Full Circle

Buenos Tardes,
We´re back in Costa Rica Backpackers, at the same computers I wrote our first update from, which is sort of poetic really. This time we´re staying in a cheaper but nicer and more conveniently-located room (with our own bathroom), which is good but just goes to show that even nice places try to rip tourists off. Today we travelled from Uvita to San Jose, via Quepos, which took a grand total of 11 hours (4 hour wait at Quepos), so now it´s 10 to 6, we´ve been up since 3.50am and are very, very tired. Still, we survived the horriffic journey back from Quepos, where I spent a while nearly in tears because I was so scared we were going to fall off the sheer cliff face. Ironically, this was supposed to be the less scary route back from Uvita, since on the way down from San Jose we went via San Isidro El General, a 3-hour journey winding up to over 3,000 metres above sea level, to the beautifully-named Cerro de la Muerte, or Death Mountain. Aside from the twisting and winding road up through the mountains with perilous drops, and the mudslides that happen fairly often (we saw a recent one, where boulders the sizes of cars had fallen, hopefully not actually onto cars..), we were so high up that we were actually in the clouds, which reduced visibility to about 6 ft in front of the bus. So having survived that I begged Ben for us to not take the return journey along there - instead we took the notoriously bumpy road to Quepos (a terrible road in a country of terrible roads) and then waited around for hours, with me all the time reassuring Ben that I was incredibly grateful that we were avoiding a scary journey, and then that happened. But anyway, at least the baby who had been SCREAMING for about 20 minutes in Quepos, as we were waiting for the bus, stopped pretty soon after we left. I did understand how he felt, honestly, but we´d just spent 4 hours traipsing around a place where there really isn´t 4 hours worth of stuff to do, and were incredibly worried about missing our bus, and it really drove me to my last nerve. For all these reasons and more, I am pleased to be back in San Jose - the main reason is that it´s really nice here, despite what everyone says about it. Tomorrow is shopping day, and the day after is our 30 month anniversary where we´re going to the Teatro Nacional to see a classical performance, followed by a relatively fancy meal.
Uvita was nice in its own way - the main effect it´s had on us is to make us incredibly cynical about eco-lodges and nature-friendly people, and shown us that everything has a price when you´re a tourist in Costa Rica. You want to see the beautiful, natural waterfall? Of course! Two dollars. Basically we stayed in aforementioned eco-lodge, which was a sight to behold because it was like a huge, wooden loft, with everything constructed out of beautifully-crafted wood and stone and stuff, and the setting really was incredible. The main problem, other than the money-grabbers of Uvita, is that Uvita is emphatically not a beach village, it´s more like a village with a beach... 5km away. Which was fine in the end since they charged us a lot of money to get into it (special tourist price, incidentally, about 6 times what the locals pay) anyway. We may well have been the only tourists ever to visit Uvita for more than an hour, without having a car or taking taxis - and that´s saying something, since whomever planned Uvita didn´t remember such a thing as pedestrians. It´s also a bit sad to see the (relatively unspoilt) Zona Sur completely saturated in For Sale signs - one of them aptly summed the whole thing up, saying: ¨Costa Rica -- Lots For Sale¨. Anyway, I´ll elaborate on eco place later, maybe. It´s a bit depressing to think about now, which is a shame since it should have been lovely. I also might have a huge rant and release my pent up ANGER, FURY AND RAGE at the guy who ran the hostel in Dominical, since he´s a stupid lazy good-for-nothing who couldn´t even do the ONE THING we asked him to. And he made the least comfortable chairs imaginable, in fact I couldn´t even conceive of such an uncomfortable sedentary apparatus before I saw this with my own eyes. And he was called Angel. Pfft.

EDIT!!! Because I forgot to mention two of the lovliest things we´ve done this month. Firstly, on our last night in Dominical we had a fire on the beach, and toasted marshmallows, which was lovely and I just wanted to write about it in case I ever forget. Secondly, we did Don Lulo´s Horseback Waterfall Tour, which was definitely one of the highlights of this trip. My horse was called Frijolito (little bean) and I think they gave me him because I hadn´t ridden before and he wasn´t one of the leader horses, although he definitely had ideas above his station and didn´t like to be overtaken by anybody - a perfect match for me, then. Ben´s was called Espirito (Spirited) and was a bit off-the-wall. Also on the tour was a Tico family and ´Jodhpur Lady´, a realtor from Florida whose name we never asked, and who came fully kitted out in said jodhpurs, riding boots etc. She was really cool, though, and when we went swimming at the waterfall, even though she hadn´t brought a change of clothes, swimsuit etc, she just whipped off her top and went swimming in her bra and jodhpurs (which she then had to wear wet for the return journey). Ben jumped off from a height of about 25ft, twice, which was spectacular although the first time I almost didn´t dare to watch. The price included two meals at Don Lulo´s house, where there was also a ´zoo´ - Definitely not for animal lovers, it consisted of a couple of Macaws, a Toucan, a deer and some huge rat or hamsters things, which the tour guide bothered so we could see them do stuff (just sitting in their enclosures being happy apparently isn´t interesting enough for us tourists), including winkling the baby rodent out, first with a broomstick handle, and then when that failed, by sticking his hand in and pulling the poor thing out. He did stop just short of getting a monkey and making it dance for us, thankfully.


We´re off for dinner now, update to follow soon since the internet is now blissfully free once more. Write comments please :)
Lots of love,

Louise and Ben xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx