Day: 136
Just a few minutes after midnight on day one-three-six and I am sitting in terminal 207 of Ontario International Airport in a black pleather chair waiting for my flight to board and take off to Costa Rica. The recent terrorist plans in London have this whole place feeling like a jail. Heavily armed military at every crossing, not sunblock on the plane, and extended periods of serching through our bags. The young girl in glasses next to me is rocking herself to sleep on her pillow in her lap. The people here look exhausted and dreary, like one to many late night flights have flown their way. I am having a rush of adreniline surging through my body in excitemnet to get to someplace completely new and foreign. American has been nice to me (horrible on the budget), but I really enjoy the struggle of finding a place to sleep in a land where everyone jabbers at me in a different tounge. Life just makes sense to me when I have to figure it out every minute, like I am up to a new challenge with ever passing moment. I have eighteen days for Costa Rica before I am home for an entire month, for 10 days of work, some siblings birthdays and my friend’s, Christine, 21st birthday celebration. She was trying to make it to Costa Rica with me but budget constraints wouldn’t let her. It’s too bad, I would have enjoyed the company. I guess I’ll Just have to make some new friends, part of the adventure.
Time to board.
Time for a 3 hour flight, land in Houston just after 5am. I chased that with a four and a half hour layover and another 3 hour flight into San Jose, Costa Rica.
I booked a Hostel online, The Pangea, and they have a service that for $6 they’ll pick you up from the airport and take you right to their hostel. A great deal considering that a Taxi for the same ride costs $14. The bad side of this is that I was introduced to “Tico Time”, a Tico is what the Costa Ricans calll themselves and a sense of time is what they lack. It was about fifteen minutes before I found Oscar waiting for me and about another half an hour until Oscar found Martin and Andrea, a British couple who were shareing the van with me. Then Oscar called the shuttle and we waited another half an hour until it arrived, packed to the brim with a departing school group. We finally arrived at the hostel just after two. I showered and even though I was exhausted I decided to go for a little walk through this grey city to see if I could find some lunch and an ATM. I found some money and a chicken sandwich then decided on a little nap, seeing how I didn’t manage to sleep much last night.
When I woke up it was just after six and another guy, Jeremy from South Carolina, had just moved into the room with me. We got to talking and headed upstairs to the hostel bar for a beer. I understood San Jose wasn’t really safe after dark but Jeremy who had been in Costa Rica for the last 10 weeks started telling me scary mugging stories. At first I didn’t completely believe him, but soon another guy joined us, Mike a med student also from South Carolina, and he also had his own stories and reasons not to go out after dark. I decided to believe them, and since it seemed everyone else at the hostel also planned to stay at the bar all night, and beers were only $1.40, I didnt see any reason to go out. I spent the evening drinking beers and listening to Costa Rica advice from everyone who had already spent a few weeks here. I made some friends and drank half a dozen beers before all the time on the airplanes and inadequete sleep caught up to me just
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