. It´s true that it´s just a big, busy city, but I much preferred it to some of the capitals I had been to previously on my trip. The guidebook pointed out lots of plazas and lovely buildings that I should visit so I just meadered for a good few hours taking photos and soaking up the city atmosphere. I also had a small parcel and some postcards to post so I went and found the post office, which was situated in the most lovely building I have seen yet on my travels. I took plenty of photos so you can see those on flickr.
It was mid afternoon by the time I made it back to the hostel so I bought some lunch and spend the rest of the afternoon relaxng by the pool and reading my book.
I decided to be a proper traveller and not get a taxi to the airport which would have cost me about $15, and took a local bus instead which was about $1! Took a while to find it and then wasn´t entirely sure that the busd driver knew what I was talking about when I asked if he was going to the international airport, but I got there in the end with plenty of time to check in.
Funilly, when I was queueing to board my flight a girl approached me and asked if I had been on Utila about a month ago and was friend with a tall blonde girl called Alex!! She had been there and Lals had been her divemaster on a few dives. I have said it before, but it seems to happen so much travelling that you meet people again and again even weeks and countries apart.

Playa Tamarindo and San Jose

San Jose, Costa Rica