Day 27 in San Jose, Costa Rica
5:45 am-
We started our day really early. Our goal was to beat the traffic to the border. we had to wait an extra 20 minutes before we left due to the rain. It was raining really hard and we didn't want to get soaked loading the car. We drove an hour to the border and luckily hit no traffic. We parked in front of the rental car company and waited for them to open for 30 minutes. They had a security guard try to open Bens door and that did not like that at all. He was asking what's we were doing sitting there and then proceeded to tell us they opened at 8:00 am, like we didn't already know that. People in Central America are very intrusive and controlling. We have had more than one incident that this has happened. We had a guy make Ben park up further (maybe a foot) because he didn't like the way we parked. This is just one of the many things Ben has dealt with driving over here. He doesn't like controlling people but he hasn't went off on anybody yet. The horn blowing over here is insane too. They honk for everything. Back to our day, we returned the rental car and walked to the immigration office. We had people trying to sell us papers that we later found we didn't even need. We crossed the border after getting our exit stamp which only cost $3 each. We planned on riding a bus to San Jose but we passed a rental car company and decided to price it. It wasn't much more than what we would have paid for bus tickets and taxis for five people.
9:15 am-
After renting the car we went to the Costa Rica border to get our entering stamp. The line was huge. Our guess was 300-400 people in line. We got in line and had multiple people tell us we could go to the front since we had small kids. We finally got out of line to go try. We stood up there for a while before the border was even open. Once opened the polica was very rude, he would let me and the kids through but said Ben would have to go stand in the line and wait. We told him that we were together and couldn't leave without him. He just shrugged his shoulders and went on his way. We eventually went back and stood in the line. Luckily the line moved fast, it only took one hour and 15 minutes to get our stamp. We had to show proof of leaving the country. This border was really strict compared to all of the borders we have crossed before.
11:30 am-
We went back to our car and hit the road. we were hungry and drove for 2 hours in search of food. We picked Sunday as a travel day again and most things are not open on Sundays. We found a KFC and Ben wanted to stop.
2:30 pm-
We got back on the road, we still didn't have a destination in mind. We finally decided to just go to San Jose area to make it easy when we need to leave. We book a hotel on kayak and drove for 2 hours until we made it. We stopped and had a few pipas frias (coconut waters) on the way. I was able to take a lot of picture of the scenery on the way here but unfortunately my camera died on the way and I apparently lost my battery charger :(. So those photos will come at a later time.
6:00 pm-
We checked into our hotel and got settled in, it's definitely one of the best places we have stayed at. We went ahead and booked the rest of our days here. It's outside of San Jose and in a good area. I would recommend this place to anyone (Adventure Inn) with free breakfast, great wifi, hot water, a/c, pool, hot tub, restaurant, gym, and a friendly staff.
7:00 pm-
We went in search of a restaurant. The place we tried to find was impossible to find. We gave up and stopped at a little Mexican restaurant, thinking we couldn't go wrong there. Well we were wrong, the food was not good. Ben had fajitas or should I say chicken with bbq sauce. We had quesadillas and chicken tacos. All the chicken had BBQ sauce on it and nothing else. The kids only ate because they were hungry.
8:30 pm-
We got back to the hotel and everybody was tired from getting up early. So most of us crashed on the bed pretty early.
Not sure what tomorrow holds for us. Just going to see what happens. I don't have many pictures because they are on my camera and no way to get them off without my charger.
