San Isidro, Friday

Fri 24th 2247 Slept OKish, set alarm too early really so was snoozing unhelpfully on it and thus neither up nor getting good sleep.

Got up 10ish, host made me breakfast, we talked and he told me how to get into town and showed me some nearby stuff (I may go walking somewhere tomorrow). I walked into town, went into cathedral (very nice actually - not as striking as Barranquilla's modern cathedral, but genuine "not saying it to be socially acceptable" nice "clean" modern sort of building), had ceviche (twice, with a gap) at Pescaderia del Pacifico (recommended by hosts) which was really nice and I wish I'd been eating it more (but I was worried about sauces) and will try to have during rest of time, walked round park in centre a bit, did a bit of aimless walking, bought 2.5l of pepsi black for 980 (!) at supermarket and drank it in street/sitting in bus station by mercado central (where pescaderia is, also lots of other sodas) - no one molested me at all - had second ceviche, bought some biscuity things at bakery to share tonight (tho only I actually ate any - I felt a bit lardy, but they had been calling to me, as biscuits do :-) ) and walked back - could have got bus but had plenty of time and if anything didn't want to get back too early - and got couple of bottles of beer (returnable, possibly just as is for the 500 each deposit without buying new beers since I paid cash, Asian woman running place seemed very proactive in eg coming over to explain about returnables as soon as I opened the fridge to take them out ) and came back, dogs at lower house on this property mildly hassled me but nothing too bad.

Came in, said hi, hid in room a bit and had shower, then watched a bit of of some Scandinavian drama on netflix about corpses coming back to life and drug runners hiding cocaine in bodies to ship over border in Spanish with hosts, then we had tortilla espanola and shared one of the beers I'd bought (host made me a michelada - spicy variety, not lime variety) and chatted.

Bit stream of consciousness as wanted to bash this out but want to move towards bed.

I hastily booked a double room in the cheapest place on booking.com during gap in this morning's chat, about USD23/night and a bit on edge of Cartago but not terrible - for whatever reason (hosts suggest maybe semana santa) there were *no* dorms or "traditional" hostels (I get the impression my room is a bit pseudo airbnb but maybe in a house where the owner operates multiple rental rooms, a kind of halfway to hostel place) available at least when I sorted by price. I had a quick look on airbnb and some rooms for vaguely similar (perhaps less, tho different currencies and airbnb's hidden fees make this far from clear) amounts so figured booking.com would be less faff.

During chat tonight I think hosts have convinced me San Jose is worth a visit, just take usual big city precautions and if I must go round at night use Uber or Didi (?) - I didn't ask about official taxis. There is also a cheap and semi-frequent train service between San Jose and Cartago and Alajuela and also places like Heredia, which sounds both cool and convenient.

I was vaguely tempted to maybe stay here another night but I'm not *that* desperate to do so and I also don't want to wear out my welcome - it is both nice and a little constraining to feel I am "living with" these people rather than just renting a room in their house for three days.

I think that's most of it. Oh, host (there are two, a couple, but I'm not bothering to distinguish) let me use top loading washing machine and (rather nifty, actually) centrifugal no heat dryer than hang clothes up overnight for final drying - tho they felt pretty dry to me anyway - to wash my clothes, so that's nice - I wore the blue wool top tonight so I could get all three light plastic tops properly washed, and to be fair given it is a smidge cooler here and it's night the blue wool top was not really uncomfortable.

Prob watch bit of YT etc before bed but we'll see.

2332 Bed.