London-San José

18th Jan 1822 OK, the post-by-email process seems to have worked fine from my phone, which is good.

1931 Sort of actually final packing, including putting stuff in clothes pockets for tomorrow. Trying to take my time and be careful, feeling a bit of pressure - it feels super late partly (good) because I got up very early, partly (bad) because I feel I need to go to bed "soon". The reality is I don't need to get too worked up about it, as long as I actually get up tomorrow it doesn't matter too much if I'm knackered - rather not be, but I can (for example) sleep on the flight if I really want to.

Have filled water bottle - 1091g! This is OK though, I probably won't want that much and thought about half filling it but it's probably no bad thing to chug it at the airport before security as then I can carry water through in my body and perhaps be less thirsty later on, if I can't refill it airside.

2042 Final weight is probably 7.9kg, although the only AAA batteries I have are apparently *just* good enough to operate the luggage scales except that when they take the load and are about to freeze a final weight on the screen they reset. This includes the nuts and that full water bottle.

I was taking some photos of some tags I was cutting off a couple of T-shirts with my actual camera and it kept resetting and saying check battery. I've swapped to the other battery (this being the "official" Canon one I got with it) and it has still done it a couple of times. It also sort of kind of seems to work.

It would suck to be without the camera but not the end of the world; I've already waffled about maybe not taking a camera. However, it's going to be annoying to take it and be lugging it round with me as dead weight for two months. Just had a bit of a play with it and popped the battery in and out a few times in case contacts are somehow dirty (incidentally I fully charged both batteries a few days ago) and it (touch wood) seems to be working OK now. I guess I'm going to be taking it at this rate. I have used it intermittently (with the other non-Canon battery, just as it happens) for the odd photo at home over the last few years and it has generally worked OK so it would be a bit of a coincidence if it had just now got worse. Anyway, we'll have to see how it goes.

No FCDO update.

2228 Finally bought Rough Guide Kindle edition (£8.99). Reading first few pages it makes it sound like the country is going to be entirely booked up and expensive as hell during the dry season. Meh, just have to give it a try. Push comes to shove I can always try a border crossing or something like that.

It does say no part of the country is more than 9 hours' drive from any other part. So I guess even without taking remotely epic bus journeys, it would be possible to get to either Panama or Nicaragua from anywhere in the course of say 3-4 short bus hops of a couple of hours each. Not saying I plan to do that, but if I'm finding it completely dispiriting and/or overpriced, maybe.

19th Jan 0027 No FCDO or VCR updates. Bed. Feeling OKish really.

0513 Probably got to bed ~0045 but not sure. Read in bed until at a complete guess falling asleep about 0130. Alarm yanked me out of sleep at 0500, got up about a minute or two later. Feel a bit tired but not terrible, having breakfast (heating up some frozen tortilla). FCDO/VCR no update and trains look OK. In some ways I am up way earlier than necessary but it's nice not to have to start immediately rushing around checking things and leaving.

0619 Had tortilla and a pack of six sausage rolls, didn't entirely want all those sausage rolls but seemed better than lugging them with me and eating on train and making a mess etc. Need to actually start checking round and leaving shortly.

(Also had cup of coffee and a cup of milk to use up the last of the carton.)

0726 On train from LBG to GTW. Left flat pretty much dead on 0650. Probably left actually "starting to leave" slightly too late and felt a tiny bit under pressure, but it was OK. Getting up early did kind of help, I should just have started the "leaving flat" phase a few minutes earlier. All OK so far. Feeling OK, not exactly excited but maybe a quiet hint of it.

There was one of those tube+train maps on platform at LBG and I was looking at it and thinking of my associations with various parts of London. Sort of nice and also a bit melancholy at the same time. (Yes the tube-only map is iconic, but as I've lived in SW London a lot the train lines are needed for the full emotional flavour. :-) )

Obviously early days yet but bag is not negligible but also not a tremendous strain to be carrying. Yes I feel more encumbered than if I had nothing, but considering I'm going on holiday, I could easily be *way* more encumbered than this.

Probably already said but vague plan is that I will try to avoid writing too much blog stuff while out-and-about, partly to be more "present" but also on the practical grounds I plan to leave the K1 (which has a keyboard) back at accommodation and carry the G5 (which doesn't, although just maybe I'll become a convert to soft keyboards and predictive text this trip) around with me. I do intend to try to write something up every day, I will just be doing it back at accommodation if this plan is realistic.

I checked mailbox when leaving flat, nothing in it. Had checked yesterday afternoon but was vaguely possible there was a late delivery. In theory redirection started yesterday anyway.

Will go airside ASAP at airport, I don't think there's any advantage in hanging around landside.

Quite nice vivid orange (red earlier) sunrise from train windows.

Bit of snow/ice in corners of some fields. There was a bit of frost on some streets near flat, though not IIRC right outside it - maybe the areas with frost were a bit more exposed to wind or something.

0856 At Flying Horse. Feels slightly ridiculous "because I can", but hey, I'm on holiday. 4.40 for pint of Doom Bar isn't great but not terrible. Phone keyboard seems to be glitching and I can't get to some special symbols.

Security OK although we had to take our shoes off (though not everyone was doing it, and they intermittently seemed to enforce it) and the metal detector (if that's what it is) beeped and I had to empty pockets of non-metallics as well and go into another booth (one of those extra-invasive X-ray jobs? no idea) and then got a pat down, probably because I forgot to take plastic bag of toilet paper out of back pocket. But everyone was nice enough, I hate the whole business and kind of particularly resent the shoes but there you go. Was pretty quick at least, I had chugged water and got liquids out before joining almost nonexistent queue and was probably through in 5-10 mins even with this extra attention. TBF lots of other people seemed to get pulled aside after initial metal detector beeped, not just me.

Lessons learned:
- I took most stuff off and put it in bag or fleece eg waist belt, but forgot to take watch off. Don't know if this actually mattered, no one seemed to pay specific attention but (guessing) maybe this is what set the initial detector off.
- With this new scanning stuff (poss only relevant for that secondary scanner) completely emptying pockets into bag or fleece (both of which go through in the tray) would also probably be a good idea to have as little hassle as possible.

0905 Rebooted phone, hasn't made any difference to keyboard. Can't believe this is a hardware fault as all keys do work, just not how I expect.

OK, input method had somehow changed to Menu IME. No idea but fixed now.

Oh, I refilled my water bottle OK. Even if I don't want it before or during the flight, it just might come in handy tonight at accommodation if I want to go more-or-less straight to bed without going out to hunt for bottled water. The tap water might well be OK but I'm not sure, might take it easy on that if I can and slowly build up to it - probably paranoid but as I've said before I suspect being cavalier about the tap water is generally my biggest source of illness on a trip.

0930 Free refills on coffee here. Did kind of fancy a pint but that might have been an option. Not going to get a coffee *after* pint, still have maybe third of it and gate should be announced within half hour and then it's only an hour til the flight so can't really be hanging around here. By same token even if I hadn't had the pint I'd probably only have had time for 2 or ;ust possibly 3 coffees anyway.

0951 Finished pint. Quietly enjoyable, been reading a bit as although the decor in here is vaguely nice (I'd quite like to read some of the small print, but impossible unless you have a table right by a poster) it's not exactly "stare meditatively into the distance" territory.

1009 At gate 34. Bit of a trog (though did go for opportunistic piss after leaving Flying Horse).

1048 On plane (for a few minutes now). All OK, flight is full-ish and seats to my left occupied, my immediate seatmate is a biggish woman but beyond some (actually pretty reasonable) elbows straying across the boundary I don't think she is going to be a huge problem.

4 empty seats apparently based on something I overheard. Possibly that's just in economy.

Feeling mild desire for a piss, glad I had one on way to gate. Don't regret pint as such but a minor unpleasant side effect.

Boeing 777 FWIW.

1113 15 mins ish while we wait for de-icing team to do their stuff, then 10 mins taxi time. Some prospect of turbluence mid Atlantic but although they may be downplaying it it doesn't sound like they expect anything too horrific.

Not ideal if we're running slightly late but not a huge deal.

Just FTR (it is what i expected) no masks required in airport or on plane. A handful of people wearing masks as always but most not.

Phone keyboard just auto-deleted a bit of text, something it has been doing intermittently for months. Don't think I was touching it. So if there are odd fragments of sentences in something I wrote, it's probably caused by this auto-delete happening and I didn't notice to rewrite it.

Watching Big Lebowski. Amusingly there's a pre-film ad for citizenship of St Kitts & Nevis by investment. Yeah, that's going to do well with a basic economy audience. I guess the ads aren't tailored on a per-cabin basis, but it still struck me as funny.

1143 Plane is moving.

1203 Made beeline for toilet instant fasten seat belt sign went off ;-). Overheard a conversation earlier and there's apparently a drink served early so wanted to get out before I got semi-trapped here by crew serving or having a drink on my table.

1252 Had a beer (small of course, but not tiny - 330ml, fair enough). Quite enjoying BL - have seen it before, I bought the DVD back when that was a thing but probably only watched it once and I barely remember a lot of it.

Feeling oddly happy, although that seems a bit of an OTT word. Not actively edgy about getting from airport to accommodation but it is a vague lurking thing. Of course there's a fair chance it will be utterly trivial, although I do hope I can coax at least a few small-ish bills out of cash machine at airport to avoid problems paying the driver.

1411 Good to see all sorts of classic lines in context finally (since I forgot the DVD viewing way back when). Not sure if it's one of them, but "Just because we're bereaved doesn't make us saps" feels exactly like something I'd want to say (some of Mark Twain's writings on undertakers inspired similar feelings).

1424 Wow, 1998 date on BL. Don't think I bought the DVD until several years later.

Vaguely tempted by some other films which slip my mind now (got gorilla arm scrolling through all fiilms before takeoff)  but will give Despicable Me a try; be good to see origin of those minion characters I've seen a lot.

1612 Sort of liked DM, mixed feelings about it.

Listening to bit of music and reading on phone for a change. Feeling slightly chilly, given quite a few people have blankets on this is probably not just me.

Woman to left hasn't been a problem, the odd bit of picking dropped stuff up for each other etc has made her seem more human. But to be scrupulously fair she hasn't really been sprawling etc anyway. I was being a bit negative.

1631 Feeling a bit sleepy (not for first time). Bit of a wobbly turbulence but it's not that bad, rough road sort of effect.

1842 Just watched ND. Never seen it before, IIRC I did have some vague interest in seeing it when it first came out. Quite good really, not sure what I expected but it wasn't that.

1905 Queued for bog/stretched legs a bit. Left knee-ish hurting from sitting, I got this on train back from parents' too (and other times). It's odd, walking on it is fine, sitting at computer is fine, but sitting on transport isn't. Maybe it's because I am sitting for more continuous time.

Feeling bit edgy about arrival but it's hardly the most epic journey in the world and I'm sure it will be fine.

Going to watch Labyrinth (with David Bowie, not Pan's Labyrinth), reminds me of Rab as I watched it round at his place a few years ago, almost certainly for the first time.

2211 It's 1611 in Costa Rica, we're 40 mins from landing, then a short taxi. I hadn't checked sunset time as I didn't want to make assumptions about speed of customs and immigration, but just maybe i will get to the accommodation in daylight.

Was nodding off and stopping myself during Labyrinth. I tried allowing myself to sleep in the end but don't think I did. Gas coming out of bowels like crazy but I assume it's just pressure changes, I feel OK.

Bit edgy but it's fine, I'm making this into a bigger deal than necessary. Though I think F33W sort of implied this is vaguely normal.

Watching Shaun of the Dead because I have already seen it and own the DVD so if I miss the end (it will be tight-ish with flight landing) it doesn't really matter.

0135 UK/1935 CR I'm at the accommodation, I've had a shower and cleaned my teeth and I am going to bed soon-ish. Everything is broadly OK.

1952 I had to reboot the damn phone as it was crawling and because I'm an idiot I also "had" to do Duolingo.

On the plus side, I got a text from Three saying CR is a Go Roam Around The World destination. I was sure they'd canned this. Anyway, definitely something to investigate tomorrow, although TBH if I can just get a local SIM that's maybe better. I could have bought a Claro SIM in baggage claim hall at airport but I wasn't desperate and I'd kind of rather buy one in a regular shop, maybe from a cheaper network, during my planned puttering around.

I was last through security thanks to being sat at back of plane when we exited at front and also having a strategic toilet visit, but not a big deal. 99% sure I got a 90 day stamp but not double checking now. No problems, except it's a bit disconcerting and also slightly disappointing everyone seems keen to speak English to me.

There was one cash machine in the baggage area and I tried that multiple times without success. A message from bank app now I have wifi here suggests I tried to withdraw £1000 approx because I fucked up choosing the amount. More on that in a minute.

Customs no issue at all, I asked about my (unopened) nuts and they're fine, so I have them if I need them. Food on plane was plentiful and fine so I didn't need them on there.

You exit the customs area straight onto the street with lots of (pleasant enough) taxi touts, but I needed cash. Was feeling a bit sweaty in fleece in apparently 25C weather too. Wandered up and down that road and asked a couple of people, eventually got redirected to arrivals where there was AFAICT one cash machine cluster all for the same bank (red colour stripes) I had had troubles with at baggage claim area.

Problems:
- it doesn't offer a menu of amounts to choose from, as I had expected, so I was trying to do mental arithmetic to convert approx 200GBP into CRC at a rough rate of 575 (or is that dollars and its 750 for pounds? i did know and I have a note but not sure right now) and utterly fucking it up. (In my defence, I was feeling a bit frazzled.)
- I was trying to adjust the figure so it was a multiple of the available bill sizes while giving me some small bills and I kept fucking that up
- I did eventually manage to get the machine to agree to dispense 600k CRC but it then said something (different) to the effect the notes weren't available
- I got desperate and went with the USD withdrawal option and it gave me USD200 without a murmur. USD4.95 fee a bit shitty but what can you do?

Lesson learned: pre-calculate an approximate withdrawal amount in local currency in case there isn't a menu of amounts.

Anyway, I then got a taxi with no real fuss, I was a bit paranoid asking about it being official and on the meter and I was a bit disconcerted I got a red cab (the tout phoned for it) and the tout got in as well, but I think it was an official red cab and although everyone wanted to speak to me in English, knowing a bit of Spanish was reassuring as I could mostly understand their chat and see they were just chatting not plotting. :-)

I haven't sat down and worked it out yet and I'm not doing it tonight but I suspect I got stiffed on the fare. The meter showed 4.2k-ish CRC which seems fine, I did sort of offer to make it 5k so let's call it that. The driver had very little change (how convenient - but not necessarily a fix) and he gave me 5k CRC change in 1k notes for a USD20. I really didn't feel up to arguing, I wanted to get into the accommodation (self-checkin so no reception to dash into if things turned awkward etc) and I didn't want to be doing calculations with possibly misremembered exchange rates on my phone and arguing. Worst case is probably I've paid USD17ish for a USD8ish fare. As I say, I was feeling frazzled and a bit (nothing specific) "at risk" and just wanted to get into accom and deliberately didn't make a fuss.

Driver told me guy I've been calling my tout was head of cabs at the airport, not sure if true. Driver also gave me a card and said to call him if I want a tour or (maybe) even if I just need advice.

All this is one of the reasons I didn't want to get USD at the airport, I suspect it would cause confusion as I tried to mentally juggle three currencies as well as offer scope for confusing change-giving, but it's OK. I do hope I can get CRC at other machines, maybe I was doing something wrong with the exchange rates and asking for impossible amounts at the airport or maybe the airport machines are geared towards tourists who like USD.

Getting some more cash and experimenting with the machines for different banks will be part of my puttering around over next day or two.

Accom is a bit "lonely" as it's self-check in so no reception type staff on hand in emergency, I saw a guy lying on his bed with door open as I came in and said "buenas tardes" but otherwise I just hear a few people. It doesn't feel threatening or anything and the room is pretty big (two single beds and a double) and does have a small private kitchen and a fridge and a bathroom, and a tower fan which I have on, though post-shower I don't feel like I'm dying with the heat, it's pleasantly warm really.

I could maybe write more but I think that's the basics down and it would be good to get into bed and read and go to sleep if I want - I do feel a bit fresher after the shower but I'm not hungry, I have water (full litre bottle from LGW fountain) and so I have no need to go out and look for any food or drink.

My impressions of the city so far are pretty slim but it looks OK. Very Latin American-ish, which I know is very vague. It feels kind of familiar in that way but also just vaguely threatening to be wandering around in after dark with no prior experience of the area when I'm not at my best mentally or physically.

It was dark as I was in taxi; had I not lost so much time finding cash machines and struggling to use them I might have got in in twilight or just possibly even daylight. We only landed about 20 mins behind schedule FWIW.

Wanted to mention one last thing but can't think what it was. Oh, I think just to say the main thing is to just take it easy on myself next day or two, not rush into "doing tourist stuff" and get my bearings and so forth. Try to do a fair amount of walking for exercise and exploration, sort out SIM(s), that kind of thing.

I'm not attempting to sort any of my luggage out tonight, stuff needs shifting round a bit after flight (eg passport will prob stay here in room not on me) but I will do it tomorrow when I hopefully feel refreshed after sleep. I will probably wake up pretty early local time anyway even if I have a long sleep.

I should give myself credit for not freaking out during cash machine hijinx. I was feeling frustrated and tired etc and although I had enough USD for a cab I didn't have enough for accom (not that I've had to pay yet, but I didn't know that) and I really didn't want to have to get to accom then go out again for cash on street in dark in unknown place so I persisted. I did feel a bit lost and vulnerable struggling to get this cash (oh, I also dug out a second card and tried that but no joy - as I say, I suspect I may have been requesting silly amounts, but then again the fact my 600k wd failed differently suggests that wasn't the only problem) but I managed to not let that reasonable-ish feeling spiral out of control.

Bed FFS.