Costa Rica & work

My birthday party ended around 2am and I woke up at 4am to leave for the airport to catch the plane to San Jose, Costa Rica's capital. Of course Alberto and I were really tired, but we managed to stay awake enough to notice our plane being called off, but once in the plane we slept and didn't even notice the take off and woke up only once we touched the ground in Costa Rica 1.5 hours later (and 5 minutes half way to eat our breakfast). Anyway, we arrived around 8am and we had no idea what to do so we got some flyers in an abandoned tourist information stand on the airport and walked outside and found a bus to the center. Once arrived in the centre we walked around for a while and asked some people where to find some cheap hotels and after walking quite a bit in the Costa Rican heat (28 degrees early in the morning already) we finally found a decent hotel for a decent price (Costa Rica turned out to be a lot more expensive than Guatemala) and we rested for a bit. Then we went back to the centre and were surprised to see how big the difference with Guatemala City is. There were a lot of people walking outside, just shopping and relaxing, you don't see that in Guatemala City.. (except for zone 1, the historical centre). But except for a few buildings there were not many places of interest, the best thing was just to walk around and enjoy the atmosphere. Then we had some dinner and returned to the hotel to rest before going out. Instead, we woke up the following morning, so we never went out.

That morning we took the bus (at 6am) to Manuel Antonio, a place at the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. After a few hours we arrived and walked into the hotel next to the bus stop and were lucky to find a room right away. Unfortunately the hotel didn't accept bank cards, so we had to take a taxi to another village to find an ATM that would accept our card. Around 11 we had paid the hotel and arrived at the entrance of the national park. A lot of people were waiting there and it seemed that we might have to wait for a quite a while before getting in. But timed our arrival well and after 5 minutes we were let in and started our walk through the jungle. Soon already we saw a group staring at a sloth (luiaard, I also had to look it up) in the trees. A bit further we arrived at a beach, like you would imagine the beaches here, palm trees, white sand and light blue water. Then we finished our walk through the jungle, but we still hadn't seen any monkeys, so that was a little disappointing.. But we were happy to find a group of monkeys on the way to the exit, so our mission was still accomplished. Then we relaxed some on the beach and changed to get ready for Quepos, the village next door. On the way in the bus we met two locals who showed us a nice restaurant with ok prices, we had dinner with them and went to a bar where we would meet a guy that worked in our hotel. The bar turned out to be almost empty and also the guy from the hotel was bored so we took off and tried to find another place, but at 12 we gave up and went back to the hotel.

The next day was already the last day in Costa Rica, we had a few hours in the morning to relax at the beach before our bus would take us to the airport. We left around 12 and arrived at the airport around 15:30 and then waited 4 hours until our flight left. Like on the way there, we slept during the whole flight and missed our chance in Guatemala to see our apartment from close (the airplanes practically fly through our window). So, evaluating, Costa Rica was a beautiful country, very safe and expensive and with very friendly people, I'll definitely enjoy returning in the summer.

The week after that was really busy; because we were in Costa Rica until Monday, we had to make up for that missed day at work (well, we were not forced, but we had to in order to finish our work). So I worked on Saturday and Sunday as well in order to prepare for the closing of the month January. So also the week after I made some pretty long days (especially because I still have 2 jobs). But on Saturday I went to Antigua with the new trainees (2 Norwegians and a German) and some guys from AIESEC. There we walked around and I realised again that Antigua is really nice to walk around for a few hours, but that there is really not that much to see and it is not that different from the average French/Spanish/Italian town, so I still don't know why it is that famous around the world. The day after I just relaxed and got ready for another week of work.

Well, that's it for now. I'm not sure when you can expect my next update, we don't really have a lot of plans for the coming weeks, but in Guatemala you can never now what will happen...

Ah and the pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10445&id=226700492&l=aa98f3847e