San Jose (Costa Rica) - We know the way...and we know the way out

SAN JOSE (COSTA RICA)
04 February - 05 February 2017

There's not a lot to write home about when it comes to mentioning our return to San Jose. It was completely out of necessity, a requirement allowing us to transfer from Boquete in Panama to San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua.

Our overnight stay didn't uncover anything that we'd somehow missed on our previous stop.

Kindly accept this entry as a mere placeholder of necessity. Something that prevents me from breaking the travel chain of realisation from start to finish,

And with that said, San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, next stop!

San Jose (Costa Rica) - Do you know how to get there?

San Jose (Costa Rica)                           

22 January – 24 January 2017

Exiting the terminal in San Jose I desperately wanted to ask someone, ‘Sabes como llegar a San Jose’, which is roughly translates to asking someone whether they know the way to San Jose. Our opportunity did come soon enough when we really did need to find the local bus that went downtown. The meaning, or rather the relation of the question probably would have been lost on them in the sense that the song, ‘Do you know the way to San Jose’, was about busting out of Los Angeles rather than trying to find your way out of a Costa Rican airport.

This will take you to San Jose - the bus driver must know the way, right?

San Jose - Costa Rica

Staying the course with our budget busting holiday we jumped a public bus from the airport and made the assumption that whichever one we took it was eventually tracking to city centre, which in fact it was, just that we exited a couple of kilometres too early subjecting us to an extended walk across town in order to get to our hostel.

Down town San Jose - Costa Rica

San Jose - Costa Rica

San Jose - Costa Rica

San Jose - Costa Rica

In all honesty  we found San Jose to be unremarkable. Fairly ordinary concrete structures, honking traffic, nothing outstanding nor noteworthy. San Jose, aka, ‘Chepe’ is not even a vanilla capital, it’s the lighter side of beige. The only place where we found some respite from the run of the mill was within Barrio Escalante, an area known as the gastronomic centre of town. At least here you could wonder in and out of several fairly cool establishments without journeying too far and without acquiring that innate level of boredom where you look at a city and just think, ‘so what’.

Some of the coolest looking cash around - Costa Rican colon

Down town San Jose - Costa Rica

Cars side by side with good 'ole fashioned rail - San Jose - Costa Rica

Unfortunate as it is, San Jose is the capital of the mediocre but far from being representative of the entire country  - thank goodness for that. I understand that like many places, digging deeper, getting to know the people, making real connections would probably light the way to fascination but that's the oeuvre of modern day travel. It's identification by Instagram, your bite sized one stop shop of satisfaction that necessitates a highlight for both validity and depth. San Jose, we just didn't have the time for you. Apologies on our part, but really, you need to get yourself some game!