February 2002

ihana.com - big trip - diary - costa rica - february 2002

 

Hotel "Mil Estrellas" in the centre of San Jose

Landrover coffee!

Saturday 23 - Thursday 28 February

While in San Jose we checked out a couple of other night spots, one was particularly noteworthy, Hotel Del Rey. This is a big hotel with a bar and casino. The bar is packed with two types of people - prostitutes of mainly wicked quality ($100 each, according to two New York cops we met later) and fat american guys over for fishing trips. Naturally the two get together and everybody gets what they want. The ihana crew are of more noble persuasion and left to explore the more traditional night spots.

A visit to the Landrover dealer to buy a couple of wheel bearings for our spares collection was in order. We also tried to get some replacement shocks on warranty as two of our Old Man Emu units have failed and the landy has been bouncing around for a month now. No luck on the shocks, no thanks to the original supplier in England, but maybe we'll get them in Panama. We did get a free box of Landy coffee though.

Camping at 3491m...

...with a tuna...

...and a nice view

We drove north to Puerto Limon to investigate possible shipping from Costa Rica to Colombia but it was all via Panama so this was a waste of time. We did have a bit of a laugh with one of the locals, 65-year-old Johnson. He was hoping to pick up some of the passengers from the docked cruise liner in his taxi but business was slow so he regaled us with stories of how times have changed, with hard-working Philipino deck crews taking over from the easy-paced Europeans putting paid to his shore run ship painting ventures of past years. He showed us round a few shipping agents and told us that he'd never killed anybody...great!

We returned to San Jose, driving straight through and turning south over the mountains. The road wound upwards interminably through thick night fog until we finally cleared it at the summit. Not wanting to miss the inevitable stunning views the next morning, we camped here in probably the coldest night of the trip so far. After waking up, taking in the views and noticing that a decomposed tuna had somehow made its way almost 3500 vertical metres from its home, we descended into humid costal heat and arrived in Dominical.

Brake pads changed in the nick of time

Camping by the beach in Dominical

The end of Bs first surf board

Our travelswithrover friends were due to meet us here so while we waited T changed the brake pads. The rear drums were fine but the front disc pads had worn, in one case, almost down to the metal. The new pads feel massively better.

The campsite is dwarfed by tall coconut palms and there were enough fallen nuts lying around to make a tasty snack - just like living on a desert island. The waves here are supposed to be good for surfing but it was pretty flat so we just did a bit of swimming.

Opening coconuts

Typical Costa Rican scenery

Leaving Dominical, with its typically indifferent locals and specially inflated tourist prices, we drove parallel to the coast down to the Osa Peninsular.

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