San Jose

¡Hola!
Just a quick update to say we´ve arrived safely (eventually) and are in San Jose, the capital city. It´s 10am here and the weather is gorgeous - there´s a bit of a breeze but it´s warm and sunny. We´ve just had breakfast (a bargain at 3500 colones, or about three pounds fifty, for coffee on tap, juice, then pancakes and maple syrup for Ben and tropical fruit salad with banana yoghurt and oaty cereal for Lou) and are going to hang around at the hostel for a while, before venturing into the capital. The room is quite basic although clean with hot water, the communal areas of the hostel are really good, though - there´s a swimming pool, free internet, hammocks etc and there are lots of other young travellers around, so there´s a nice atmosphere. Too soon to say what it´s like here, but on first impressions it is very green, sunny and friendly.
The journey yesterday was okay, in that nothing went wrong, but it was just incredibly long and with the time changes, by the time we got to sleep it was 5am in our heads, but only 10pm in Costa Rica, so we had 12 hours of flights plus hanging around at Miami (where we had the biggest but most disgusting diet coke ever), and effectively a 27 hour day on about 2 hours sleep. Not an experience we´re keen to repeat!! The Virgin Atlantic tv on demand thing is excellent though (Family Guy, Simpsons, Blackadder and films, top 40 albums and audio books) (although annoying that they suddenly turn it off without warning when you´re about to descend) but by complete contrast, Costa Rican tv looks awful - when we were having breakfast this morning there was a music video on.. it was actually more naff than French rap, which certainly didn´t seem possible before today. The stereo was playing Red Hot Chili Peppers but has now moved on to a delightful medley of Eiffel 65 - Europop halfway across the world!
We haven´t found any English people yet, but there are some gringos (Americans), and lots of Dutch people, inexplicably..

Anyway, this was going to be a quick one, so we´ll sign off now.
Hope you are all well and that England has a tiny bit of sun (we will try to send some over, but in return can you keep the rain over there please?).
Lots of love,

Louise and Ben xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx