Letters from Costa Rica (part 1: San Jose)

  (text in ENG)

National Theatre in San Jose

  Thinking that this is our last chance to travel in this continent, and as it was on my bucket list to see a real jungle in my life, we planned a trip to Costa Rica for the end of the year. Costa Rica is a favourite travel destination for the Americans and as the end of the year (Christmas, New Year`s) is high season everywhere, we planned and reserved everything months before. I don`t know if we really had to do it finally, but that`s true that even in the summer we had find hotels already full for the winter...

  But finally we took nice hotels, planned everything beforehand so all we had to do in December is to go and have fun in Cost Rica! We flew in from Mexico to San Jose (it took only 3 hours) and I have to tell, the American airlines can be ashamed by the much smaller Taca Airlines. In this 3 hour flight we had screens in front of us with dozens of movies, we got a nice breakfast and the staff was extremely nice. Opposite to this, one week ago we had to take a 12 hour flight to Japan in United with 4 movies shown from the corridor screens, the food was like trash and the staff was rather not be there... No wonder, United rank 9th among the 10 American airlines in 2013...

   So, the 3 hours flew quickly and at 9am we arrived to San Jose Airport. We reserved a hotel close to downtown so we took a local bus there (it`s one tenth the price as the taxi). Fortunately the bus stop was right in front of the hotel, so we didn`t even have to walk a lot. The staff in the hotel was nice as well - we were planning just to drop off our bags and head for some sightseeing, but they gave us our rooms hours before check-in. After a little rest we headed to the downtown. Well, our guidebook said there is not to see in the city, maybe the zoo to "prepare" for the nature and jungle. Well, the guidebook was right. The downtown is nice as it has broad walking streets, but nothing to see really - rows of local shops, not much restaurant or cafe... The only thing worth to see is the National Theatre: it is a European style theatre, nice sculptures, paintings etc. However, for a European girl, like me it wasn`t much of a deal. We have theaters, opera houses just as nice as this one and for the price of the entrance fee in Costa Rica, in Hungary you can even see an opera or ballet. So, we looked around and left in about 10 minutes.
   But even so, it was nice to walk around in the downtown and get the atmosphere of the city. We rested the rest of the day and left to the airport again early in the morning the next day.

downtown of San Jose

   We headed to Drake Bay, a place near Panama. From Drake Bay (which is both the name of the bay and a small village in the bay) you can reach Corcovado National Park, the most remote and less "touristicated" National Park in Costa Rica.
 
   We took a 45 minutes flight with a national LCC, Nature Air. We flew with a 16 seater small cessna, everything was smooth and the view was nice from the plane. The first 20-30 minutes were over mountains and then we got out to the ocean and flew along the landline until we reached the airport of Drake Bay. The airport itself was showing the remoteness of the place: only one runway, a small souvenir stand outside and that`s it.

   But about Corcovado, I will write in my next letter...

More pictures of San Jose → San Jose