Sun 22nd 2106 On the whole a quietly successful day by my fairly undemanding standards.
Just been adding Grecia hostel to Google Maps/OSM and it's only 11.9km from here! Saw a road sign today saying Grecia 22 (km I assume) so maybe the road winds a bit.
Woke up about 9am though had been intermittently drowsing before then. Think I maybe left accom about 10 but far from sure. Went out to get cash (eg to pay new hostel) and the streets were pretty quiet although there seemed to be some guys playing music in central park IIRC and a few vague "stall" things (eg a hopscotch grid chalked on pavement?). Got some cash with Starling at Grupo Mutual, I suspect the "160000 is less than 2000" problem *was* caused by the need to enter an extra two zeros for the fractional colones, as I got it to work after doing that. Definitely best bank so far as the fee is "only" 1500, and for all I know it's possible to amortise this further by withdrawing more than 160k.
Vaguely fancied sitting in somewhere for a coffee but nowhere massively appealing came up - lots of places shut anyway, prob as it's Sunday.
Came back to accom to drop off cash and went back out. Popped down to the street outside Feria and somewhat hastily snapped the nice view and briefly admired it in person, though I felt not quite edgy but as though someone might come up and hassle me, although hardly anyone about. Also suddenly on this walk thought about random dogs having a go - to be fair, although there's been the odd yappy bastard inside someone's house as I've walked past, so far there don't appear to be any street dogs just wandering around.
Then went into town for walk round, vaguely tried to locate Soda del Banco for lunch but couldn't find it (it might have been shut, but I didn't find it to find that out). I ended up going to a random soda which had prices on display (*possibly* Las Delicias, but I really wouldn't like to say).
I dithered heavily from the street but decided to go in as it was busy enough to presumably be good but not too rammed and intimidating. I took a punt on the casado de bistek, having been made edgy by seeing various casados with "pollo/carne/etc en salsa" , but since this menu did have those options but had no mention of salsa on some others I had a go, and I'm glad I did as this opens up easier dining options for rest of trip. I also managed to get the salad undressed, so 3-for-3 on that! Anyway, the casado was nice but actually utterly lacking in novelty - steak with (suggested by waitress) onions on, beans (frijoles-ish but still individual beans, not cooked to a mush), salad and rice, which is pretty much something I've had in loads of places before. Not complaining, just pointing out that although it may or may not have been called a casado in other countries I've visited, the same kind of dish was there under some name or other.
I think I sort of figured out the "rules" for sodas, at least based on observing other people in this one - it's table service to order, but you go to the counter to pay. They also don't seem geared towards letting you eg order a coffee after the meal - or maybe I'm just crap/nervous about trying to attract waitress attention. As no one came over when I sat down at first I actually went over and ordered at the counter, despite thinking it would have been table service and it actually being so for some other people who sat down while I was there.
The waitress was nice enough but - maybe I was just edgy as it was small enough with enough customers I felt self-conscious - seemed to start talking at me when I approached counter without giving me time to say anything. Meh. I did at least avoid any massive linguistic hassles.
After that I felt time hanging a bit heavy on my hands - I had done a fair old walk in the morning and after lunch I might guess it was 2ish. As it happened I wandered round and to central park (in front of yday's museum) and there was a "senior citizen's dance" (I think) in the kind of covered over pseudo-very-large-bandstand with some guy playing vaguely (sorry, no good with genres) Latin type music and various old-ish (maybe one or two young-ish) couples dancing with lots of people standing round watching.
Not normally my cup of tea but I had absolutely nothing else to do so I stood and watched and kind of enjoyed the music and got a bit lost in thought and was impressed by one or two very energetic dancers and didn't feel "threatened" or terribly uncomfortable most of the time. I stayed there til about 1615 IIRC, as I wanted to get water on way home and also get back before dark, though I probably wasn't pushing it wrt darkness.
I have remembered one of the "tricks" to getting rid of large bills from cash machines is to use them in a big supermarket where they generally don't make a fuss. That said, I only remembered when buying water but had already palmed off a 20k on the soda for lunch. Incidentally I missed the "X" in "X mil blah blah" when they told me the price, I should have asked but I felt off balance and just handed over the 20k. Sure they didn't rip me off but not ideal on my part. I rather awkwardly put 400 in coins on counter as a tip, I rather suspect I don't need to do this but not sure.
It was sunny this morning and I was wearing the dark orange merino top I got at Decathlon just before trip and I felt it was maybe a smidge warm, though not necessarily. It clouded over this afternoon and it felt very comfortable then - even if it *isn't* ideal for very warm weather, I need to remember that I'm not always going to be in super stereotypically sunny tropical weather on this trip.
It did rain *very* lightly - like just a sort of watery feeling in the air, almost - not enough to really even notice. IIRC I checked forecast last night and it said 1mm of rain against the hours showing possibility of rain or something like that, which I don't think is a lot.
I also managed to speak to a bus driver at the Grecia stop to ask the price and he said it was 2100. I wasn't expecting it to be a lot (it's about an hour's journey and this is a local-ish type bus, although generally they do look modern-ish coach types) but good to have a rough idea so I can have approx right cash on hand.
Bit edgy about tomorrow and getting the bus with my bag but it should be fine of course.
I did a sneaky (and slightly unsatisfactory due to no plug working, as other day) wash of a couple of tops tonight. This gives me an extra couple of days in hand when combined with uw wash the other day. Using room's tower fan for a bit of assistance with drying these off.
I allowed myself to kill some time on YT this evening and I also a bit weakly snacked on one of the packets of nuts I brought for the flight out if necessary. I'm vaguely hoping to lose weight over this trip, as I did in Colombia, and generally although not huge the one soda meal a day has been fine. I think perhaps the nerves induced by tomorrow's transition made it more tempting to snack tonight. Not saying I won't snack and eat more and have beers etc during trip, just that barring special "temptation" I don't think it's entirely a bad thing if I'm slightly under-eating in general.
2135 Quick look at RG says very little about Grecia. Which is maybe kind of reassuring. It would be good if I could get some kind of walking in the countryside in and I kind of have to do that via a tour given I lack the balls (or perhaps enjoy not lacking the balls) to head out solo and get savaged by some random dog in the middle of nowhere. I don't know how tourist-oriented Grecia might be, maybe there will be some options or maybe not. Worst case I'm sure I can pass three days there pleasantly enough and identify somewhere near-ish for a next little hop.
I will be vaguely sad to leave Alajuela. It seems a nice enough place on the whole, although I also have to say that it doesn't feel like there's a huge amount of "tourist" stuff I haven't seen - guide book says you can do it in half a day IIRC. But still, seeing things like the dance this afternoon is quietly cool.
I am genuinely surprised there seems to be no real concept of a sit-in or takeaway coffee shop here. I don't think I've seen one of the big coffee chains (despite a notable presence of other chains like McDonalds, KFC, BK, Taco Bell) nor do there seem to be local businesses of this type. Yes you can get coffee anywhere, but everything seems to be a soda ("get in, eat, get out") or a full-on fancy-ish restaurant, with very little in the way of cafe as an intermediate step. In particular nowhere seems to have anywhere to sit outside despite the weather seeming perfect for that (it's not as if it's searingly hot, at least right now, even when the sun's out - an umbrella etc over a table would go a long way), and it seems a bit surprising there's nothing of the sort on the central square. (It might have been too expensive for me anyway, but I didn't get to the point of rejecting anywhere on price grounds.)
2223 Cleaned teeth, had shower and shaved. Moving towards bed. Not super tired but not not tired either. I haven't really packed but it's not as if I have that much, some clothes are still slightly damp, today's dirty clothes need to be out in case I need them in the night (eg for toilet visit) and it's not as if (touch wood) I expect to be short of time in the morning - I am stone cold sober and on recent form I'm getting up around 9am anyway, checkout isn't till 11 and although I'll probably be tempted to leave earlier it is smart to stay as long as I can, since check in at the new place isn't til 2 (of course you can always get lucky and they let you check in early, but no guarantee) and touch wood even with walk to bus stop and waiting up to an hour for a bus the journey isn't likely to take over three hours.
Camera has been fine, incidentally, though only been dragging it out of pocket for quick snapshots.
It might seem a bit silly but in some ways if tomorrow goes OK the basic "framework" of the trip is in place. I have been getting around OK here in Alajuela, if I can manage a bus trip that's the basics sorted. :-)
Incidentally if I didn't already say since I actually got here to Alajuela properly, people don't seem to be so keen to speak English as they were at the airport. I'm not complaining, just making the observation. I suspect a lot of them might speak basic English and if you were confident and/or desperate enough you'd get by just fine without any Spanish, but obviously I'm not trying that.
Monday, 23 January 2023
Sunday, 22 January 2023
Alajuela, Saturday
Fri 20th 2054 Someone is playing (recorded) music mildly annoyingly elsewhere in accom. We just had a weird but sort of cool vaguely salsa-ish (really not sure how to describe it) version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".
Bed.
2059 Actually TLST only just finished. I rembered what I was going to say - I was tempted to get some beers at supermarket and have one or two here (in kitchen, maybe) but I decided against it. As it happened the supermarket didn't seem to sell alcohol anyway. (I had seen other places I could have bought beer if I'd wanted. Not saying I won't, but probably as well to have a day or two off when there's no pressing "reason" to drink.)
I also just realised actually the 10 day Claro plan would have worked out at 1k less over 30 days than the 30 day plan. And might have had 1GB extra over the 30 days. Not getting up to check the leaflet! :-) But in any case, 1k not end of world, and having to top up every 10 days would get tedious and I'd be more likely to have a crisis of some kind and then realise I'd forgotten to top up. Plus swings and roundabouts having 5GB over 30 days vs 2GB every 10 days, in terms of being able to "smooth out" variations in need vs being able to use more and know you get a fresh allowance soon.
Sat 21st 0929 Woke up about 6am ish IIRC, went back to sleep and finally woke up a bit after 8 without being able to get back to sleep, been sort of lying in bed eading since then and intermittently making vague lazy forays into the guide book.
Looking at guide book map, my confusion re street numbering arises because there's an odd/even distinction to both calles and avenidas based on which side of the centre you are.
Vague plan for today is to go to nearby Feria market mentioned in accom booklet but not RG, maybe treat myself to an empanada or something, then perhaps go over to the two adjacent bus stations near the centre to scope out buses to Grecia and perhaps visit the museum Juan Santamarca (sp, from memory).
I am wondering - not that the accom guidebook makes out it is a hotbed of crime or anything - if I avoid taking my phone and/or camera to the market in case of pickpockets. This is entirely paranoia on my part but I might do it.
I might also pop back to accom briefly during the day as it's all fairly close, eg to have some of that cold pop from the fridge and/or to pick up camera/phone again if I do leave them behind when I go to the market.
Looked at weather forecast earlier and it might piss it down tomorrow afternoon, and a bit on Monday. Not sure. Nothing I can do and if I do get soaked I won't be that far from home etc.
Guide book says Poas volcano park is open daily and makes no mention of this reservation business. Then again, owner here probably knows and after all that Canadian woman *had* been on some site and registered, so there must be something to it. I haven't looked on the web yet and despite this apparently having mildly "must do" status I probably won't. If it's true it *is* only doable on Saturdays and the weather turns after 10am I have already missed it. I am oddly not that bothered about it - maybe, despite really liking that kind of thing, because I am thinking there might well be other such opportunities during the trip. Also it is highly likely I will be back here at the end of the trip, or could be without any great pain, given how close it is to the airport, although if you really can only do the volcano on a Saturday that doesn't fit well with me flying out on IIRC Thursday. But if I am desperate it wouldn't be too hard to do the tour from San Jose if I am there, or to come to Alajuela for a couple of nights just to do the tour from here.
Worst comes to worst, I don't think it's a deathbed regret item, and if (not impossible) I do return to Costa Rica it would (Saturday stuff permitting, though even if true that may not be the case in even a year's time, given no guidebook of any vintage seems to mention it) be easy enough to go see it as first thing after arriving.
Right shoulder is hurting BTW. It was hurting a bit before I left UK and I suspect I just knocked or strained it a bit, but I hope it clears up. At least it's not my left arm so I'm not left with nagging doubts it's a legacy of breaking it.
As there are no windows in room and I just have bedside light on, it feels vaguely night time even though I'm certain it's sunny out. I kind of don't want to but I should probably start prepping (eg stashing cash I got yesterday, which I didn't do last night) to go out. No rush, but maybe be good to aim to be leaving here in an hour or so.
Accom book suggests getting empanada arreglada. Luckily I just Googled it and it's "slathered in condiments". Fuck that. I might chance ordering an empanada of some other type but got a nasty feeling it might be slathered in condiments anyway. Still, they are probably cheap enough I can just chuck the bugger away and write it off to experience.
1647 Been back at accom a few mins. On the whole actually a quietly successful day with actually some moments in which (without being related to women) I could " feel my happiness uncurl" to misappropriate a quote from The Streets. (Stray spaces around double quotes are present because the K1's keyboard app knows better than I do how to punctuate. Yet right now I feel vaguely discombobulated. Meh. Going to try to relax a bit, am probably back at accom for good tonight. Will probably write today up in a bit.
1654 Have been wondering about having a Spanish lesson, but I know from overhearing other people the walls here do very little to block sound and therefore I'd have to assume other people would hear the entire thing. On the other hand, since I don't intend to say anything secret, maybe I shouldn't care.
1756 Have a Spanish lesson in half an hour. Just done some semi-illicit socks/uw washing (2 pairs each) in shared bathroom - this is the downside of shared bathrooms. Not explicitly not permitted, but they have a laundry service (USD5) so implicitly maybe not permitted. Bit of a lightweight wash as couldn't get water to stay in basin despite my "universal" sink plug but I tried to block it up a bit with garments being washed. Will give them the sniff test once they've dried. I really need to wash a pair of tops to go with them but we'll see how that goes; if push comes to shove re-wearing a top isn't so critical. I may pay for a laundry service at new hostel, but here I don't have enough dirty stuff nor really enough time to feel comfortable spending USD5 on laundry service and risking not getting it back before I go.
1949 Had Spanish lesson. I snapped a few photos on phone today (more on this below) and I appear to have 256 photos (a handful of those from before today) totalling 1GB. I think my turning HDR mode on which effectively quadruples the number of photos may have been a bad idea. (Or I need to tell it to not keep the three component images, but that seems a shame. Or I just need to be very selective with HDR and not leave it on as I blat out dozens of shots in the hope some will come out.) l had hoped/expected to get all my photos (in duplicate) on 2x32GB SD cards, and all the photos from eg my Colombia trip would easily fit. Not a big deal but I do need to be careful.
Anyway, let's waffle. To be absolutely clear, I feel broadly OK (perhaps rambling at my Spanish teacher about this sort of stuff also helped ;-) ) but it's been a little bit up and down today.
So I did got over to the Feria. The route took me past a rather rundown looking patch of scrubby land surrounded by barbed wire which I had walked past yesterday, and I might have not gone that way had I not been going to the Feria. I didn't feel too edgy and there were people around and as the road had no buildings on the south side part of the way there were really nice views over the countryside to the mountains. (I didn't take a photo as didn't have camera and although I toyed with getting phone out on way back, I didn't quite feel comfortable.)
The food market was fairly big and I walked round it a couple of times. It was busy but not heaving (plenty of space) so it didn't feel at all intimidating and I'm sure there was no real risk of being pickpocketed. That said I don't think it would have been appropriate to pull out a camera (or my phone) and start snapping - maybe no one would have cared, but maybe they would and I think it would have been a bit crass.
I tried not to zoom round walking insanely quickly and to appreciate being there. There was also a really nice cool breeze at times (and it was all under a big roof) and I found myself half wishing I could buy stuff and cook with it, and then also thinking about making wine with some of it, and I had some vague thoughts of home and opening a bottle of (say) the cherry wine when I get back and I started to feel vaguely cheerful in an odd but nice way.
I had seen Soda Gina (as mentioned in the accom book page about the market) and went over there and had a very nice arroz con pollo and (yay) an undressed salad and some stuff that might have been fried plantain but I'm not sure (but was very nice) and a "jugo de cas" which seemed vaguely familiar but I don't know what "cas" is, but it was very nice anyway.
I then (realising - not for the first time - I had very little to do, and in fact that the big problem of being a tourist is filling the gaping quantities of time on hand) decided I'd stay for a coffee. I in fact stayed for a second coffee and was just vaguely watching the goings on and getting lost in more-or-less pleasant thoughts and feeling very touristy and a bit relaxed. (My right shoulder was hurting and I realised it felt stiff when I turned my head to the right; I must have slept on it badly or something, it still hurts a bit but is much better now as I'm writing this.)
I did wonder if I was "in the way" and maybe this wasn't the sort of place you were meant to hang around in indefinitely, but since there were several tables free I figured I wasn't doing any harm and I was running up a bigger bill and thus giving them money so no one should care. And maybe no one did, but I started to get edgy.
When I asked for my third coffee I got a different waitress (who seemed to have come over to take my empty cup) and who seemed to look at me a bit blankly when I asked for another coffee. She then said something I didn't understand and I felt awkward as fuck and I think I asked again for a coffee and she left, but didn't bring me one. So I went to the counter and asked the original waitress who said yes, sure, but then came to the table a minute later to say they had no more coffee but only juice, so I ordered a juice.
And then a bit later the other waitress came back and I felt awkward (which didn't help my language skills) and maybe explained that she had been trying to tell me they had no more coffee, or maybe explained that they did have coffee again if I wanted one. I really don't know. I felt awkward and confused and I wondered if I'd accidentally been rude as a result etc and it was just as I say awkward.
(To be clear, except that the "second" waitress did seem to look at me blankly when I said (not trying any flowery phrases) that I'd like another coffee, I don't think she intended to be rude and the fault, if any, was mostly mine. I also don't think I was necessarily rude, at worst I probably just came across as not understanding. But it still all felt awkward.)
I was also a tiny bit edgy as there were no prices on the menu, I had asked the price of the arroz con pollo (2300 IIRC) and the accom book had recommended this place but I started to wonder if they'd claim the juice was 5000 each or something. This didn't happen, I went to counter and they asked me what I'd had (very trusting of them) and it came to about 5100, which seemed pretty reasonable (if not insanely cheap - a general CR observation on my part, not complaining about this place - I am also still not "acclimatised" to the currency and find it hard to make snap judgements on whether a given price is "expensive" or not). I was going to round up as a tip and handed over a 20k note hoping for change (which I don't think was unreasonable for a bill of that size) but I stupidly showed that I had some small bills when I took the 20 off my roll and they asked for them and (politely, I think giving genuine advice) told me to be careful (presumably thinking I didn't realise it was a 20k and that someone might short change me), and that flustered me a bit so I ended up accidentally not leaving a tip. To be fair I had a quick look in guide book before leaving this morning and although it didn't mention sodas, it did say in restaurants 10% was automatically included and no need to tip, and I guess I probably didn't need to tip at the soda, though I would have and probably will continue to do modest rounding up (though at an approximate 10%ish level, not rounding 5100 up to 6k say, given that's over a quid tip and nearly 20%). So I felt a bit bad about that too.
Anyway, I then went into town and headed for where I'd seen from the guide book the two likely bus terminals (and associated sprawl of street-side bus stops) were. The F* (can't remember name) terminal looked huge, new, well-maintained and utterly unused with all the gates locked and the vast sprawling expanse of concrete utterly empty. No idea what's going on there. I found the Tuasa terminal and looked at the front of all the buses there but none obviously said Grecia.
I wandered around (it's all exercise/sightseeing, and I wasn't feeling too stressed as I didn't need to go today) and did things like try to observe where random buses on the street seemed to be coming from/going to and eventually stumbled on the street side bus stop (no actual formal bus stop signs or anything) where there were two buses for Grecia (and points further). FTR, if I remember correctly a) this is just outside the "back" exit of the Tuasa terminal, up past a "Claro" sign on the right b) this is at corner of Avenida 1 and Calle 10.
(I had toyed with asking someone on street where I could get a bus to Grecia, but I lacked confidence and/or felt it might be a bit rude. I also wasn't desperate.)
I stepped up into the waiting bus (no queue, no apparent intention to depart there and then) to ask the driver and he sort of waved me back a bit. Not sure why, surely I hardly look like a threat (and he wasn't wearing a mask or anything, so presumably there's no covid angle on this). Anyway, although he didn't seem super friendly, to give him his due he politely enough answered my questions (I can buy a ticket on the bus, no need to buy in advance, there's a bus about every 45 mins - and I subsequently saw other buses probably for different companies there to Grecia, so maybe guide book's 30 mins is about right if he was only talking about his compact - and there's a service every day - I just wish I'd asked the price so I can have roughly correct money on hand when I go on Monday) and I didn't seem to have any big language problems.
I then wandered off just killing time/sightseeing/walking for exercise and came across the central park quite by accident and saw the JS museum so decided to go in. I already thought it was free but it looked deserted-ish so I asked the guard(s) on the entrance if it was open and if it was free and after writing my name in a book I was waved in.
I have to be absolutely clear here that everyone in the museum was in fact super friendly and accommodating; I really do mean that. However, there seemed to be absolutely loads of guards around and they seemed to be slightly more "active" /"friendlier" than I would have expected and I was constantly on the back foot in case they were going to tell me I'd done something wrong when in reality they were just coming over (to take the first example) to tell me the uppermost floor where there's an open air walkway round the building with nice views was closing soon if I wanted to go look at it (which I did, after I finally clarified what the guard wanted and that I hadn't done anything wrong).
I was also the last one off the roof (as I hadn't twigged to the closing soon bit - not the museum, just the roof - at this point) and I apologised in (incorrect) Spanish for delaying them and they were super affable, but then one said something about photos (and I should say at this point the guard at the street entrance had clarified unbidden that photos without flash were fine, just no flash) and he was *probably* just asking me if I'd taken some photos to be friendly but I got a vague impression he was maybe checking I *hadn't* taken any photos because it wasn't allowed and I ended up mumbling something which probably made no sense but was accepted. This combination of irrational guilty conscience, suspicion of crazy rules (maybe you *aren't* allowed to take photos from the roof, although I honestly can't see why that would be the case) and linguistic difficulties (exacerbated by nerves from the other points) does my head in, further exacerbated by feeling frustrated that I get unnerved so easily by this sort of stuff (i.e. I have a problem that I have a problem with this).
I did see the rest of the rooms and as I say everyone was in fact super affable and courteous but I just felt constantly on the back foot by this point and was quite glad to finish a hurried inspection (to be honest, the museum was OK and interesting in points but the building itself was nicer/more interesting) and leave, still feeling a bit edgy.
(One point I wouldn't mind clearing up is that one of the earlier rooms said they exported something - it's not germane, but maybe coffee - from Puntarenas to England in (say) the 1800s. I was intrigued enough to go back and look at the map in the first room (which was interesting, as my CR geography knowledge is nonexistent) and Puntarenas is on the *Pacific* coast. So why were they shipping stuff to England from there? Was it *so* much harder to get stuff to the Carribbean coast from (I think) Alajuela that it was worth having to (I assume) ship it right round South America to get to England? Or did it then hop up the coast from Puntarena to near Lake Nicaragua and get transshipped a couple of times (overland the short distance Pacific to LN, then steamer, then overland from east side of LN) to cross to the Carribbean side that way? Or something else? This was just a casual mention of shipping to England in the museum so they didn't go into this, but I really am curious.)
Oh - jumping out of sequence - when I was at Soda Gina I got my phone out just to check Spanish dictionary and saw I had a text from "Sutel" which (I didn't fully understand the Spanish) seems to be advising me that my phone (it quoted the IMEI) is not approved and that (I think; this is very must a "gist" thing) I may have problems and can't complain if I do. It doesn't seem to be threatening me with anything (cf the message I got in Colombia telling me my A9s was not approved and would be blocked after 40 days or whatever) or suggesting I'm doing anything illegal, and it does in fact seem to work fine, so I guess it doesn't matter, unless they continue to send these messages and ramp up the aggressiveness.
After leaving the museum it was a little early to come back to the hostel (evenings a bit dreary as it is, though TBH with a bit of admin type stuff then the Spanish lesson and now writing this, it will probably be 2130ish by the time I'm done and I'll probably be happy to go to bed and/or watching an hour or so of Youtube would fill the time before a slightly later bedtime without much boredom) I thought I'd maybe just wander the streets a bit more then come back.
As it was I still felt a bit edgy from the museum and I also walked down a (not massively deserted or insalubrious-looking, but not bustling - it was pretty busy in the really central part of town, probably because it's a weekend as it felt busier than yesterday) street and a couple of people hanging around outside on a shop forecourt *might* have shouted at me (come here??? but really not sure) but might have been shouting to a mate across the road and certainly didn't attempt to do anything when I ignored them and walked past (they were several metres away) but it made me a bit jittery. Just FWIW, not saying Alajuela isn't safe or that I didn't feel safe most of the day.
I stopped in at a mini supermarket round corner from accom to get some water - piss a bit yellow this morning so wanted to get plenty. They didn't have that much water on display and it was same in the big supermarket yesterday. I also sort of thought sparkling water would be nice (I probably hadn't had any since I was in Colombia) and I asked and ended up (without fully twigging how much it was, though I'd probably have paid anyway to be polite) asking the very polite cashier if they had any and she found me a 2l bottle of Canada Dry soda water which was 1950 - over two quid!
I enjoyed it and as a one-off "treat" (retrospectively classifying it as such) that's fine but I'm not routinely paying those sort of prices. (She didn't know the price and took it to the till to check; I'm 95% sure she did not mark the price up because I'm a tourist. Incidentally that reminds me as I was recounting my adventures to my Spanish teacher, she told me a couple of rip-off stories she'd experienced with her daughters *in her own country, in her own language, within (I'd guess) 100 miles of her own home* which were the sort of thing I anticipate in my paranoid moments but which (touch wood) were *way* more exploitative than anything I think I've actually experienced, despite me being way more of a touristy potential victim than her and her family due to being foreign, from a "rich" country and not a native speaker. So maybe on the whole I've been lucky and/or I've somehow managed to look after myself surprisingly well.)
It's speculation on my part but I do wonder, given relative lack of water in both those shops, if the tap water *is* safe to drink here and as a result the market for bottled water is vastly smaller, so it's more of a luxury good and isn't sold in bulk as it is in my Latin American countries. Following on from this, it may be that because it isn't "normal" to buy bottled water, there isn't the same demand for sparkling water. I may have got the wrong impression and/or have forgotten what it was really like, but generally it's felt to me as though "agua con gas" is just a standard non-luxury item in most LA countries, just an alternative to "agua sin gas" , whereas here perhaps it is relatively uncommon for people to drink it because they all just get tap water and buy soft drinks when they want fizz.
It may just be my pronunciation or a regional language variation, but the woman at the mini-supermarket today didn't seem to recognise the phrase "agua con gas" and thought I'd asked for something else (can't remember what, sadly), though when I clarified by saying "agua con burbujas" she realised what I meant. I don't know what the phrase here is - the bottle I bought is "club soda" , but that may be beause it's a soft drink (Canada Dry) branded "mixer" rather than because that's what sparkling water is called here.
I will say that Aldous Huxley quote about welcoming boredom as a sign of excessive freedom when travelling came to mind at the Feria (not sure if I should capitalise that) this morning, in quite a good way. Yes, I am not "doing much" , but it was on the whole quite nice to feel I have a lot of time on my hands and one of the "big things" I did today was as simple as spend half an hour or so wandering round a food market and then have nothing better to do than fill in a couple of hours having an early lunch and some juice/coffee etc.
I think that's most of the stuff I have to say written. I will probably have a shower/shave shortly and move towards bed - it's already 2105 and I do feel slightly tired. Not that I couldn't stay up if something interesting were happening, I'm not fighting to keep my eyes open, I just do have this kind of "yeah, I guess I am a bit tired" feeling.
2131 Oh - during walk today I saw an ordinary-ish looking (vaguely chain - the poster was professionally printed in colour, not a sole proprietor whiteboard type of sign) restaurant advertising 6 chicken wings, fries and a coke for 5500 - that's over 7 quid, nearer 8. This feels fucking insane. I'm not sure it would cost that much in London. It's not as if this was somewhere swanky, several cuts above the sodas I ate in yesterday and today. Obviously I am not having to pay that, but it's vaguely disconcerting to think that I can't just walk into a non-pretentious restaurant without paying attention and not have a fairly nasty surprise when I get asked to pay.
2157 Have decided I will upload (almost all) trip photos to Google Photos - the privacy loss is fairly small and the ability to easily share some with family and to have an extra backup in case of accidents is worth it. Will turn backup off again after trip though.
Think I forgot to say earlier that FWIW, when I got that blank look on asking for another coffee, followed by what felt like rather a fraught situation, *if* I'd been drinking beer I'd have thought they thought I'd had enough. Which just goes to show how you can maybe misinterpret a situation sometimes. (Which also reminds me somehow of the strangely reassuring sight of the woman leading our party arguing with a female bouncer that we weren't too drunk to go into a West End that night I went to the film preview with J+V. A situation I'd normally associate with myself feeling awkward with a male bouncer.)
Finally ready to have shower and clean teeth and go to bed. The shared bathroom does make this sort of (slightly, if I'm being honest) more of a chore than it "should" be, but it's not a huge deal and the cost savings are well worth it, especially on a long trip in a mildly expensive country.
2240 About to go to bed. Shaved despite not feeling like it, because I probably ought to try not to look unnecessarily scruffy.
As discussed with teacher, when I don't understand someone I will try to either say that I don't understand, could you please repeat etc or if I *might* have understood, to paraphrase back to them as a question ("Sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Did you say the museum is closing now?" style of thing). *Not* guessing, hoping and pretending. ;-)
Bed.
2059 Actually TLST only just finished. I rembered what I was going to say - I was tempted to get some beers at supermarket and have one or two here (in kitchen, maybe) but I decided against it. As it happened the supermarket didn't seem to sell alcohol anyway. (I had seen other places I could have bought beer if I'd wanted. Not saying I won't, but probably as well to have a day or two off when there's no pressing "reason" to drink.)
I also just realised actually the 10 day Claro plan would have worked out at 1k less over 30 days than the 30 day plan. And might have had 1GB extra over the 30 days. Not getting up to check the leaflet! :-) But in any case, 1k not end of world, and having to top up every 10 days would get tedious and I'd be more likely to have a crisis of some kind and then realise I'd forgotten to top up. Plus swings and roundabouts having 5GB over 30 days vs 2GB every 10 days, in terms of being able to "smooth out" variations in need vs being able to use more and know you get a fresh allowance soon.
Sat 21st 0929 Woke up about 6am ish IIRC, went back to sleep and finally woke up a bit after 8 without being able to get back to sleep, been sort of lying in bed eading since then and intermittently making vague lazy forays into the guide book.
Looking at guide book map, my confusion re street numbering arises because there's an odd/even distinction to both calles and avenidas based on which side of the centre you are.
Vague plan for today is to go to nearby Feria market mentioned in accom booklet but not RG, maybe treat myself to an empanada or something, then perhaps go over to the two adjacent bus stations near the centre to scope out buses to Grecia and perhaps visit the museum Juan Santamarca (sp, from memory).
I am wondering - not that the accom guidebook makes out it is a hotbed of crime or anything - if I avoid taking my phone and/or camera to the market in case of pickpockets. This is entirely paranoia on my part but I might do it.
I might also pop back to accom briefly during the day as it's all fairly close, eg to have some of that cold pop from the fridge and/or to pick up camera/phone again if I do leave them behind when I go to the market.
Looked at weather forecast earlier and it might piss it down tomorrow afternoon, and a bit on Monday. Not sure. Nothing I can do and if I do get soaked I won't be that far from home etc.
Guide book says Poas volcano park is open daily and makes no mention of this reservation business. Then again, owner here probably knows and after all that Canadian woman *had* been on some site and registered, so there must be something to it. I haven't looked on the web yet and despite this apparently having mildly "must do" status I probably won't. If it's true it *is* only doable on Saturdays and the weather turns after 10am I have already missed it. I am oddly not that bothered about it - maybe, despite really liking that kind of thing, because I am thinking there might well be other such opportunities during the trip. Also it is highly likely I will be back here at the end of the trip, or could be without any great pain, given how close it is to the airport, although if you really can only do the volcano on a Saturday that doesn't fit well with me flying out on IIRC Thursday. But if I am desperate it wouldn't be too hard to do the tour from San Jose if I am there, or to come to Alajuela for a couple of nights just to do the tour from here.
Worst comes to worst, I don't think it's a deathbed regret item, and if (not impossible) I do return to Costa Rica it would (Saturday stuff permitting, though even if true that may not be the case in even a year's time, given no guidebook of any vintage seems to mention it) be easy enough to go see it as first thing after arriving.
Right shoulder is hurting BTW. It was hurting a bit before I left UK and I suspect I just knocked or strained it a bit, but I hope it clears up. At least it's not my left arm so I'm not left with nagging doubts it's a legacy of breaking it.
As there are no windows in room and I just have bedside light on, it feels vaguely night time even though I'm certain it's sunny out. I kind of don't want to but I should probably start prepping (eg stashing cash I got yesterday, which I didn't do last night) to go out. No rush, but maybe be good to aim to be leaving here in an hour or so.
Accom book suggests getting empanada arreglada. Luckily I just Googled it and it's "slathered in condiments". Fuck that. I might chance ordering an empanada of some other type but got a nasty feeling it might be slathered in condiments anyway. Still, they are probably cheap enough I can just chuck the bugger away and write it off to experience.
1647 Been back at accom a few mins. On the whole actually a quietly successful day with actually some moments in which (without being related to women) I could " feel my happiness uncurl" to misappropriate a quote from The Streets. (Stray spaces around double quotes are present because the K1's keyboard app knows better than I do how to punctuate. Yet right now I feel vaguely discombobulated. Meh. Going to try to relax a bit, am probably back at accom for good tonight. Will probably write today up in a bit.
1654 Have been wondering about having a Spanish lesson, but I know from overhearing other people the walls here do very little to block sound and therefore I'd have to assume other people would hear the entire thing. On the other hand, since I don't intend to say anything secret, maybe I shouldn't care.
1756 Have a Spanish lesson in half an hour. Just done some semi-illicit socks/uw washing (2 pairs each) in shared bathroom - this is the downside of shared bathrooms. Not explicitly not permitted, but they have a laundry service (USD5) so implicitly maybe not permitted. Bit of a lightweight wash as couldn't get water to stay in basin despite my "universal" sink plug but I tried to block it up a bit with garments being washed. Will give them the sniff test once they've dried. I really need to wash a pair of tops to go with them but we'll see how that goes; if push comes to shove re-wearing a top isn't so critical. I may pay for a laundry service at new hostel, but here I don't have enough dirty stuff nor really enough time to feel comfortable spending USD5 on laundry service and risking not getting it back before I go.
1949 Had Spanish lesson. I snapped a few photos on phone today (more on this below) and I appear to have 256 photos (a handful of those from before today) totalling 1GB. I think my turning HDR mode on which effectively quadruples the number of photos may have been a bad idea. (Or I need to tell it to not keep the three component images, but that seems a shame. Or I just need to be very selective with HDR and not leave it on as I blat out dozens of shots in the hope some will come out.) l had hoped/expected to get all my photos (in duplicate) on 2x32GB SD cards, and all the photos from eg my Colombia trip would easily fit. Not a big deal but I do need to be careful.
Anyway, let's waffle. To be absolutely clear, I feel broadly OK (perhaps rambling at my Spanish teacher about this sort of stuff also helped ;-) ) but it's been a little bit up and down today.
So I did got over to the Feria. The route took me past a rather rundown looking patch of scrubby land surrounded by barbed wire which I had walked past yesterday, and I might have not gone that way had I not been going to the Feria. I didn't feel too edgy and there were people around and as the road had no buildings on the south side part of the way there were really nice views over the countryside to the mountains. (I didn't take a photo as didn't have camera and although I toyed with getting phone out on way back, I didn't quite feel comfortable.)
The food market was fairly big and I walked round it a couple of times. It was busy but not heaving (plenty of space) so it didn't feel at all intimidating and I'm sure there was no real risk of being pickpocketed. That said I don't think it would have been appropriate to pull out a camera (or my phone) and start snapping - maybe no one would have cared, but maybe they would and I think it would have been a bit crass.
I tried not to zoom round walking insanely quickly and to appreciate being there. There was also a really nice cool breeze at times (and it was all under a big roof) and I found myself half wishing I could buy stuff and cook with it, and then also thinking about making wine with some of it, and I had some vague thoughts of home and opening a bottle of (say) the cherry wine when I get back and I started to feel vaguely cheerful in an odd but nice way.
I had seen Soda Gina (as mentioned in the accom book page about the market) and went over there and had a very nice arroz con pollo and (yay) an undressed salad and some stuff that might have been fried plantain but I'm not sure (but was very nice) and a "jugo de cas" which seemed vaguely familiar but I don't know what "cas" is, but it was very nice anyway.
I then (realising - not for the first time - I had very little to do, and in fact that the big problem of being a tourist is filling the gaping quantities of time on hand) decided I'd stay for a coffee. I in fact stayed for a second coffee and was just vaguely watching the goings on and getting lost in more-or-less pleasant thoughts and feeling very touristy and a bit relaxed. (My right shoulder was hurting and I realised it felt stiff when I turned my head to the right; I must have slept on it badly or something, it still hurts a bit but is much better now as I'm writing this.)
I did wonder if I was "in the way" and maybe this wasn't the sort of place you were meant to hang around in indefinitely, but since there were several tables free I figured I wasn't doing any harm and I was running up a bigger bill and thus giving them money so no one should care. And maybe no one did, but I started to get edgy.
When I asked for my third coffee I got a different waitress (who seemed to have come over to take my empty cup) and who seemed to look at me a bit blankly when I asked for another coffee. She then said something I didn't understand and I felt awkward as fuck and I think I asked again for a coffee and she left, but didn't bring me one. So I went to the counter and asked the original waitress who said yes, sure, but then came to the table a minute later to say they had no more coffee but only juice, so I ordered a juice.
And then a bit later the other waitress came back and I felt awkward (which didn't help my language skills) and maybe explained that she had been trying to tell me they had no more coffee, or maybe explained that they did have coffee again if I wanted one. I really don't know. I felt awkward and confused and I wondered if I'd accidentally been rude as a result etc and it was just as I say awkward.
(To be clear, except that the "second" waitress did seem to look at me blankly when I said (not trying any flowery phrases) that I'd like another coffee, I don't think she intended to be rude and the fault, if any, was mostly mine. I also don't think I was necessarily rude, at worst I probably just came across as not understanding. But it still all felt awkward.)
I was also a tiny bit edgy as there were no prices on the menu, I had asked the price of the arroz con pollo (2300 IIRC) and the accom book had recommended this place but I started to wonder if they'd claim the juice was 5000 each or something. This didn't happen, I went to counter and they asked me what I'd had (very trusting of them) and it came to about 5100, which seemed pretty reasonable (if not insanely cheap - a general CR observation on my part, not complaining about this place - I am also still not "acclimatised" to the currency and find it hard to make snap judgements on whether a given price is "expensive" or not). I was going to round up as a tip and handed over a 20k note hoping for change (which I don't think was unreasonable for a bill of that size) but I stupidly showed that I had some small bills when I took the 20 off my roll and they asked for them and (politely, I think giving genuine advice) told me to be careful (presumably thinking I didn't realise it was a 20k and that someone might short change me), and that flustered me a bit so I ended up accidentally not leaving a tip. To be fair I had a quick look in guide book before leaving this morning and although it didn't mention sodas, it did say in restaurants 10% was automatically included and no need to tip, and I guess I probably didn't need to tip at the soda, though I would have and probably will continue to do modest rounding up (though at an approximate 10%ish level, not rounding 5100 up to 6k say, given that's over a quid tip and nearly 20%). So I felt a bit bad about that too.
Anyway, I then went into town and headed for where I'd seen from the guide book the two likely bus terminals (and associated sprawl of street-side bus stops) were. The F* (can't remember name) terminal looked huge, new, well-maintained and utterly unused with all the gates locked and the vast sprawling expanse of concrete utterly empty. No idea what's going on there. I found the Tuasa terminal and looked at the front of all the buses there but none obviously said Grecia.
I wandered around (it's all exercise/sightseeing, and I wasn't feeling too stressed as I didn't need to go today) and did things like try to observe where random buses on the street seemed to be coming from/going to and eventually stumbled on the street side bus stop (no actual formal bus stop signs or anything) where there were two buses for Grecia (and points further). FTR, if I remember correctly a) this is just outside the "back" exit of the Tuasa terminal, up past a "Claro" sign on the right b) this is at corner of Avenida 1 and Calle 10.
(I had toyed with asking someone on street where I could get a bus to Grecia, but I lacked confidence and/or felt it might be a bit rude. I also wasn't desperate.)
I stepped up into the waiting bus (no queue, no apparent intention to depart there and then) to ask the driver and he sort of waved me back a bit. Not sure why, surely I hardly look like a threat (and he wasn't wearing a mask or anything, so presumably there's no covid angle on this). Anyway, although he didn't seem super friendly, to give him his due he politely enough answered my questions (I can buy a ticket on the bus, no need to buy in advance, there's a bus about every 45 mins - and I subsequently saw other buses probably for different companies there to Grecia, so maybe guide book's 30 mins is about right if he was only talking about his compact - and there's a service every day - I just wish I'd asked the price so I can have roughly correct money on hand when I go on Monday) and I didn't seem to have any big language problems.
I then wandered off just killing time/sightseeing/walking for exercise and came across the central park quite by accident and saw the JS museum so decided to go in. I already thought it was free but it looked deserted-ish so I asked the guard(s) on the entrance if it was open and if it was free and after writing my name in a book I was waved in.
I have to be absolutely clear here that everyone in the museum was in fact super friendly and accommodating; I really do mean that. However, there seemed to be absolutely loads of guards around and they seemed to be slightly more "active" /"friendlier" than I would have expected and I was constantly on the back foot in case they were going to tell me I'd done something wrong when in reality they were just coming over (to take the first example) to tell me the uppermost floor where there's an open air walkway round the building with nice views was closing soon if I wanted to go look at it (which I did, after I finally clarified what the guard wanted and that I hadn't done anything wrong).
I was also the last one off the roof (as I hadn't twigged to the closing soon bit - not the museum, just the roof - at this point) and I apologised in (incorrect) Spanish for delaying them and they were super affable, but then one said something about photos (and I should say at this point the guard at the street entrance had clarified unbidden that photos without flash were fine, just no flash) and he was *probably* just asking me if I'd taken some photos to be friendly but I got a vague impression he was maybe checking I *hadn't* taken any photos because it wasn't allowed and I ended up mumbling something which probably made no sense but was accepted. This combination of irrational guilty conscience, suspicion of crazy rules (maybe you *aren't* allowed to take photos from the roof, although I honestly can't see why that would be the case) and linguistic difficulties (exacerbated by nerves from the other points) does my head in, further exacerbated by feeling frustrated that I get unnerved so easily by this sort of stuff (i.e. I have a problem that I have a problem with this).
I did see the rest of the rooms and as I say everyone was in fact super affable and courteous but I just felt constantly on the back foot by this point and was quite glad to finish a hurried inspection (to be honest, the museum was OK and interesting in points but the building itself was nicer/more interesting) and leave, still feeling a bit edgy.
(One point I wouldn't mind clearing up is that one of the earlier rooms said they exported something - it's not germane, but maybe coffee - from Puntarenas to England in (say) the 1800s. I was intrigued enough to go back and look at the map in the first room (which was interesting, as my CR geography knowledge is nonexistent) and Puntarenas is on the *Pacific* coast. So why were they shipping stuff to England from there? Was it *so* much harder to get stuff to the Carribbean coast from (I think) Alajuela that it was worth having to (I assume) ship it right round South America to get to England? Or did it then hop up the coast from Puntarena to near Lake Nicaragua and get transshipped a couple of times (overland the short distance Pacific to LN, then steamer, then overland from east side of LN) to cross to the Carribbean side that way? Or something else? This was just a casual mention of shipping to England in the museum so they didn't go into this, but I really am curious.)
Oh - jumping out of sequence - when I was at Soda Gina I got my phone out just to check Spanish dictionary and saw I had a text from "Sutel" which (I didn't fully understand the Spanish) seems to be advising me that my phone (it quoted the IMEI) is not approved and that (I think; this is very must a "gist" thing) I may have problems and can't complain if I do. It doesn't seem to be threatening me with anything (cf the message I got in Colombia telling me my A9s was not approved and would be blocked after 40 days or whatever) or suggesting I'm doing anything illegal, and it does in fact seem to work fine, so I guess it doesn't matter, unless they continue to send these messages and ramp up the aggressiveness.
After leaving the museum it was a little early to come back to the hostel (evenings a bit dreary as it is, though TBH with a bit of admin type stuff then the Spanish lesson and now writing this, it will probably be 2130ish by the time I'm done and I'll probably be happy to go to bed and/or watching an hour or so of Youtube would fill the time before a slightly later bedtime without much boredom) I thought I'd maybe just wander the streets a bit more then come back.
As it was I still felt a bit edgy from the museum and I also walked down a (not massively deserted or insalubrious-looking, but not bustling - it was pretty busy in the really central part of town, probably because it's a weekend as it felt busier than yesterday) street and a couple of people hanging around outside on a shop forecourt *might* have shouted at me (come here??? but really not sure) but might have been shouting to a mate across the road and certainly didn't attempt to do anything when I ignored them and walked past (they were several metres away) but it made me a bit jittery. Just FWIW, not saying Alajuela isn't safe or that I didn't feel safe most of the day.
I stopped in at a mini supermarket round corner from accom to get some water - piss a bit yellow this morning so wanted to get plenty. They didn't have that much water on display and it was same in the big supermarket yesterday. I also sort of thought sparkling water would be nice (I probably hadn't had any since I was in Colombia) and I asked and ended up (without fully twigging how much it was, though I'd probably have paid anyway to be polite) asking the very polite cashier if they had any and she found me a 2l bottle of Canada Dry soda water which was 1950 - over two quid!
I enjoyed it and as a one-off "treat" (retrospectively classifying it as such) that's fine but I'm not routinely paying those sort of prices. (She didn't know the price and took it to the till to check; I'm 95% sure she did not mark the price up because I'm a tourist. Incidentally that reminds me as I was recounting my adventures to my Spanish teacher, she told me a couple of rip-off stories she'd experienced with her daughters *in her own country, in her own language, within (I'd guess) 100 miles of her own home* which were the sort of thing I anticipate in my paranoid moments but which (touch wood) were *way* more exploitative than anything I think I've actually experienced, despite me being way more of a touristy potential victim than her and her family due to being foreign, from a "rich" country and not a native speaker. So maybe on the whole I've been lucky and/or I've somehow managed to look after myself surprisingly well.)
It's speculation on my part but I do wonder, given relative lack of water in both those shops, if the tap water *is* safe to drink here and as a result the market for bottled water is vastly smaller, so it's more of a luxury good and isn't sold in bulk as it is in my Latin American countries. Following on from this, it may be that because it isn't "normal" to buy bottled water, there isn't the same demand for sparkling water. I may have got the wrong impression and/or have forgotten what it was really like, but generally it's felt to me as though "agua con gas" is just a standard non-luxury item in most LA countries, just an alternative to "agua sin gas" , whereas here perhaps it is relatively uncommon for people to drink it because they all just get tap water and buy soft drinks when they want fizz.
It may just be my pronunciation or a regional language variation, but the woman at the mini-supermarket today didn't seem to recognise the phrase "agua con gas" and thought I'd asked for something else (can't remember what, sadly), though when I clarified by saying "agua con burbujas" she realised what I meant. I don't know what the phrase here is - the bottle I bought is "club soda" , but that may be beause it's a soft drink (Canada Dry) branded "mixer" rather than because that's what sparkling water is called here.
I will say that Aldous Huxley quote about welcoming boredom as a sign of excessive freedom when travelling came to mind at the Feria (not sure if I should capitalise that) this morning, in quite a good way. Yes, I am not "doing much" , but it was on the whole quite nice to feel I have a lot of time on my hands and one of the "big things" I did today was as simple as spend half an hour or so wandering round a food market and then have nothing better to do than fill in a couple of hours having an early lunch and some juice/coffee etc.
I think that's most of the stuff I have to say written. I will probably have a shower/shave shortly and move towards bed - it's already 2105 and I do feel slightly tired. Not that I couldn't stay up if something interesting were happening, I'm not fighting to keep my eyes open, I just do have this kind of "yeah, I guess I am a bit tired" feeling.
2131 Oh - during walk today I saw an ordinary-ish looking (vaguely chain - the poster was professionally printed in colour, not a sole proprietor whiteboard type of sign) restaurant advertising 6 chicken wings, fries and a coke for 5500 - that's over 7 quid, nearer 8. This feels fucking insane. I'm not sure it would cost that much in London. It's not as if this was somewhere swanky, several cuts above the sodas I ate in yesterday and today. Obviously I am not having to pay that, but it's vaguely disconcerting to think that I can't just walk into a non-pretentious restaurant without paying attention and not have a fairly nasty surprise when I get asked to pay.
2157 Have decided I will upload (almost all) trip photos to Google Photos - the privacy loss is fairly small and the ability to easily share some with family and to have an extra backup in case of accidents is worth it. Will turn backup off again after trip though.
Think I forgot to say earlier that FWIW, when I got that blank look on asking for another coffee, followed by what felt like rather a fraught situation, *if* I'd been drinking beer I'd have thought they thought I'd had enough. Which just goes to show how you can maybe misinterpret a situation sometimes. (Which also reminds me somehow of the strangely reassuring sight of the woman leading our party arguing with a female bouncer that we weren't too drunk to go into a West End that night I went to the film preview with J+V. A situation I'd normally associate with myself feeling awkward with a male bouncer.)
Finally ready to have shower and clean teeth and go to bed. The shared bathroom does make this sort of (slightly, if I'm being honest) more of a chore than it "should" be, but it's not a huge deal and the cost savings are well worth it, especially on a long trip in a mildly expensive country.
2240 About to go to bed. Shaved despite not feeling like it, because I probably ought to try not to look unnecessarily scruffy.
As discussed with teacher, when I don't understand someone I will try to either say that I don't understand, could you please repeat etc or if I *might* have understood, to paraphrase back to them as a question ("Sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Did you say the museum is closing now?" style of thing). *Not* guessing, hoping and pretending. ;-)
Saturday, 21 January 2023
Alajuela, Friday
Thu 19th 2043 FFS! I was in the wrong room. I happened to check emails just before going to bed and the non-resident owners had sent me directions to find *my* room (nice enough, but just a private twin with shared bathroom and shared kitchen) at 5ish am this morning and somehow I had never seen it.
Luckily I noticed and I think I've managed to put stuff back how it was near enough and put the keys to that back on the counter in the room and in the lock box. I will keep my mouth shut and if I am asked (fingers crossed some poor sod hasn't been trying to check in - but they could have got into the *building* at any rate, so probably not) I will say that I didn't see their e-mail (which was sent stupidly late really) until I had already had a shower in that room which had a key in the lock box on street, and then I changed. This is nearly true, except I spent a few hours in there, but that's my secret.
I just hope to fuck I haven't left anything in there. I am 90% sure I haven't, and I do have my passport. It's a good job I didn't "unpack" excessively.
Anyway, if there is fallout from this a) it's not primarily my fault and I'm not going to accept blame, although probably no one will try to pin any on me in the first place b) I am definitely in the right room now and I'll deal with it tomorrow after a night's sleep.
2055 Actually in bed at last. Still bit edgy about the above, but the key thing is that I put the keys back outside and in the room itself so no one is going to be seriously fucked over. They may notice a towel is damp etc and I can and will explain if pushed, but no more inconvenience than that.
Fri 20th Jan 1704 Got back to accom maybe 30 mins ago. Went into kitchen to put bottle of water and bottle of some guarana fizzy diet drink I got (Cotiuba?? bottle is in fridge not room so can't see it) at supermarket on way back. Owner was there talking with a Canadian woman guest, had brief chat with them - apparently you need to register (on web?) to go to Poas volcano, you might only be able to go on Saturday and there might not be a bus or there might just be a bus a bit like the one I vaguely recall from guidebook which gets you there a bit late to have a good chance of a cloud-free view of crater and comes back at midday or thereabouts. Canadian woman and her brother are apparently thinking of going via Uber.
I had seen this registering business mentioned in welcome booklet here in room this morning. Not checked my up-to-date guidebook yet. I was already thinking during day (which I intend to write up later after a bit of reading and/or YT - frankly I suspect I'm in for the night now and time may hang heavy) that I might not try going to Poas, at least from here now. Anyway, wanted to note that down while fresh in my mind.
They also said it's Costa Rican school long holidays until Feb (not clear when in Feb) which means it's necessary to register for a lot of stuff and/or it's busy. This shits me up a bit. I may well look into booking next stop after these four nights tonight.
My earlier wafflings about going to Nicaragua or Panama if it's too busy or expensive in CR didn't take into account coronavirus rules; they may be no problem, but as of now I have no specific idea what rules might be in place. Still, while I'd rather not, failing to cross a land border because of a failed PCR test or whatever when I'm in no rush and can just turn back isn't as disastrous as it would be if I were flying into the country.
Incidentally the mask situation here appears superficially rather UK-like (ignoring the legal requirement in medical contexts IIRC) - hardly anyone wearing masks but a few people, the businesses I've been in today haven't made people wear masks and because presumably business owners here have the same weird aversion to taking down outdated notices as those in the UK, a good number of businesses still have "you must wear a mask" and similar signs on the door but no one - including the staff - is wearing one, and AIUI there's no legal compulsion to do so either, so the notices are utterly confusing and pontless. How hard is it to take down a bloody poster? But this isn't a specifically Costa Rican failing, as I say the same seems to be the case in the UK too.
Right, going to slack off for a bit and then continue write up. I will say that my main objectives today were to get cash, get lunch and get a SIM card and I have (subject to some possible problems I haven't investigated yet) achieved all three. I also fairly quickly got to the point where I feel pretty safe on the streets in daytime - no one seems to be interested in hassling me for whatever reason.
1737 FWIW if I forgot to say above, owner said the cloud cover can change rapidly up at the volcano, so just because it is cloudy when you get there, it won't necessarily stay cloudy for the rest of the day.
1826 Been lying on bed reading and I've been on the verge of nodding off a couple of times. This is, I guess, fine, if a little unexpected - I did get a reasonably solid long sleep last night, although I suppose I'd been a bit short on sleep for a few nights and I've done a fair amount of walking today too.
I might go to bed early. Let me just have at least a quick poke on eg booking.com for Grecia and see how that looks, and then I might put off making plans until tomorrow - I could for example trog over to the relevant bus terminal tomorrow and ask about buses.
Oh, I investigate Three Go Roam this morning, but unless you have an old SIM (shame I didn't keep my "Guatemala" one alive, although being PAYG it may not have qualified anyway) there's a £5/day roaming charge to use your allowance, so it's practically useless for me and this is why I think I thought it had been canned - I looked it up a month or so ago and found this and wrote it off.
OK, that hostel I vaguely liked the sound of has a single private with shared bathroom for four nights for about 47k or about £17/night. They have dorms for less but this early in the trip when I'm still finding my feet I'm reluctant to do that. It's free cancellation until 22nd as well so in the (probably unlikely event) it's an utter mare to get to by bus from here I could cancel tomorrow night without having to investigate now when I'm feeling just a bit tired. Sod it, given the free cancellation I will book this.
OK, yes, quick search in Rough Guide on Kindle says buses Alajuela-Grecia every 30 mins and it takes an hour. A nice easy hop, surely. The hostel has a bar, I might meet someone and even if I don't I can maybe have a quiet beer or two instead of sitting in my room as I will here.
OK, that's booked. Feels good to have that sorted. I don't exactly like "rushing off" but until I get more confident re availability at short notice (this wasn't too bad TBH, given it's two nights before) I didn't want to take chances. Alajuela does seem OK and I will waffle about it later, but gut feeling is there's no "must see" here, I can and perhaps will come back here as a matter of convenience at end of trip, and for that matter with Grecia a short and frequent bus ride away, I can probably come back next week if I have regrets.
I am not particularly desperate to socialise at this point but it does feel like a proper hostel with staff and a bar might avoid some of the slight boxed-in feeling of this place (which feels a little transitional).
Incidentally a dorm at that hostel would have been slightly over half what I'm paying. I've been in dorms a moderate amount over the years, I think it's tolerable and I will probably do it a bit (not constantly) later in trip to keep costs down and/or out of necessity due to availability (TBH gut feeling is that availability isn't going to be as bad as I feel, especially as I have some flexibility to vary my route based on availability, it may even take me on the slightly off-the-beaten track parts of the tourist routes as a result, but I also suspect that if you're willing to stay in a dorm you can probably get something a day or so ahead in most places without too much trouble or paying an arm and a leg) but I do want to give it a few weeks first as (not that I feel too edgy right now, except wrt "too busy" concerns, but still, it is early days) I am likely to have found my feet by then.
1918 Right, let's bash out a few notes about today.
I woke up IIRC at about 1 and 4am feeling vaguely disoriented, but it wasn't that crushing (albeit short-lived) feeling I'll call homesickness (although it isn't necessarily that, as it crops up once in a while when I *am* at home). I think I finally woke up about 8am still feeling a bit tired but I just didn't seem to want to go back to sleep either. Maybe it was nearer 9, I'm not sure.
A few people around when I went out to clean my teeth, said hola, it's not a huge place obviously.
I spent ages in my room sorting stuff out (rearranging things following flight - it's different now I have a "base", stuff like that), deciding what the plan for today was (get cash, have lunch, get SIM), researching Three Go Roam, etc. I kept feeling vague "need to get out and do stuff" guilty urges but I kept talking myself out of it. There isn't any rush, I also want to start gradually and a bit of preparation (e.g. making sure my debit/credit cards are split up) could save my arse later.
Anyway, although I had a fair amount of USD I really didn't want to pay for anything except in CRC if I could help it, so cash plus a bit of a walk the first order of the day. I set off and made a point of noting landmarks near accom and did a pseudo-regular tour of the grid-based layout of the town centre. It was warm but not unpleasantly grindingly so (my mind reverts to Guayaquil here, although TBF I think it was going into a rotiserrie restaurant which added to the heat which really sticks in my mind).
At first I felt a bit "everyone is going to see I'm a tourist and hassle me" but I did my best to walk slowly-ish and I don't think it took that long (an hour or two? just a guess) before I pretty much felt comfortable walking around and that no one was going to hassle me.
I found numerous banks and had various confusing interactions with their cash machines. I also got politely told (and my Spanish wasn't good enough while feeling slightly flustered to understand at first) to take my cap off by a security guard at one of the places that had the machines in the main bank - lesson learned. In no particular order:
- one machine wanted to charge me something like ten quid as a fee, so I cancelled, although based on what I learned later it would probably have failed anyway
- at least one bank's machines seemed to insist on you entering two extra zeroes to "fill in" the pointless two decimal places at the end of the amount
- one bank's machines insisted that numbers like 160000 were too small and that the minimum amount was 2000 - as I write this I wonder if this was due to confusion over decimal points (see prev item) but I am fairly sure it wasn't
- several banks rejected the transaction and said to contact my bank
- one bank said transaction had processed successfully after a very very long wait, but gave me not cash - and this was of the machine type that takes your card in - as all UK ones do IME, but here and in other parts of Latin America some banks have machines that only take your card in part way and "locks" it so you can't take it out, but I assume these machines always release your card and can never swallow it.
I did speak to bank staff (is there a cash machine? etc) in Spanish and on the whole that felt reasonably solid, despite a wobble with the security guard asking me to remove my cap.
This was with the Starling card I'd used at the airport. I deliberately hadn't taken other cards out to reduce risk of theft/loss. In the end after maybe two hours (I was walking round and "seeing" the place and getting a feel for it etc, so it wasn't wasted time) I came back to accom and got on chat with them. They were very decent (as they were last time I tried, IIRC) and it turned out I have a £300/day allowance (which I had forgotten, as normally I'd never withdraw more than that in a day) *and it works on a UK calendar day window*. I had withdrawn USD200 at just past UK midnight at the airport so all my withdrawal attempts this morning for £200ish worth of CRC were failing because I only had something like £140 allowance left. (Another minor bit of fallout of cash machine woes at airport - if I'd got this sorted 10 mins earlier none of this would have happened today.)
So I'm sure the Starling card would have worked if I'd waited, but I wanted CRC to pay for food/SIM so I took my Barclaycard Rewards out and used that - I knew roughly where to find the machines now, and used one of the red ones I had used at the airport and got 200k out for an only slightly insane fee of about 2.8k (from memory).
Of course I then struggled a bit to find a place to eat, despite seeing loads when I needed cash first. I did see some OK ones including Peruvian and Chinese but I felt that even though I wouldn't be going for uber-typical CR dishes it would be silly not to eat in a CR restaurant my first day. And in the end I found a soda (had seen loads earlier, as I said) called Soda del Banco which had prices on the menu on the wall (finding my feet - until I know roughly what to expect, don't want to trust the prices are going to be "OK" if they aren't shown) and had pretty decent filet de pollo, papas fritas and a salad (which I asked for no dressing on and got, I felt pretty chuffed with myself - oh, I ordered at the counter, I think that was right) and a tamarind juice (I do like tamarind, it was nice but a bit small as I had a raging thirst on by this point) for something like 3700 for the food, 700 for the drink and (not remembering specifically about tipping customs) figuring making it 5000 would be an OK but not insane (unlike some of my early Guatemalan experiences) tip. I paid with a 20k note to get some small bills too.
I then sallied out to find a SIM. Claro seem to be the only game in town based on my observations. I went into one place and asked about a SIM and the guy said he only had them with no internet. I then found an actual Claro shop, went in and after queuing a bit (small place, 1 MoS and 2-ish customers waiting) I paid 1.5k for a SIM and 10k for 5GB/30 days, unlimited WhatsApp (nice if it works but as this is for G5 to carry round it probably won't) and 200 minutes for calls to CR numbers (possibly useful for taxis etc). Did all this in Spanish and although I fumbled a bit at times and felt a bit annoyed, I am still pleased with myself. I asked if I could try it in shop so I sat down and put it in G5 (had moved "normal" UK SIM to K1 that morning) and it activated but I couldn't get on internet and my balance seemed wrong. A text arrived just as I went up to the counter which said the 10k deal had been activated, but since I was there I let MoS play with phone a bit and she couldn't get it to work either. Oddly I tried it half an hour ago and it seems to work fine, so no idea what happened. I didn't intend to ask for a refund but perhaps this made me feel more flustered (with impact on my Spanish) as I wondered if I was being a bit weak. But (as she asked and I said) I did have another phone back at accom and even if the SIM had only worked in K1 it would still be kind of worth having (though inconvenient to use, as I'd like regular UK SIM available in case of texts warning me of stuff from banks, and I'd rather not carry that SIM in the G5 as it's more likely to get lost that way).
Anyway, touch wood, it seems to be working. I haven't tried to play with WhatsApp on G5 now, maybe eg tomorrow night if I am bored during evening in.
This is a smidge more than I hoped to pay but at about £17/month it's not terrible and 5GB of data is more than I have on my UK SIM back home and should allow me to "splurge" a bit on using it if I am wifi-less for whatever reason. Also if it turns out I really should have gone with another network I can always get one after 30 days and I'm only out the fairly negligible price I paid for the SIM
There were cheaper deals but they were for 15 or 10 days and were more expensive per day, rather than there being cheaper deals with less data/calls for a lower daily rate.
I made a point of not getting phone out and playing with it/reading on it while waiting for/eating lunch and while in the queue at the Claro place; I'm trying to be a bit more present and/or just rely on my brilliantly powerful intellect to amuse me. :-)
It was about 3pm, maybe a bit earlier, when I left Claro shop. It had gone a bit cloudy and pleasantly cooler and there was a bit of a refreshing breeze. There also seemed to be a *very* light rain in the air at some points, which surprised me but wasn't remotely soaking and was quite refreshing.
It felt a little early to be going back to accom but I formed a vague resolution to walk round for another hour or so and get some water+pop at a supermarket, shove it in hostel fridge and maybe drink a bit in the kitchen (thinking that I shouldn't hide myself away too much and then I might get to chat more - this worked to a small extent tonight as putting it in there lead to that conversation already described, though I drank a couple of hasty and awkward glasses solo in the kitchen 10-15 mins later). As it happened despite feeling I'd got the rough hang of the geography and the numerical avenida (W-E) and calle (N-S) street naming, I got lost - *probably* because the avenida numbers decrement as you go north to the centre, then start to increment again, but the street signs don't say "avenida 1 *N*" or "avenida 1 *S*" , just "avenida 1" , so when I thought I was heading south because the numbers were increasing I was actually heading north. This is speculation but I'm moderately confident.
As a result - and vague worries about the darkening sky threatening heavier rain - that was the one time today I resorted to using the phone GPS, which is how I twigged I'd actually gone right out to the NE corner of the main "square" central-ish area. Walked back zig-zagging through the centre and by the time I got to the supermarket I'd previously seen near accom it was relatively late anyway.
General impressions of Alajuela is that it's quite pleasant - I don't know if the whole of CR is like this, but I did feel safe (even from random hassle) on the streets - but not (although there are certainly some cool looking buildings - but I resisted temptation to pull camera out today as I had eg wodge of cash i'd withdraw in camera pocket, and even ignoring that, I didn't want to advertise my tourist status by photographing stuff while I had all that cash and one of my good travel cards on me) on the whole amazingly attractive. Nice enough but not "beautiful" .
As I said last night, v "Latin American" feel to the streets - lots of small-ish businesses which on reflection can also be true in parts of London, but it feels more intensely "small businessy" here - but also oddly and sort of coolly but also sort of confusingly when you're walking around the fairly compact centre - there seemed to be pockets of residential stuff kind of mixed in. This is probably a slightly confused perception based on my somewhat random walking.
Fairly serious looking hills/mountains to north and south horizons; I did try to use these for navigation a bit, but except for E-W v N-S they weren't that useful - I couldn't tell them apart, at first I did think the southern ones were noticeably higher but whether or not that's true, I think in reality the more local up-down of the streets and buildings in the way make this initial judgement of mine a bit unsubstantiated.
Fingers hurting a bit and though I'm not actively tired I suspect if I did lay down I'd fall asleep so I would like to stop. I think I've covered most stuff but can always add more in another day's entry.
It does feel - and I may be being unfair - that scope for using Alajuela as a base for daytrips (ignoring Poas and its awkward buses and registrations - oh incidentally not that I was specifically looking, but I didn't notice any businesses offering tours to Poas, despite an old guide book saying many companies did offer it) feels limited. This accommodation is nice enough but it also does feel a smidge "lonely" and ideal for a transitory stay but not more. There are obviously bars etc in town but nothing looked super tempting/unthreatening and the idea - in my current fresh off the plane state in particular - of going out solo for a few beers and maybe some live music feels a bit impractical. It's a fine line but somewhere a smidge more touristy and/or smaller - like grecia? - feels like this sort of thing might be more doable.
And as I think I've already said, I may well be back here at the end of the trip, and even if I'm not, it's far from impossible I'll return to CR in the future and again Alajuela will be there right by the airport and a natural place to put in a night or two, or longer if I subsequently discover cool stuff here I'll wish I'd known about now, etc.
Going to go have a shower, shave and clean my teeth and then I think I'll move towards bed. I suspect/hope I will naturally be up fairly early again given that I am feeling tired enough I'll probably be asleep quite early. No major plans for tomorrow, probably just wander a bit, maybe check out bus station, probably photograph some of those cool-looking buildings and maybe go into any if they are open, or visit some of the sites listed in guide book. And probably ditto, except bus station, the day after (Sunday) as well.
2039 That went fairly well, the shave (first with a disposable razor I had spare at home) felt OK, naturally some blood but not too bad. Still feeling my way back into the routines associated with shared bathroom, eg I should use a carrier bag to take everything over instead of my hands.
Nearly said earlier re altering plans based on availability and this forcing me slightly off the beaten path that this is probably true, but anything on sites like booking.com is still on a somewhat beaten path. But I didn't because there were entire apartments multiple km outside Grecia available for less than I'm paying for my private room in town. These do feel a little off the beaten path. A bit intimidating maybe but also worth bearing in mind if (more likely on a future trip, with a laptop) I just want to hole up somewhere peaceful that there are possibilities there. For all I know such places might also be a decent base for nearby activities/hikes/whatever, although current gut feeling is that if I do use Grecia as a base for even a week or so I'd want to be in town (not nec at hostel booked tonight) as the extra convenience of buses in all directions and facilities is probably better.
Was going to say one other thing.
2048 Still not come back to me. Will post this and then bed. Can always add forgotten stuff to next entry of course.
Feeling broadly OK. I haven't "done" much by the standards of eg someone making the most of a two week trip, but I've got done what I wanted to do, I'm mostly not pressuring myself and minor jitters aside I'm not feeling terribly uncomfortable and while eg trogging round trying to get cash for two hours wasn't exactly "fun" , I didn't feel I was wasting my time and I didn't get worked up (just quietly a bit frustrated, but I knew I had other cards and some cash and no rush etc) and I could probably say overall the day has been quietly enjoyable in a slightly strange way.
Luckily I noticed and I think I've managed to put stuff back how it was near enough and put the keys to that back on the counter in the room and in the lock box. I will keep my mouth shut and if I am asked (fingers crossed some poor sod hasn't been trying to check in - but they could have got into the *building* at any rate, so probably not) I will say that I didn't see their e-mail (which was sent stupidly late really) until I had already had a shower in that room which had a key in the lock box on street, and then I changed. This is nearly true, except I spent a few hours in there, but that's my secret.
I just hope to fuck I haven't left anything in there. I am 90% sure I haven't, and I do have my passport. It's a good job I didn't "unpack" excessively.
Anyway, if there is fallout from this a) it's not primarily my fault and I'm not going to accept blame, although probably no one will try to pin any on me in the first place b) I am definitely in the right room now and I'll deal with it tomorrow after a night's sleep.
2055 Actually in bed at last. Still bit edgy about the above, but the key thing is that I put the keys back outside and in the room itself so no one is going to be seriously fucked over. They may notice a towel is damp etc and I can and will explain if pushed, but no more inconvenience than that.
Fri 20th Jan 1704 Got back to accom maybe 30 mins ago. Went into kitchen to put bottle of water and bottle of some guarana fizzy diet drink I got (Cotiuba?? bottle is in fridge not room so can't see it) at supermarket on way back. Owner was there talking with a Canadian woman guest, had brief chat with them - apparently you need to register (on web?) to go to Poas volcano, you might only be able to go on Saturday and there might not be a bus or there might just be a bus a bit like the one I vaguely recall from guidebook which gets you there a bit late to have a good chance of a cloud-free view of crater and comes back at midday or thereabouts. Canadian woman and her brother are apparently thinking of going via Uber.
I had seen this registering business mentioned in welcome booklet here in room this morning. Not checked my up-to-date guidebook yet. I was already thinking during day (which I intend to write up later after a bit of reading and/or YT - frankly I suspect I'm in for the night now and time may hang heavy) that I might not try going to Poas, at least from here now. Anyway, wanted to note that down while fresh in my mind.
They also said it's Costa Rican school long holidays until Feb (not clear when in Feb) which means it's necessary to register for a lot of stuff and/or it's busy. This shits me up a bit. I may well look into booking next stop after these four nights tonight.
My earlier wafflings about going to Nicaragua or Panama if it's too busy or expensive in CR didn't take into account coronavirus rules; they may be no problem, but as of now I have no specific idea what rules might be in place. Still, while I'd rather not, failing to cross a land border because of a failed PCR test or whatever when I'm in no rush and can just turn back isn't as disastrous as it would be if I were flying into the country.
Incidentally the mask situation here appears superficially rather UK-like (ignoring the legal requirement in medical contexts IIRC) - hardly anyone wearing masks but a few people, the businesses I've been in today haven't made people wear masks and because presumably business owners here have the same weird aversion to taking down outdated notices as those in the UK, a good number of businesses still have "you must wear a mask" and similar signs on the door but no one - including the staff - is wearing one, and AIUI there's no legal compulsion to do so either, so the notices are utterly confusing and pontless. How hard is it to take down a bloody poster? But this isn't a specifically Costa Rican failing, as I say the same seems to be the case in the UK too.
Right, going to slack off for a bit and then continue write up. I will say that my main objectives today were to get cash, get lunch and get a SIM card and I have (subject to some possible problems I haven't investigated yet) achieved all three. I also fairly quickly got to the point where I feel pretty safe on the streets in daytime - no one seems to be interested in hassling me for whatever reason.
1737 FWIW if I forgot to say above, owner said the cloud cover can change rapidly up at the volcano, so just because it is cloudy when you get there, it won't necessarily stay cloudy for the rest of the day.
1826 Been lying on bed reading and I've been on the verge of nodding off a couple of times. This is, I guess, fine, if a little unexpected - I did get a reasonably solid long sleep last night, although I suppose I'd been a bit short on sleep for a few nights and I've done a fair amount of walking today too.
I might go to bed early. Let me just have at least a quick poke on eg booking.com for Grecia and see how that looks, and then I might put off making plans until tomorrow - I could for example trog over to the relevant bus terminal tomorrow and ask about buses.
Oh, I investigate Three Go Roam this morning, but unless you have an old SIM (shame I didn't keep my "Guatemala" one alive, although being PAYG it may not have qualified anyway) there's a £5/day roaming charge to use your allowance, so it's practically useless for me and this is why I think I thought it had been canned - I looked it up a month or so ago and found this and wrote it off.
OK, that hostel I vaguely liked the sound of has a single private with shared bathroom for four nights for about 47k or about £17/night. They have dorms for less but this early in the trip when I'm still finding my feet I'm reluctant to do that. It's free cancellation until 22nd as well so in the (probably unlikely event) it's an utter mare to get to by bus from here I could cancel tomorrow night without having to investigate now when I'm feeling just a bit tired. Sod it, given the free cancellation I will book this.
OK, yes, quick search in Rough Guide on Kindle says buses Alajuela-Grecia every 30 mins and it takes an hour. A nice easy hop, surely. The hostel has a bar, I might meet someone and even if I don't I can maybe have a quiet beer or two instead of sitting in my room as I will here.
OK, that's booked. Feels good to have that sorted. I don't exactly like "rushing off" but until I get more confident re availability at short notice (this wasn't too bad TBH, given it's two nights before) I didn't want to take chances. Alajuela does seem OK and I will waffle about it later, but gut feeling is there's no "must see" here, I can and perhaps will come back here as a matter of convenience at end of trip, and for that matter with Grecia a short and frequent bus ride away, I can probably come back next week if I have regrets.
I am not particularly desperate to socialise at this point but it does feel like a proper hostel with staff and a bar might avoid some of the slight boxed-in feeling of this place (which feels a little transitional).
Incidentally a dorm at that hostel would have been slightly over half what I'm paying. I've been in dorms a moderate amount over the years, I think it's tolerable and I will probably do it a bit (not constantly) later in trip to keep costs down and/or out of necessity due to availability (TBH gut feeling is that availability isn't going to be as bad as I feel, especially as I have some flexibility to vary my route based on availability, it may even take me on the slightly off-the-beaten track parts of the tourist routes as a result, but I also suspect that if you're willing to stay in a dorm you can probably get something a day or so ahead in most places without too much trouble or paying an arm and a leg) but I do want to give it a few weeks first as (not that I feel too edgy right now, except wrt "too busy" concerns, but still, it is early days) I am likely to have found my feet by then.
1918 Right, let's bash out a few notes about today.
I woke up IIRC at about 1 and 4am feeling vaguely disoriented, but it wasn't that crushing (albeit short-lived) feeling I'll call homesickness (although it isn't necessarily that, as it crops up once in a while when I *am* at home). I think I finally woke up about 8am still feeling a bit tired but I just didn't seem to want to go back to sleep either. Maybe it was nearer 9, I'm not sure.
A few people around when I went out to clean my teeth, said hola, it's not a huge place obviously.
I spent ages in my room sorting stuff out (rearranging things following flight - it's different now I have a "base", stuff like that), deciding what the plan for today was (get cash, have lunch, get SIM), researching Three Go Roam, etc. I kept feeling vague "need to get out and do stuff" guilty urges but I kept talking myself out of it. There isn't any rush, I also want to start gradually and a bit of preparation (e.g. making sure my debit/credit cards are split up) could save my arse later.
Anyway, although I had a fair amount of USD I really didn't want to pay for anything except in CRC if I could help it, so cash plus a bit of a walk the first order of the day. I set off and made a point of noting landmarks near accom and did a pseudo-regular tour of the grid-based layout of the town centre. It was warm but not unpleasantly grindingly so (my mind reverts to Guayaquil here, although TBF I think it was going into a rotiserrie restaurant which added to the heat which really sticks in my mind).
At first I felt a bit "everyone is going to see I'm a tourist and hassle me" but I did my best to walk slowly-ish and I don't think it took that long (an hour or two? just a guess) before I pretty much felt comfortable walking around and that no one was going to hassle me.
I found numerous banks and had various confusing interactions with their cash machines. I also got politely told (and my Spanish wasn't good enough while feeling slightly flustered to understand at first) to take my cap off by a security guard at one of the places that had the machines in the main bank - lesson learned. In no particular order:
- one machine wanted to charge me something like ten quid as a fee, so I cancelled, although based on what I learned later it would probably have failed anyway
- at least one bank's machines seemed to insist on you entering two extra zeroes to "fill in" the pointless two decimal places at the end of the amount
- one bank's machines insisted that numbers like 160000 were too small and that the minimum amount was 2000 - as I write this I wonder if this was due to confusion over decimal points (see prev item) but I am fairly sure it wasn't
- several banks rejected the transaction and said to contact my bank
- one bank said transaction had processed successfully after a very very long wait, but gave me not cash - and this was of the machine type that takes your card in - as all UK ones do IME, but here and in other parts of Latin America some banks have machines that only take your card in part way and "locks" it so you can't take it out, but I assume these machines always release your card and can never swallow it.
I did speak to bank staff (is there a cash machine? etc) in Spanish and on the whole that felt reasonably solid, despite a wobble with the security guard asking me to remove my cap.
This was with the Starling card I'd used at the airport. I deliberately hadn't taken other cards out to reduce risk of theft/loss. In the end after maybe two hours (I was walking round and "seeing" the place and getting a feel for it etc, so it wasn't wasted time) I came back to accom and got on chat with them. They were very decent (as they were last time I tried, IIRC) and it turned out I have a £300/day allowance (which I had forgotten, as normally I'd never withdraw more than that in a day) *and it works on a UK calendar day window*. I had withdrawn USD200 at just past UK midnight at the airport so all my withdrawal attempts this morning for £200ish worth of CRC were failing because I only had something like £140 allowance left. (Another minor bit of fallout of cash machine woes at airport - if I'd got this sorted 10 mins earlier none of this would have happened today.)
So I'm sure the Starling card would have worked if I'd waited, but I wanted CRC to pay for food/SIM so I took my Barclaycard Rewards out and used that - I knew roughly where to find the machines now, and used one of the red ones I had used at the airport and got 200k out for an only slightly insane fee of about 2.8k (from memory).
Of course I then struggled a bit to find a place to eat, despite seeing loads when I needed cash first. I did see some OK ones including Peruvian and Chinese but I felt that even though I wouldn't be going for uber-typical CR dishes it would be silly not to eat in a CR restaurant my first day. And in the end I found a soda (had seen loads earlier, as I said) called Soda del Banco which had prices on the menu on the wall (finding my feet - until I know roughly what to expect, don't want to trust the prices are going to be "OK" if they aren't shown) and had pretty decent filet de pollo, papas fritas and a salad (which I asked for no dressing on and got, I felt pretty chuffed with myself - oh, I ordered at the counter, I think that was right) and a tamarind juice (I do like tamarind, it was nice but a bit small as I had a raging thirst on by this point) for something like 3700 for the food, 700 for the drink and (not remembering specifically about tipping customs) figuring making it 5000 would be an OK but not insane (unlike some of my early Guatemalan experiences) tip. I paid with a 20k note to get some small bills too.
I then sallied out to find a SIM. Claro seem to be the only game in town based on my observations. I went into one place and asked about a SIM and the guy said he only had them with no internet. I then found an actual Claro shop, went in and after queuing a bit (small place, 1 MoS and 2-ish customers waiting) I paid 1.5k for a SIM and 10k for 5GB/30 days, unlimited WhatsApp (nice if it works but as this is for G5 to carry round it probably won't) and 200 minutes for calls to CR numbers (possibly useful for taxis etc). Did all this in Spanish and although I fumbled a bit at times and felt a bit annoyed, I am still pleased with myself. I asked if I could try it in shop so I sat down and put it in G5 (had moved "normal" UK SIM to K1 that morning) and it activated but I couldn't get on internet and my balance seemed wrong. A text arrived just as I went up to the counter which said the 10k deal had been activated, but since I was there I let MoS play with phone a bit and she couldn't get it to work either. Oddly I tried it half an hour ago and it seems to work fine, so no idea what happened. I didn't intend to ask for a refund but perhaps this made me feel more flustered (with impact on my Spanish) as I wondered if I was being a bit weak. But (as she asked and I said) I did have another phone back at accom and even if the SIM had only worked in K1 it would still be kind of worth having (though inconvenient to use, as I'd like regular UK SIM available in case of texts warning me of stuff from banks, and I'd rather not carry that SIM in the G5 as it's more likely to get lost that way).
Anyway, touch wood, it seems to be working. I haven't tried to play with WhatsApp on G5 now, maybe eg tomorrow night if I am bored during evening in.
This is a smidge more than I hoped to pay but at about £17/month it's not terrible and 5GB of data is more than I have on my UK SIM back home and should allow me to "splurge" a bit on using it if I am wifi-less for whatever reason. Also if it turns out I really should have gone with another network I can always get one after 30 days and I'm only out the fairly negligible price I paid for the SIM
There were cheaper deals but they were for 15 or 10 days and were more expensive per day, rather than there being cheaper deals with less data/calls for a lower daily rate.
I made a point of not getting phone out and playing with it/reading on it while waiting for/eating lunch and while in the queue at the Claro place; I'm trying to be a bit more present and/or just rely on my brilliantly powerful intellect to amuse me. :-)
It was about 3pm, maybe a bit earlier, when I left Claro shop. It had gone a bit cloudy and pleasantly cooler and there was a bit of a refreshing breeze. There also seemed to be a *very* light rain in the air at some points, which surprised me but wasn't remotely soaking and was quite refreshing.
It felt a little early to be going back to accom but I formed a vague resolution to walk round for another hour or so and get some water+pop at a supermarket, shove it in hostel fridge and maybe drink a bit in the kitchen (thinking that I shouldn't hide myself away too much and then I might get to chat more - this worked to a small extent tonight as putting it in there lead to that conversation already described, though I drank a couple of hasty and awkward glasses solo in the kitchen 10-15 mins later). As it happened despite feeling I'd got the rough hang of the geography and the numerical avenida (W-E) and calle (N-S) street naming, I got lost - *probably* because the avenida numbers decrement as you go north to the centre, then start to increment again, but the street signs don't say "avenida 1 *N*" or "avenida 1 *S*" , just "avenida 1" , so when I thought I was heading south because the numbers were increasing I was actually heading north. This is speculation but I'm moderately confident.
As a result - and vague worries about the darkening sky threatening heavier rain - that was the one time today I resorted to using the phone GPS, which is how I twigged I'd actually gone right out to the NE corner of the main "square" central-ish area. Walked back zig-zagging through the centre and by the time I got to the supermarket I'd previously seen near accom it was relatively late anyway.
General impressions of Alajuela is that it's quite pleasant - I don't know if the whole of CR is like this, but I did feel safe (even from random hassle) on the streets - but not (although there are certainly some cool looking buildings - but I resisted temptation to pull camera out today as I had eg wodge of cash i'd withdraw in camera pocket, and even ignoring that, I didn't want to advertise my tourist status by photographing stuff while I had all that cash and one of my good travel cards on me) on the whole amazingly attractive. Nice enough but not "beautiful" .
As I said last night, v "Latin American" feel to the streets - lots of small-ish businesses which on reflection can also be true in parts of London, but it feels more intensely "small businessy" here - but also oddly and sort of coolly but also sort of confusingly when you're walking around the fairly compact centre - there seemed to be pockets of residential stuff kind of mixed in. This is probably a slightly confused perception based on my somewhat random walking.
Fairly serious looking hills/mountains to north and south horizons; I did try to use these for navigation a bit, but except for E-W v N-S they weren't that useful - I couldn't tell them apart, at first I did think the southern ones were noticeably higher but whether or not that's true, I think in reality the more local up-down of the streets and buildings in the way make this initial judgement of mine a bit unsubstantiated.
Fingers hurting a bit and though I'm not actively tired I suspect if I did lay down I'd fall asleep so I would like to stop. I think I've covered most stuff but can always add more in another day's entry.
It does feel - and I may be being unfair - that scope for using Alajuela as a base for daytrips (ignoring Poas and its awkward buses and registrations - oh incidentally not that I was specifically looking, but I didn't notice any businesses offering tours to Poas, despite an old guide book saying many companies did offer it) feels limited. This accommodation is nice enough but it also does feel a smidge "lonely" and ideal for a transitory stay but not more. There are obviously bars etc in town but nothing looked super tempting/unthreatening and the idea - in my current fresh off the plane state in particular - of going out solo for a few beers and maybe some live music feels a bit impractical. It's a fine line but somewhere a smidge more touristy and/or smaller - like grecia? - feels like this sort of thing might be more doable.
And as I think I've already said, I may well be back here at the end of the trip, and even if I'm not, it's far from impossible I'll return to CR in the future and again Alajuela will be there right by the airport and a natural place to put in a night or two, or longer if I subsequently discover cool stuff here I'll wish I'd known about now, etc.
Going to go have a shower, shave and clean my teeth and then I think I'll move towards bed. I suspect/hope I will naturally be up fairly early again given that I am feeling tired enough I'll probably be asleep quite early. No major plans for tomorrow, probably just wander a bit, maybe check out bus station, probably photograph some of those cool-looking buildings and maybe go into any if they are open, or visit some of the sites listed in guide book. And probably ditto, except bus station, the day after (Sunday) as well.
2039 That went fairly well, the shave (first with a disposable razor I had spare at home) felt OK, naturally some blood but not too bad. Still feeling my way back into the routines associated with shared bathroom, eg I should use a carrier bag to take everything over instead of my hands.
Nearly said earlier re altering plans based on availability and this forcing me slightly off the beaten path that this is probably true, but anything on sites like booking.com is still on a somewhat beaten path. But I didn't because there were entire apartments multiple km outside Grecia available for less than I'm paying for my private room in town. These do feel a little off the beaten path. A bit intimidating maybe but also worth bearing in mind if (more likely on a future trip, with a laptop) I just want to hole up somewhere peaceful that there are possibilities there. For all I know such places might also be a decent base for nearby activities/hikes/whatever, although current gut feeling is that if I do use Grecia as a base for even a week or so I'd want to be in town (not nec at hostel booked tonight) as the extra convenience of buses in all directions and facilities is probably better.
Was going to say one other thing.
2048 Still not come back to me. Will post this and then bed. Can always add forgotten stuff to next entry of course.
Feeling broadly OK. I haven't "done" much by the standards of eg someone making the most of a two week trip, but I've got done what I wanted to do, I'm mostly not pressuring myself and minor jitters aside I'm not feeling terribly uncomfortable and while eg trogging round trying to get cash for two hours wasn't exactly "fun" , I didn't feel I was wasting my time and I didn't get worked up (just quietly a bit frustrated, but I knew I had other cards and some cash and no rush etc) and I could probably say overall the day has been quietly enjoyable in a slightly strange way.
Friday, 20 January 2023
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.
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.
Wednesday, 18 January 2023
Costa Rica preparation
18th Dec 1732: I booked flights to Costa Rica on Thursday (kind of). I'd been dithering about doing a trip for months (?), and things finally developed enough momentum that I kind of found myself "pushed" into booking because I didn't want to lose a half-decent option I'd found when I was really just investigating without a specific intent to book.
19th Dec 0131 Just waffling some more to catch up on already-happened stuff.
I had a quick poke at flights on Sunday night, having at some point half-decided that Costa Rica was the preferred option on my short list (but without any really solid reason, except "I haven't been there before"). Another poke on Monday night. None of the comparison sites I used seemed to be willing to cooperate and allow me to easily say "I don't want to transit the US or Canada", even though my primary reason - you have to get a transit visa, which costs money and takes time, so you can find yourself in limbo (e.g. by the time you get the visa, the flight price has gone up - or you book the flight to fix the price, then don't get the visa) - seems to be something surely many people will be worried about. I guess maybe most of their users are American so they don't care.
I found a flight via Madrid but no one would sell it me unless I flew into Madrid for an ~24h layover before flying out. This makes no sense with the number of flights there must be from London-Madrid - *no* other flight had an acceptable 3-4h-ish connection time and spare seats at a decent price? - but that's what it looked like.
So long story slightly shorter, in the end I splurged slightly on direct BA flights Gatwick-San Jose and back. This has a generous 23kg hand baggage allowance (which I'm going to come nowhere near) but no checked baggage (which I can live with, but it means I can't bring any alcohol back as a "souvenir", because Terrorism). Seat selection is also not free, even 24h before checkin, which feels chiselling, but although some information I saw while deciding whether to book or not seemed to suggest it would be £40/flight to reserve a seat, in the end I actually reserved a seat (on 18th, a few days after the booking) each way for £26/flight, which isn't *great* but isn't too bad. I didn't get super cushy seats but TBH except for paying nearly £100/flight to sit in the emergency exit row, none of the pricier seat options looked tremendously desirable. I picked something at the back (fingers crossed there's no terrible turbulence, though I guess I'll never know whether it's *slightly* better sitting over the wing or *loads* better, as for any particular turbulence event I'll only ever be sitting in one place, and I don't fly enough to do some kind of mental averaging out) with the aisle on my right (since I'm right handed), which is absolutely the main thing and really the only reason I'm willing to pay for seat selection (the aisle, not specifically aisle on the right). It's been a long time since I flew but I skimmed a few websites for tips on seat selection in case they jogged my memory (they didn't really) but apparently picking an aisle/window seat at the back can increase your chances of the middle seat(s) being empty as almost no one is going to choose a middle seat at the back. I have no idea if the airline might tend to allocate seats to those who don't pay in these shittier areas even if the flight's half empty, but anyway, worth the punt. I don't mind the possible noise from being near the toilet and I figure it might (vague memories seem to back me up on this) feel a bit more spacious back there because of the lack of further seats behind me. (I deliberately didn't pick the very last row as the seats wouldn't recline; I don't care too much about reclining myself, but if the person in front of me reclines, I want to be able to "pass it on" by reclining myself.)
I was of course dithering about booking the flights. I happened to notice on Monday while dithering that BA had a "reserve the seats and price for 72 hours for £10, refundable if you do book, and if the price goes down you still get that lower price too" option, which I dithered a bit about in turn and then took. That gave me three days to "play" with the idea of having committed to the flight, and I did book on the Thursday afternoon. My admiration for this rather nice offer was tempered a bit by receiving a confusingly (deliberately or incompetently?) worded e-mail just after midnight saying "just 24 hours to book" when I actually had ~47 hours left (it even quoted the deadline I expected), which made me worry I'd got confused and was going to accidentally miss the deadline or be forced into giving up some of my 72h dithering time, but overall it's a nice feature. So I sort of booked the flights on Monday evening, but I actually properly booked them on Thursday afternoon, then I (probably) had another 24h to cancel and get a full refund so I was still forcing myself to think "do I want these flights or not?" on Friday afternoon before the 24h window ran out. I started looking at the seat booking on Saturday night but since things didn't look like they were in any danger of selling out I slept on it and only booked those on Sunday night.
The flight times aren't bad - the departure from Gatwick is ~11am, which probably means leaving the flat at 5am or something horrible (and worse if there are train strikes that day; it's not clear yet) but could be worse, and I get into San Jose late-ish afternoon, so there may be daylight for the transit. Returning from San Jose the flight leaves about 6pm, so I don't have to be rushing around like crazy early in the morning on the last day or hanging around the airport from early afternoon until midnight or anything. And of course having a direct flight is always vaguely nice.
20th Dec 2103 Still not caught up on all the stuff that already happened but I'm checking over my clothes. I think the two pairs of trousers (black and charcoal) from the last trip are still fine - they (and anything else new) only had 5 weeks' wear, of course. Dark+light blue isocool long-sleeved top seems fine. The two dark blue isocool long-sleeved tops are both a bit weirdly "horizontally lined" at the same place on the back - I have to assume some kind of friction, but I can't think what exactly. They are probably wearable but would ideally replace them (or it, depending how many I want to take).
Of the two thin long-sleeved merino wool tops, the grey one got mended (pretty nicely) as it tore while I was in Colombia - may or may not want to take that. The blue one looks OK, there's maybe just the tiniest hint of wear under one of the armpits which might be where the grey one went, but I wouldn't like to swear it's not just discolouration. I always felt a bit dubious about wearing these, mainly because of my prejudice against wool, even though they are actually pretty fine. They are also a bit tight (not "not fitting", just "not loose") and that may not be ideal for keeping cool and/or against mosquitoes - really not sure though.
Dark and light grey (two separate) Quechua short-sleeved T-shirts look to be in reasonable condition, although broadly speaking I prefer long-sleeved.
Bright red Domyos short-sleeved T-shirt looks in good condition, possibly never worn. I have a bright blue one of these too which has some small stains (presumably food or something which didn't come off fully in the wash), and also a darkish red unbranded short-sleeved T-shirt which shows discolouration under armpits and some small probably-food stains - those are both probably wearable (and the underarm discolouration is probably irrelevant, unless it's actual wear and the material might go, but I suspect not - probably sweat/deodorant bleaching) but perhaps very slightly scruffy with those small stains on.
I had a look at the PackTowl the other day and it seems to be in reasonable condition. Fleece (black) also looks in good condition.
Shell jacket (black) looks in good condition - it has some whitish marks in slightly odd places that are probably scuffs. It is possible I didn't wash this when I got back from the last trip, although I probably did - I washed everything else, but since it's all a little musty from being in a bag in the cupboard for three years I am sticking stuff in the wash again tonight once I've been over it.
Shell trousers (black) again in good condition - not too surprising as they've only been worn a handful of times IIRC.
Underwear looks good too, although I do seem to have one never-used pair FWIW.
This isn't counting the "old" travel clothes (beige Rohan trousers, beige combat-ish trousers, blue short-sleeved Rohan collared shirt) which are perhaps a bit worn and/or perhaps not a good idea wrt "fashion" anyway.
21st Dec 0015 Checking misc travel supplies so I can order what I don't need; doing this late-ish at night because can't check once I go up to visit parents. I seem to have two bottles of shaving oil, one nearly full - can't see a best before date so I assume this doesn't go off. I have a full bottle of saltidin anti-mosquito spray (still sealed in plastic bag it came in) but it expired in 2021 :-( It might work but when there's a small risk of getting malaria or dengue or whatever if it doesn't work I'm reluctant to take the chance, so I'll have to buy some more.
For the record, I already have a new unused toothbrush and disposable razor which I can take with me, I don't need to buy new ones. The water purification tablets I always take and almost never use (since they're not perfect, they're just "just in case") are still in date as well.
0316 Just noticed the grey merino top has a small-ish hole in it. I wasn't planning on taking it away with me really, but this definitely knocks that out. AFAICT having just checked it again the blue one still looks fine, although this does make me wonder about the durability of these (maybe the grey one was just unlucky though?) as they were new before the Colombia trip and if memory serves (blog could confirm) the grey one developed the big hole and got repaired while I was in Barranquilla fairly early on (and before any kind of "trekking" that might have put extra strain on it). I was thinking of - and still might - buying a new one or two of these, assuming they're still on sale (as I think they are). Anyway, I'll chew it over.
22nd Dec 2256 Not done anything specific re trip but will contnue with wafflings about already done stuff. I'll double check this as I write and then it's done. Had a look at the vaccination advice for Costa Rica a few days ago, none are "advised" but you should consider diptheria, hepatitis A, rabies and tetanus. Let's put rabies to one side - I may or may not faff with this, but *if* I just need to get a booster for it *and* I can get that done at a reasonable cost before I go away I may, otherwise I may not - as I've said before, you still need shots if you get bitten and I don't plan on doing anything specifically risky in this area. OK, I don't have my vaccination booklet here with me so I can't finally double-check this and be done with it, but in short I believe I already have all the others. Ah, the blog entry from September 2018 covers this anyway. Yes, the booklet shows hepatitis A running out in August 2016 but the nurse told me I didn't need it, and it looks from the web as though two shots is now considered to be valid for 20 years or life. And I had tetanus/diptheria/polio in September 2018 valid for 10 years. My typhoid vaccination from then will have expired, but typhoid is not mentioned on the NHS Fit for Travel page for Costa Rica so I guess that's fine. And the whole country is low risk for malaria, there are other mosquito-borne illnesses for which there's no vaccine or other preventive medication, but it's basically just a case of trying to be diligent with mosquito repellent and hoping - I don't need to be trying to coax a doctor into letting me pay for anti-malaria drugs. So except for the vague possibility of a rabies booster I'm sorted there.
A quick look at NHS page about rabies vaccination seems to suggest that one booster dose might be considered if I was vaccinated more than a year ago (which I was, of course), but it doesn't give any details on how much time can have elapsed between the initial three dose course and the booster. The Boots rabies vaccination page seems to imply that you can have a booster dose after one year, but it has to be after one year almost exactly. The Superdrug website says a) there's a national shortage of the vaccine b) that the rabies vaccine [none of these sites says "rabies vaccine type X", incidentally] protects you for 10 years but if you're working with animals or otherwise at higher risk, more frequent boosters might be recommended. Given the "may be considered" wording on the NHS website, it and Superdrug are vaguely consistent, although the NHS website is silent on how long the vaccine lasts instead of saying 10 years.
I'm not super happy about this but gut feeling is I am not going to try to see anyone about this rabies booster. Meh. WHO rabies map shows Costa Rica as medium risk. The Fit for Travel site (which links to it) sort of implies it's not necessary and that it is necessary - if you will be "travelling to...a county.. where rabies is considered a risk" (not any specific level of risk) you should "consider" it, but then things like "trekking, cycling or running" only seem to be treated as relevant if you're going to a "high risk" country. Meh.
OK, I found: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rabies-post-exposure-treatment-timing-of-vaccine-booster/guidelines-on-timing-of-rabies-boosters-based-on-antibody-levels It says "Routine booster doses are not recommended for most travellers. A single booster dose of vaccine can be considered, following a risk assessment, in those who have completed a primary course more than one year before and are travelling again to a high risk (enzootic) area." I am *not* travelling to a high risk area, assuming this uses similar terminology to that WHO map.
My natural caution is making this a bit of a fuckfest but it really doesn't look like the travel advice makes this a particular necessity - it's not, for example, in the "courses or boosters usually advised" advice for Costa Rica, which is where I started this caution loop. And since, as I think I've already said, you still need urgent treatment after a bite from a possibly infected animal even if you are vaccinated/boosted, it's not as if having the vaccine (which I have had - it's just that my booster state is a little vague) is all that comforting. I honestly don't know what happens if you're on some trek (thinking of that three day hike I did in Colombia, for example) and a suspicious bite happens, it feels vaguely ridiculous to think special steps are going to be taken to get you to a doctor ASAP, but maybe that happens, or maybe it should. Really don't know. This is obviously actually entirely outside my area of expertise (which isn't purely medical, it's also about "how easy it is to find someone who can treat you" - and presumably even if pretty back-of-beyond areas there could well be some sort of treatment available at rural surgeries or whatever, I just don't know), but as I say I think really it doesn't look like I'm being strongly advised to have it, and I *may* qualify as already having had it anyway.
Just had quick look (via Google; didn't go there directly, it just came up in the results) on the CDC website and it's totally at odds with NHS advice for Guatemala, e.g. malaria medication is recommended for some areas and typhoid vaccination *is* recommended. Fuck knows, there's probably a huge amount of grey area here and no one really knows.
29th Dec 1736 Still need to finish writing up some of the earlier stuff, but will also try to keep this up to date-ish. Been pretty slack but I need to have a skim over a guide book or something and sketch out a rough itinerary - I will almost certainly abandon it at some point, but I want to have some kind of rough plan to keep me going until something turns up to change it. In particular, I need to sort out accommodation for the first few nights and get my head straight about how to get there from the airport, and I need to form some vague plans first.
Looking on archive.org there's a 2015 guide book for CR on there so I will skim that and bash down a few thoughts. I "should" probably enjoy planning out the trip and looking at all the exciting things I can do, but as I've probably said before I don't. Oh, FWIW, archive.org is also replete with "how to retire to Costa Rica" books, which feels mildly alarming in a "it's going to be *so* fucking expensive because of all the rich retirees" way. In no particular order, as stuff catches my eye:
- It might be nice to visit Lake Nicaragua, although the map in the guide book implies it is entirely within Nicaragua rather than forming part of the border itself. But potentially doable, of course.
- Guide book says busiest weeks are Christmas and Easter; if true, while I am going in the peak dry season, I may at least avoid the absolute worst of high demand etc.
- Trying not to take the guide book's details too seriously - it's a 2015 edition, so it's naturally out of date, plus there's been the Incident since then. However, it does suggest there are tourist shuttles between the more popular destinations, which might be a good option, and that buses are probably OK too.
- Ziplining/canopy tours. Guide book says these originated in CR, which may explain why it seems to have so many of them. I get a vague feeling the "adrenaline" aspect of this is maybe a bit of a more recent thing and that it's possible to do this without having your stomach ejected through your throat. Hmm, yes, later parts of the book draw a distinction between "classic" and "extreme" canopy tours; applying a small discount from the book's text in the vague hope that it's trying to flatter the reader with their adventurousness ;-), the former is probably (insurance permitting) something I could have a go at.
- Canyoning (assuming this isn't all ultra-hardcore) might be an option. Guide book implies dry season isn't the best, OTOH it may not be a bad thing from a novice POV.
- Hiking is an obvious option, though there's the usual concern about finding a tour and/or getting to somewhere in order to walk myself (if it's short enough to do in a day).
- Given I can't swim, rafting doesn't massively appeal. I also think this is more a wet season thing. Snorkeling and scuba diving is obviously right out!
- Not necessarily up my street, but apparently one of the two most famous mascaradas of the year will happen while I'm there - in Barva in late March.
- The local food (i.e. what's probably available in cheap unpretentious restaurants, I hope :-) ) looks pretty decent by my standards.
- Volcanos are an attractive idea. No idea if it's still true but this guide book says you can hike to the rim of Rincón de la Vieja.
- Guide book makes San Jose sound pretty unattractive in general, but says it is safe during the day and has some interesting stuff but hardly a must see. Gut feeling is that I would probably be better off visiting it at the end of the trip, as I need to be there for the airport, and if I *do* get mugged or something it's not going to spoil the whole trip. In my skimming so far I haven't found an obvious non-day-trip location (a bit analogous to Antigua in Guatemala - close enough to the capital to be easy to access straight off the plane and touristy/safe) to head out to as soon as I land, though.
- Poás Volcano National Park near San José sounds good.
- I wasn't thinking properly at the time but I'm sure I read some comments on climates varying across the country, and I should look into this so I visit different parts at as close to optimal times as I can. (OTOH, I am perhaps irrationally a bit concerned about being there during peak season in the first place, so maybe going at slightly the wrong time to individual regions might pay off. ;-) )
- Monteverde sounds promising - "most stunning and accessible cloud forest", although "big crowds during high season" - so maybe RÃo Celeste or Rincón de la Vieja. These are all probably in broadly the same region. Guidebook also suggests beautiful but less spectacular San Gerardo de Dota as an alternative, but with the wording "avoiding tourists" maybe it's ultra difficult to get round rather than just not so busy. Shouldn't read too much into it.
- Arenal/Lake Arenal sounds good, although perhaps overly busy. (I'm not too against a "touristy" area, *especially* not to start with, but as I keep saying, the prospect of ultra-high prices, shortage of accommodation and massive crowds doesn't appeal.)
- RÃo Celeste looks good, and the book says it's off-the-beaten path, which may mean "impossible to get to if you don't drive", but still. Yes, I think it's a car-only destination.
- Got to be honest, I think I'm taking this information in at far too detailed a level. Almost everything is going to sound "yeah, that's worth doing", and it probably is. But especially given the outdated information (albeit not insanely so), it's much better to sort out the precise "I'll go to place X and do tour Y" stuff once I'm at or near place X. No real harm reading this stuff, but what I really want here is a broad plan. Part of this might be forming a suitable route between warm and cold parts of the country. If I'm coming in from the UK winter, maybe I want to go somewhere warm-ish first. Then again, cloud forest might not come as such a shock to the system if I go there "straight" from UK winter. Probably doesn't really matter that much.
- Starting to feel the need to avoid to put any pressure on myself here. Need to not turn this into a nightmare of feeling I'm not doing enough etc etc.
- Chirripó might be cool if it's not too hard for me; probably not too bad, obviously I would need to go with a tour. Maybe not, given the guide book says you need a sleeping bag and no way am I buying one and lugging it out from the UK with me. Maybe this sort of thing might be provided on a tour, although it's probably too personal an item.
- Llanos de Cortés waterfall. Although maybe not ideal during dry season?
2007 Had a break from that to have a Spanish lesson. Let me just fill in some of the older stuff rather than continue ploughing through the guide book.
I looked into travel insurance shortly after reserving the flights for 72 hours and got a nasty shock. Despite being one of the cheapest on the Colombia trip, M&S quoted me >£500 for Costa Rica and even another insurer I tried was quoting something >£250. I could have paid this but I really didn't want to, it felt insane. Luckily I poked around a bit more and LV quoted me £140-ish, which I subsequently took up a few days later just after I'd actually booked the flights. The LV policy was multi-trip, but I'm unlikely to get much extra benefit from it - it's not inconceivable I'll do a month or two's trip at some point during the rest of the insured year, I suppose, but not super likely. The M&S policy wasn't multi trip, but that's only because their multi trip policies topped out at 31 days, whereas the LV policy allowed up to 90. I'm not bowled over with the amazing value of a £140-ish policy, but I suppose it's not too bad.
No, I've got confused. £140 is what I paid M&S for the Colombia trip, the LV quote which I took up was nearly £160. Not terrible and certainly if you take the £250/£500-ish quotes as the baseline it is amazing.
I ordered myself a new ultralight bag just before Christmas; it hasn't arrived yet and I keep getting text messages about it being delayed, but fingers crossed it will turn up soon. As always all these kind of things seem oriented towards mountaineering or "serious hiking", whereas I mainly want it as a general travel bag, but I think it will be fine. (I probably already said, but the last lightweight bag developed tears during the Colombia trip - its first - and I got a full refund under the guarantee, which was nice but also annoying. I think the basic idea of the lightweight bag paid off well and the benefits outweighed (ha) the disadvantages. I didn't want to buy a new bag straight away as I had no idea when I would next travel and I didn't want to start the clock ticking on any guarantee the new bag had when I wasn't going to be actively using it.)
I think that's all the stuff I did earlier which I haven't yet written about now documented. I still need to put in some more online orders (e.g. for a new bottle of saltidin spray) and I need to decide what I'm doing about buying some extra clothes/shoes, of course, but I've written about what I've actually done/checked so far.
2042 Back on the guide book. Feeling a bit down TBH. Getting this feeling I am neither old and rich enough nor young and adventurous enough for Costa Rica. ;-) I suspect this is just one of those passing feelings but FWIW.
Just waffling, and I have no idea how practical this is nor am I ruling anything out, but:
- I really just need to go and putter around a bit and see what happens and what/where I do/don't like.
- It would be nice (a bit like Paraty) if I could find some cheap beach-ish (though that's the most likely variant, TBH some other attractive "natural feature" like a lake would be a fine substitute for a beach) place where I can get cheap food, have the odd beer and not do very much for a week. I doubt I'd actually spend much if any time "on the beach" itself, but you know, that kind of vibe. If I actually felt safe, I think it would be fine if I was the only tourist there, I don't care if it's quiet.
- It would be good to get some kind of walking in, as I did in various forms in Colombia and Guatemala. This might well include some volcano stuff. I am fairly sure this is doable without insane amounts of expense or having to own a sleeping bag or hire a car.
Those aren't essential. Anything else is just a bonus, the main thing is probably just to see if I can get a feel for the place and which bits of it do/don't suit me.
Actually - and I have no idea if this is possible - although of course it's maybe a bit chilly, it would be nice if there was an actual town in the cloud foresty kind of regions where I could stay for (say) a week in a cheapish hostel or whatever and have the odd beer or two at night admiring the view, a bit like the places I visited on that three day trip out of Santa Marta except without it being so remote you're hiking up there, spending a single night and then off again the next morning.
Finished that guide book, or at least first skim. It was "Costa Rica: the complete guide" by James Kaiser. It *didn't* have the vaguely Lonely-Planet style details - which may be on his website, but I haven't looked - which I could probably do with checking out, because a simple mostly factual couple of column inches about transport from the airport and where you can get to easily might well resolve my "so where do I start for a low-stress arrival?" question.
Do need to bear in mind that apart from my own mental quirks, the guide book naturally reflects the author's own quirks and a certain "yay, this is so fun and amazing" vibe which is expected from travel writing. I shouldn't let the combination of all this put me off, what really matters is what it's like when I'm actually there.
To be scrupulously fair, CR:TCG does seem to make an effort to address both "eco-travellers" and "fun-and-sun" types, which is in its way an improvement over the tone of LP type books.
2117 Just shoved an amazon order in for 100ml of saltidin spray. I have the semi-regular Christmas free trial of Prime so there's no point holding off putting the order in. I think I only took 100ml with me last time anyway, but I do really need to try to keep the weight of liquids I'm taking with me down so I don't want to be taking 2x100ml, I will just have to accept maybe paying over the odds and maybe having to buy DEET spray when I replenish my supply of insect repellent locally. FWIW that guide book was a lot more chilled about the need for insect repellent over most of the country than the health advice I recently read, although it's possible I just misinterpreted it and of course it may have outdated information. At least with insect repellent I assume the locals do use it (unlike high SPF sunblock) so there's at least a chance of getting it at a half-decent price.
I did have a look for non-liquid insect/mosquito repellent before Christmas, but didn't find anything super promising. There were various wipes and things that probably don't count as liquids for airport security purposes, but they were expensive and they all seemed to offer 2-3 hours protection compared to 12 hours for the spray, so the weight/protection ratio is probably not in their favour. [And I'm unlikely to remember to reapply these wipes every 2-3 hours and having to carry some around to do that could be annoying; the spray is a little more spray-and-forget-about-ti.]
I am not planning on taking a mosquito net either. I bought one for my first-ever long trip in 2009, never used it and stopped carrying it a few trips ago IIRC (I'm sure the blog can clarify if it ever mattered). It's probably lost its insect repellent qualities by now, but AFAIK it is probably still "solid" with no holes in the net and might be usable, or of course I could buy another one (and probably would if I needed one). But nothing I've seen has recommended one, and it's bulky and heavy and in the absence of such recommendations I'm not taking one. I can presumably buy one out there in the unlikely event it does turn out to be necessary or at least desirable.
archive.org also has Lonely Planet Costa Rica from 2016, so let's have a poke at this. I feel kind of compelled to do this, yet also not really in the mood and approach it with a vague sense of dread. Let me just flip straight to any advice on where to go to once you've landed. (I did incidentally take a quick look at LP website. They seemed to want to sell me a paper book for ~£17, but I couldn't see any obvious sign of any ebooks. Maybe if I dug more I'd have found it.)
Right, LPCR says there is an Interbus shuttle between the airport and San José hotels. So if I want or choose to stay in San José to start with, something like that is probably relatively stress free. Gut feeling is I'm still better off spending time in SJ at the end of the trip, but a few days at the start isn't necessarily a bad idea.
I am just skimming the book a bit now and Alajuela is apparently "a good base for exploring the countryside to the north", and is near the international airport (5-10 min drive in a taxi). If it's not a horrifically crime-ridden place, it may well be a decent initial option, especially if I could maybe get a cheap hostel there with a pick up arranged from the airport. Parque Nacional Volcán Poás (not going to be bothering with those accents...) is 37km north of Alajuela which might be doable as a daytrip (perhaps even self-organised) from Alajuela, for example. This might be a nice easy start to the trip without too much stress (except getting up early enough to get to the crater before the clouds roll in...) and in a presumably rather smaller place like Alajuela getting an onward bus to a subsequent destination would hopefully feel less stressful than doing it in San José (again, I honestly can't see that accent getting used consistently; I already haven't been).
Must admit I was hoping for a guide to regional climate by month in the LP guide but can't find one. Let me re-skim CR:TCG for what it had to say on this. Right, it says in North Pacific region, dry season lasts up to six months Nov-May. South Pacific dry season is just three months Jan-March. Caribbean coast has no clearly defined dry season. I am not sure this means all that much to me. It maybe semi-argues for preferring to visit South Pacific region first so as to be more likely to be there in dry season, but I already get the impression from the guide book that non-dry season still has stuff to do and it's not as if a few days at the end of March/start of April are going to be ultra wet etc etc. Caribbean coast is rainy year round but Feb/Mar are relatively drier months. So it probably makes sense to avoid going there at the start of the trip. But really I probably don't need to pay over-much attention to this aspect; even if it turns out I could have gone to place X at a slightly better time within the window offered by my visit, it's unlikely to be a make-or-break aspect. I also half feel (looking at the guide book) like it might be nice to go in e.g. May, which it calls "the most underrated month", when it might be quiet and cheap. Perhaps worth bearing in mind for the future, although if I *did* do a May-ish trip in 2023 I'd probably all else being equal want to go to a different country.
LP guide also has some suggested itineraries, a couple of which start out heading north from SJ, and some of which look like they could be joined together. I don't necessarily want to do that, but it might provide a "just until something else comes to mind" starting point.
I must say I feel a little better for having read some of this. Up and down a bit tonight I guess.
I might well do a bit more skimming of the guide book later but I will stop (I sort of want to and I sort of don't) for now. I am not going to rush into booking something in Alajuela right now, but maybe in the next day or two I will have a look. Fuck it, let me just have a quick poke on hostelworld or whatever now to see if there's anything at all.
OK, "everything" seems to be dozens of km from the city centre, I wonder if this is measuring from the centre of SJ or something as I don't think Alajuela is that big. Hmm, maybe not, maybe they just don't have anything in Alajuela. Maybe I don't really care. I can have (although it's selling out fast) a single private shared bathroom for £15.89/night in Grecia, which is apparently an hour by bus from San Jose (although not necessarily easy to get to direct from the airport when I'm tired). As always, not saying I won't stay in any dorms (as part of a "try not to be a complete wuss"+"keep costs down" thing, and occasionally it seems to be a near-necessity) but certainly not intending to do that when I first arrive. That place actually looks pretty decent, but they aren't obviously offering airport transfers and while I may well go there early in the trip, it doesn't seem to be quite what I want right now. That said, the prices are vaguely reassuring!
Another place does seem to be in Alajuela (albeit perhaps on the outskirts, although I don't think the distances being shown are from Alajuela) and will do SPSB for £21/night, and the listing does mention airport transfers but with no details and no prices.
FTR the outdated guide books do seem to suggest tap water is nearly always safe to drink in CR. I would want to check some more up to date sources first. As I think I've said before, it feels like what's always caught me out before with regard to getting the shits etc is drinking the tap water - although to be fair, I've usually done that when it hasn't been explicitly been advertised as safe.
There's another place on hostelworld at £33.65 with private bathroom (incidentally it says 13% tax not included, and I suspect this *may* be the case for all of these, but can't be helped) which is a bit pricey, but it's apparently 2km from the airport. They don't advertise airport transfers, but - although this feels a bit expensive TBH - for such a short distance and a tiny bit of research on where/how to get proper taxis at the airport, I could probably handle doing that solo.
booking.com? OK, there's stuff available. Annoyingly I can't see a way to filter out dorms, but just eyeballing the list there's e.g. a single room at £45 inc taxes for 3 nights (with free cancellation - several of these do have that though - until the night before) in Alajuela a couple of miles from the airport. Again no airport transfer but subject to doing a little bit of research I am probably capable of arranging a taxi over that kind of distance without too much trouble. Uber claims to be available FWIW, although I don't really want to rely on having a working SIM at the airport.
Quick rather inconclusive poke around on the web suggests there are official orange taxis with a yellow triangle on the side at the airport, which have proper licences and will use the meter. That web site says Uber cars can't get near the airport and you have to get them down the street, which may or may not be up to date.
Incidentally CR:TCG did have an "etiquette" guide which actually wasn't too smugly, err, "politically correct" for want of a better word. And it said you should be almost comically gentle with car doors when shutting them.
In the rest of the country outside the airport taxis are red instead of orange, still with a yellow triangle on the door.
mytanfeet.com (!?) apparently written by a Costa Rican says by law all official taxis must use the meter and the local name for it is "MARIA". This site also makes the point that (as I had read about in TCG) as there aren't really any addresses in CR (!, but people keep saying it so presumably it is true) you can't just give the taxi driver an address. But maybe they know hotels, and I would hope the hotel websites will give a suitably local-intelligible address substitute.
I don't much like the way mtf.com says you absolutely can't wing it with booking things last minute during high season. Hmm. I don't fucking want to be booking all my individual stays now. I guess I will if nothing else have to keep an eye on sites like hostelworld even once I actually have booked my initial accommodation so I can see how much availability is changing day-by-day.
I would have liked to see something a little more concretely reassuring but this does suggest that I probably can get a taxi from the airport to Alajuela without it being too stressful.
mtf.com does also say something about how Costa Rica can be as expensive as North America, it's not cheap. This is also a bit worrying. However, I suspect/hope this and the advice about booking in advance is perhaps aimed at more upscale travel. I find it hard to believe I could get a single room for £16/night in the US, even in rural areas, for example.
booking.com keeps saying I'm eligible for a "genius" discount if I log in, and I do have an account, so it's possible the prices would be 5-10% lower than I've been seeing, I don't know yet.
I think I am going to sleep on this but the basic idea of booking a few nights in Alajuela now, keeping an eye on availability so I can see how much I need to try to plan ahead (but I really can't see myself booking a string of short stays before I leave and just "hoping" that doesn't get annoying and/or doesn't fit badly with bus schedules/routes) with other bookings and doing the airport transfer in a simple local taxi does sound like a plan. I can then probably use Alajuela as a base for some local-ish stuff (perhaps extending my initial stay to do that) and/or move on from there with some fairly short bus hops to places like Grecia or whatever.
Oh, I just spotted the bit of text I half remembered but couldn't see in TCG - Jan-March are the best months to visit the South Pacific with its longer rainy season. But that's kind of what the other bit of text I did quote says, and given I return early in April anyway I don't think this is really a huge concern.
30th Dec 0043 Oh, and the "etiquette" thing about CR waiters not wanting to disturb you and gringo customers not wanting to ask the waiter for the bill sounds familiar from e.g. Guatemala. Also to a lesser extent (this is perhaps more of a problem with me being a bit shy/diffident, though maybe not) the related thing about "poor" service (by NA standards, at least) where you need to attract the waiter's attention if you want something because they will leave you alone otherwise.
1601 Insect repellent spray and new backpack arrived today. Not had a really good play with the new backpack but it seems OK. (Deuter Guide Lite 30, for the record.)
2200 Done a very small amount of additional web searching about Alajuela and have slept on it and I think the plan of getting accommodation there and getting a taxi from the airport is fairly decent. It may well be dark when I get out of the airport but it isn't going to be the middle of the night or anything either, which helps. Apparently Alajuela is the second largest city in the country, but I think it's still vastly smaller than San Juan and probably isn't too rough. I am thinking I will look into actually booking a ho(s)tel tomorrow, I don't really want to look today. I might book for four nights rather than the three I initially (without much thought) considered - the first night is immediately after the flight so there isn't really much of that day "left", and that gives me three full days to potter round/buy a local SIM/maybe do a day trip to somewhere/decide where I'm going next and or if I want to extend in Alajuela.
I *haven't* looked too closely into this, but some maps I've seen imply that San Juan has a metro system and that a (presumably outlying) station is probably a 5-10 minute taxi ride from Alajuela, so if I wanted to (although gut feeling is I wouldn't, right at the start of the trip) I could probably use taxi+metro to get into San Juan for a day or two out while actually staying in Alajuela.
I have to say that taking three or four days in Alajuela at the start of the trip feels a little bit "excessive" - my mind turns on those "visit a fair chunk of the country in 2 week" itineraries in the LP guidebook. But I *don't* have to rush, I don't like rushing, I am unlikely to be insanely bored during three "full" days in Alajuela and it will give me a chance to settle down, get over my initial "everyone is going to try to mug me because I'm a tourist" jitters and so forth. I'm still "being there" even if I'm not doing stereotypical tourist stuff and for all I know there will (for example) be a cool little bar just down the street from my ho(s)tel with live music on Saturday night or something like that.
Feeling surprisingly jittery about not having got the Alajuela accommodation booked. But I think it's broadly sensible to sleep on this and do it fresh tomorrow, and if the only thing standing between me and no availability or insane prices is a day or two at this point, I'm fucked, because I will not be able to be booking accommodation as I go a few days ahead. I suppose to some extent once the trip actually starts I can exhibit some flexibility (I was going to go to town X next but there's no cheap accommodation so I'll go to near-ish town Y instead) which isn't really an option here as I've identified Alajuela as singularly convenient for getting to from the airport, but still, I am booking ~3 weeks ahead at this point.
31st Dec 1523 I've booked accommodation of some sort (I think it's a vaguely family-run thing) fairly centrally in Alajuela for four nights from 19th January for ~£80 including taxes. No free breakfast, I could have had something for £60 for four nights with a (presumably basic) breakfast included, but it was a bit out of the town centre and I figured I'd probably be better more centrally. I have free cancellation on this until a day or two before I'm due to fly anyway. I checked booking.com, hostelworld and expedia and in this case booking.com were easily the best; hostelworld had a very limited selection and expedia seemed to have a limited selection too but hide it by offering me places in San Jose, not to mention that expedia's places were generally pricier. booking.com flip-flopped from telling me I have to pay in cash with CRC or USD on arrival during the booking (I got a guide price in GBP, which is fine) to saying USD in the booking confirmation. I guess they probably will take CRC anyway. I understand USD is fairly widely availble in CR but I also don't know to what extent it might actually be "preferred" and to what extent it's offered for the convenience of the many US tourists and expats and CRC is preferred and you risk getting stiffed on exchange rates if you're using USD. All else being equal I'd rather not be having to deal with two different types of currency (I'm thinking mainly of getting the coins mixed up; two different types of note may not be too problematic), but we'll see how it goes. I may - depending on how much I'm rushing at the airport and what's available - get both USD and CRC out at the airport and try to hold the USD in notes as an "emergency" reserve.
Still, while I do still feel a bit edgy that it's going to be impossible to book other stuff at short notice, it does feel vaguely good to have this booking arranged, and the free cancellation is a nice touch.
TBH it's super unclear if the accommodation has a private bathroom and/or a private kitchen and/or non-24h reception, but none of the half-decently priced options seemed very clear on this and I can live with any of the variants.
Just noticed booking.com has a probably-ad for an airport taxi booking service which will (with a 10% discount!) see me in a people carrier one-way from £31.23. I understand an actual airport taxi will be more like £10 tops (which still feels a bit excessive for a five minute trip, but there's always a premium at airports) and gut feeling is that having deliberately picked accommodation near the airport I am not willing to pay an extra £20 for a very small extra peace of mind element to this.
1646 Quick web search finds possibly-unauthoritative web site saying that USD is widely accepted but it is a bit touristy, bills larger than USD20 may not be accepted and you will typically get your change in CRC. So although I could see potential exchange rate fuckery both ways (e.g. a tour is priced *only* in USD, but I want to pay in CRC and they apply a crappy exchange rate from USD to CRC in the hope I won't notice), it is probably OK to mainly use CRC.
I have had some automated-ish e-mails from the accommodation booking, it all looks very self-check-in-y and "the neighbour will take your money if you arrive at certain times" but it's probably fine, and there is a CR-style "directions for taxi driver" given (I asked for this, but maybe they always include it as these mails look automated).
3rd Jan 0117 Quick look on Lonely Planet website suggests the lack of any ebook price for the "Costa Rica" guide book means it doesn't exist. However, their "Central America travel guide" has a chapter on Costa Rica which I could buy for £2.99 as a PDF. This isn't too excessive, and it would be nice to have something up-to-date I can keep on my phone (i.e. zero mass) for reference. What's annoying is I'd vaguely like to see the "Plan your trip" and "Understand Central America and Survival Guide" chapters, but I don't really consider those worth £2.99 each. It would be nice if these were available for 50p each or something, but what do I know?
I feel intermittently a bit jittery about the upcoming trip. Hardly suprising. It also feels like I'm not "prepared", but the reality is that although I do want to buy more stuff (e.g. clothes, a few miscellaneous supplies), I don't absolutely need to - the trip won't be ruined if I don't. I don't think buying these things is entirely gratuitous, they're not 100% "want" and 0% "need", but they're probably more 50-50 on that spectrum.
I *may* actually have an outdated copy of the ancestor of that LP CA guide book on paper in my flat, I'm not sure. (I may be thinking of "*South America* on a shoestring.) archive.org also has the 2013 edition of the ancestor ("CA on a shoestring") and TBH since those "would like to read" chapters are probably not that variable across time nor really that desirable (I imagine it's mostly political crap or stuff I can and probably already have found in other random guide books/on the web) I may just content myself with reading the old versions of those on archive.org and just buy the one chapter. It's not as if I regard LP as having some uniquely insightful perspective on things; what I'm really paying for is an up-to-date-ish reference which I can access without needing internet access and to provide a reasonably trustworthy opinion on things like the safety of region X and town Y, without drowning in a sea of conflicting and unknown-trustworthiness opinions found via random web searches. (I do also wonder just how up to date the LP guide is; it could easily be a year or two old. But still, that's not terrible.)
0203 On a random note, I just checked the hand luggage rules and disposable razors are allowed in hand luggage. Small scissors (blades under 6cm) are as well, so I *could* take some nail scissors, but since I can't rule out the possibility of taking other flights with different rules I'll probably just make do with nail clippers. Nail scissors aren't tremendously expensive but being forced to chuck a pair out at security would grate more than a disposable razor I've already had a use or two out of.
Tweezers are allowed, having been browsing onebag.com intermittently to refresh my memory I have toyed (not for the first time) with getting some (mainly for insect bites, albeit this hasn't been a big concern in practice so far), but a decent-ish pair seems to be about £10 and it feels like the sort of item I might be forced to toss at security somewhere (perhaps even in the UK, if some random security inspector decides they don't like my face or whatever, despite what the rules nominally say).
0248 If I didn't already say, I don't have any specific goal to take Spanish classes on this trip. If I find somewhere I like for whatever reason (it just feels nice, it's a good base for lots of surrounding area activities, whatever) I may well spend several weeks there. Signing up for "full time" Spanish study may or may not come into this (e.g. I like place X and the fact I could do Spanish lessons there makes staying feel more "useful"). I do intend (subject to availability) to go to language exchanges where available and not ridiculously inconvenient, because it's social and it's a good way to practice. But formal classes will depend on how things go. If Costa Rica is not particularly cheap, it would probably end up being group classes as in Colombia, and (perhaps I'm over-sensitive) I'd probably rather not do that if it's just going to mean lots of political shit in the class discussions and maybe even with other students - one "plus" about group classes would be the social aspect of meeting people, but if I feel politically awkward that's not going to happen.
0359 Not actually checked them out, but for the record, onebag.com has (on its links page, natch) some accommodation sites listed which I don't think I've used personally and which may be worth checking out.
0404 Flicking around on https://web.archive.org/web/20110706181617/http://www.ease.com/~randyj/rjlife5.htm (as linked from onebag.com), I'm intrigued and vaguely reassured to see the author recommending taking days off when you just do a few chores, read and relax during a trip. Admittedly I'm probably lazier than that, as I'm typically only doing half days of "tourism" thanks to getting up so late a lot of the time, but still.
Skimming a bit more of that site - though I really need to go to bed, and I actually clicked on the link to it from onebag.com in the hope of advice re street touts etc (have sort of found something) - there's a bit of an off-putting smug "real traveller" vibe, the sort of thing which I tend to perceive in a distilled kind of way in guidebooks, especially those aimed at a younger crowd. Meh. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. (Also, to be honest, while I guess I shouldn't absolutely write myself off, part of what annoys me here is that the tone is all "yeah, experiences and meeting people and belonging and shit" and *I can't do that*. Well, obviously "experiences" to some extent, everyone experiences stuff all the time and I can pay for a tour or whatever just like anyone else, but not the 'authentic' stereotypical traveller experiences.)
OK, https://web.archive.org/web/20110706182436/http://www.ease.com/~randyj/secure4.htm#touts does look useful wrt touts. I might as well point out that while any advice here is welcome, what really concerns me are unsolicited personal contacts that are perhaps a precursor to an attempted mugging or something similar - it is annoying to be constantly turning down people trying to sell you sunglasses or water, but (as I think I've said before) these guys have to make a living somehow, they're not doing anything wrong and as long as they take no for an answer they're not really a big problem. It's the difference between the hundreds of random itinerant vendors in the walled city in Cartagena vs that fucking big guy trying to do some sort of (IIRC - not checked old blog entries, but sure I wrote about this) bead selling scam which felt like it had vague overtones of possible violence down the slightly quieter back streets of the walled city.
Hmm, reading that secure4.htm page. It's interesting and feels useful-ish, but it doesn't seem to address mugging type issues; I don't want to be pickpocketed, but although it's worth being reminded, I kind of already follow the page's advice that (except when I'm in transit and have everything with me) the realistic worst case of being pickpocketed is nuisance, not disaster. The reminder to "Learn to be rude!" is also appreciated; IIRC last time I looked for advice on this (probably while I was in Cartagena) I was coming across endless "look at it from their perspective" smug-arse vaguely politically correct advice on stackexchange and similar. Thinking about it now, Cialdini's "Influence" probably makes a similar point - if someone is actively trying to manipulate you by relying on social conventions about rudeness/reciprocation, you should feel exempt from respecting those rules because they're trying to cheat.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110706181352/http://www.ease.com/~randyj/secure1.htm#xstoc seems interesting and kind of reassuring. I also kind of know a lot of this stuff, both from experience (I may not be a "real traveller" etc etc, but I have spent a moderate amount of time abroad and very little seriously bad stuff, especially in the way of crime, has happened so far touch wood etc etc) and from general reading, but I know I worry about this sort of stuff far more than I need to.
I'm just waffling, but although violence is actually the thing I worry about most, getting robbed/mugged when I'm carrying everything with me in transit is also a major concern.
This site makes the same observation as one of Anders Ansar's reports that (with his super light travel style; far too extreme for me, I think) when you're walking around with no luggage, you look like a much less tempting target - it's less obvious you're a tourist, and more to the point it's much less likely you have lots of nice stuff worth stealing on you. I might vaguely hope my relatively small bag offers me some advantages here.
This site (I'll call it F33W - Footloose and Fancy-Free in the Third World) also advises taking your valuables like your passport with you in a money belt when you go out except in very remote areas with bandits or whatever, because the chances of anyone robbing you at a level that will take these "hidden" valuables is way less than the risk of someone stealing them from your hotel room. I actually can't remember what I "normally" do. I probably (but I haven't tried to find old blog entries about this) generally leave them in the hotel room/dorm locker unless I feel it's particularly unsafe. I'm not necessarily revising this plan and to some extent there's an element of playing it by ear, but I can't help feeling F33W's argument has some validity.
The advice that travelling on the cheap is good protection from theft, because you're not showing off your wealth, is probably something I've thought of before myself, but it is vaguely reassuring too.
1426 Not sure if it's a coincidence from reading all that (albeit reassuring-ish) safety/security stuff on F33W last night but I woke up with a minor case of the heebie-jeebies the morning. Don't feel too bad now. Reading some more of F33W (as I'm pretty sure there's a fair amount of gold in there, albeit buried in annoyingly self-confident smugness about being "on the Road" and "real travellers" and so forth). Will intermittently waffle about it here. Interesting he says on a new trip even he has to start out fresh and it takes several weeks to get rid of feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. And that he says you should aim to arrive at your first destination in the daytime rather than the middle of the night, check into a comfortable hotel even if it's more expensive than you will usually pay, staying in arrival point for several days or even a week is stuff I've already thought about for myself (unless I read it on here years ago and forgot). Of course, he also says to find the local travelers' hangouts and join this community, which is obviously not something I'm going to do, but as I say, the fact he's writing a lot of stuff which I *do* agree with and maybe even concluded on my own (perhaps feeling a little bit guilty/lazy/pathetic for concluding it) is both reassuring and suggests there's lots of good stuff I could learn or re-learn from this site. I have probably skimmed it in the past but I'm realising it's not absolutely enormous and I am planning on trying to read the whole thing.
Note that in some countries his observation "there really are local buses and local hotels" but "you'd feel like a fool using them since 'no one' else does" strikes a bit of a chord. Not that they *weren't* exactly local buses, but when I took some of the tourist shuttle buses in Guatemala it felt a bit like "taking the easy option" rather than using the cheaper ex-US-schoolbus type buses, but it also felt like the "normal" thing to do. Although I did use some of the EUS buses, and as I say it's not as if all or even most of the people on the shuttle buses were other tourists.
2030 Continuing to intermittently read F33W, finding it by turns fascinating and irritating. It's actually a lot bigger than I realised, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing - I quite like a long read if it's mostly entertaining. One thing it is making me think is that it definitely makes more sense to visit San Juan late in the trip rather than early, not just for the reason that that way if I *do* get mugged or something it won't spoil the rest of the trip, but also because after a few weeks in the country I will be feeling that bit more confident (I remember that happening in Guatemala, for example), my Spanish will have warmed up a bit (and I'll have had chance to get use to any local accent or quirks) and as a result the chances of things going south will be reduced.
2105 It's not a criticism as such - the site has been taken down and has to be read via archive.org, and onebag.com linked to it pointing this out - but F33W is in some ways an intriguing period piece - e.g. ATMs really are almost everywhere now. And there are some things that might be outdated or might just be something I've somehow managed to miss out on and I'm really not sure which - e.g. the claim that there will be any number of occasions when you need to produce a flashlight, cup and spoon (not necessarily simultaneously!). I agree a flashlight is useful, but I don't think I've ever needed a cup or spoon or thought "well, it would be nice if I had one". (I *have* wished I had a tin opener and had to buy one.) Reading further, this is apparently for cases of communal cookery (presumably out in the middle of nowhere), which sounds vaguely plausible but feels a bit "extreme".
I keep seeing phrases in F33W which I remember from onebag.com. I wonder which came first?
2252 Feeling a bit guilty for spending time reading F33W instead of doing something more productive, but hey, at least it's got me thinking about the trip.
I am reminded (but it's not entirely novel) about the possibility of not taking a separate camera and making do with just my smartphone(s) or "no camera", depending how you want to view it. My current compact camera is a bit beaten up (the lens cover occasionally jams, IIRC) but the last time I checked it does work, and it was a decent-ish (not amazing) one when new etc, and it probably takes better photos than my non-expensive smartphones. I do also sort of feel a bit "safer" whipping the camera out to take a quick photo; I'd much rather someone stole the camera than my smartphone, not so much as a matter of cost (back home, a new camera would probably be £80+, whereas I buy smartphones secondhand and e.g. my G5 cost me under £40) as on difficulty of replacement - a smartphone isn't *just* hardware, there's the data on it, there's the config for the various apps, etc. The K1's camera isn't bad in its way, and the G5's camera works fairly well but it doesn't always seem to auto-focus nicely, although if I started using it seriously and regularly I might get into a way of using it that skirts these quirks - as it is I use it infrequently and just end up taking half a dozen photos and hoping, but I could in theory experiment with it.
It would be nice if my compact camera was USB chargeable, but as it is I have to take a separate battery charger. Gut feeling is that I will probably take it with me, but maybe try to experiment a bit with taking photos on phone too. I'm reluctant (even if I could find one; I guess compact cameras are much more niche than they used to be) to spend money on a new camera which would be USB chargeable when I'm already toying with ditching the separate camera anyway.
I suppose in principle I could (probably not for this trip, I'm just speculating) take an *extra* (third) smartphone with me to serve primarily as a compact camera replacement; it would then be USB chargeable and would of course function as a spare smartphone if I lost one of my others. That camera replacement smartphone could be something I wouldn't normally pick, as what I'd mainly care about was the balance of price and camera quality.
There is also the perennial "do I focus too much on trying to take 'nice' photos instead of really observing for myself?" dilemma.
2331 F33W does talk about renting sleeping bags if necessary, so presumably they are not "too personal" for this to be ridiculous. I don't know that I would want or need to do this, but it does suggest that that hike up the high mountain might be an option if I wanted to.
2343 "Two Years Behind the Rear Axle" as a suggested title for a travel book (from F33W, of course) made me smile. I actually had no idea the front of the bus was supposed to be more comfortable. Maybe this is more of an issue with crappy buses than well-maintained coaches.
Also interesting to see scopolamine is mentioned in F33W as used in motion sickness patches! I haven't checked to see if this is still true. If so, presumably the dose makes a huge difference.
4th Jan 0059 FWIW the (perhaps rather dated, at least in most countries) F33W mention of countries where you have to declare foreign currency on entry and exit and it's compared with official receipts when you changed that money at official banks to check you didn't use the black market reminds me of the similar thing with erosion+food in/amount excreted receipts in HHGTTG. I obviously "sort of" got this joke beforehand, but I do wonder if it was intended in part as a reference/parody of this real-world thing, which I wouldn't have noticed before (at least not when I first read the books, and perhaps not until just now).
0122 I am not big on haggling in general, nor do I shop for very much stuff, but F33W is intersting on this. The "tactic" of saying "I am not buying today, but when I come back tomorrow/next week/just before I fly home, I may buy" and perhaps getting them to write down a price on a business card or similar feels worth remembering, if only for situations like those in India where I was forced into letting someone show me loads and loads of goods I'm not interested in then guilt-tripped into buying *something* because they invested so much time in me (even though I didn't initiate the process).
0131 F33W observation - for all that it's rather old and I suspect things are easier now - that simple things like buying a train ticket or doing laundry can take most of a day is rather heartening, because this feels true and it always makes me wonder if I'm just being ridiculously inefficient or lazy (e.g. comparing myself to someone on one of the "see half the country in two weeks" suggested itineraries in the guide book). I probably am a bit inefficient and/or lazy, but maybe not quite as much as I sometimes suspect.
This is perhaps a bit of a recurring theme. In among the little bits that make me feel jealous or in some way inadequate, a lot of F33W seems to be expressing stuff I already know/agree with/discovered for myself but presenting it with confidence as the voice of experience/reason, whereas I was probably more inclined to regard it as symptoms of my own flaws (laziness/lack of confidence/assertiveness/planning/etc).
It really must have been both exhilarating and a bit scary/lonely to have travelled in an era without cheap universal e-mail, where you'd give your friends and family a list of planned poste restante boxes to write back to you etc.
0245 Finished F33W (at least whichever version, probably the latest, was linked from onebag.com). Not read the travel anecdotes but I may do at some point. Overall an impressive and useful piece of work, and I've probably been a little unfair at some of the perceived smugness. I still feel the author massively overstates the ease of meeting people, particularly other travellers, but still. I liked it enough that I've downloaded the (perhaps even older?) all-in-one Word document version and printed it to a PDF to take with me for reference.
Not a novel observation but reading F33W sort of reminds me that I have a tendency to assume locals just hate me automatically because I'm a tourist, which is probably overly negative. Growing up in a UK seaside town I know a lot of the locals here don't like tourists, but at least nowadays I personally don't really despise them. And while the locals abroad may or may not exactly love me automatically either, if I'm not rude without being provoked, make an effort with the language (a relatively strong point for me in Spanish-speaking countries), etc, there's no real reason to assume I'm actively disliked by everyone. Some, sure, that's inevitable, for good or bad reasons.
1915 I keep writing San Juan when I mean the capital of Costa Rica, which is San José. Not going to correct the errors above in the interest of "honesty", but making a note here. A very quick web search suggests there is a San Juan in Costa Rica.
2209 Jeez. Just noticed the Lonely Planet Central America travel guide which I was thinking about buying the Costa Rica chapter of for £2.99 is 10th Edition Jul 2019 - next edition due Nov 2024. I'm really not sure it's worth it, I'm sure half the businesses mentioned will have been destroyed during the pandemic, ditto for the bus routes etc. Their "Costa Rica" guide is 14th Edition Nov 2021 and explicitly says all businesses have been re-checked wrt pandemic effects, but it simply isn't available as an ebook.
Rough Guides have five different guide books covering Costa Rica available as ebooks. "Rough Guide to Costa Rica" is £13.99 as epub and has a 15/09/2022 publication date, although there's no obvious "yes, we checked everything" selling point. "Insight Guides Costa Rica" £12.99 published 31/07/2019 - definitely not. Also it says "Insight Guide" is a pictorial travel guide in magazine style; this doesn't sound like the sort of thing I want anyway. "Insight Guide Explore Costa Rica" £6.99 epub, published 30/11/2018 - definitely not, also why the hell are there *two* different Insight Guides for the same country? "Insight Guides Central America" £12.99 epub published 30/11/2017 - FFS! Not even checking "Insight Guide Pocket Caribbean Ports of Call" (£4.99).
So *maybe* - I could probably check reviews of it elsewhere - the Rough Guide is worth having, although £13.99 isn't nothing. If I *really* used the guide book heavily it would be fine, but it tends to be more something I skim or just dig the odd fact out of (like the location of the ATM at Guatemala City airport). Also, annoyingly (ebook feels like it ought to be cheaper) amazon.co.uk are selling the 2022 edition as a physical paperback for £13.49. Ah, and the Kindle edition for £8.99. I'd *rather* have an epub than a Kindle edition, but still, the saving is there. Anyway, the amazon.co.uk page says it has ben "fully updated post-COVID-19"; you'd think Rough Guides might actually say that themselves on their own site...
FWIW Amazon actually offer a free ebook with every purchase of a printed book; it may be (not sure, but I did see something a bit like this on a dated page in a websearch) RG themselves do this too. So in principle I could pay £13.49 for the paperback and get the ebook as a bonus, rather than pay £13.99 just for the ebook. OTOH, the reality is I don't *want* a paperback - I have loads of books already, these go out of date and it's not as if I have months left before the trip when having a "free" paperback copy around might encourage me to browse it for a few minutes here and there.
5th Jan 0018 Intermittently reading some of Anders Ansar's travel light reports I purchased back in 2010-ish. Mostly a bit extreme for me. However, the observation that you can use a TV in your room to play music via bluetooth is both obvious in hindsight and interesting - I had toyed with buying and taking a short 3.5mm stereo plug-to-plug lead, since once or twice I've had accommodation with a small hifi in and it would have been nice to be able to listen to my phone through it. But these days any accommodation nice enough to have such a thing is likely to have a reasonably modern TV and there's I think a fair chance I could use it as a glorified bluetooth speaker. It's also not as if I've often had this option to use a stereo, so I think for now I definitely won't buy and take the 3.5mm lead. (Plus if I did, no doubt I'd find myself constantly in accommodation with stereo systems that have phono aux inputs, just to spite me. :-) )
Feeling a bit jittery re trip but also sort of looking forward to it. In a strange way while I dread the flight date creeping up on me a bit like a dental appointment, once it arrives that's sort of "it", I just have to make the best of it and don't have to worry about preparations and shopping and so forth. I'm currently visiting parents and it will be both good and bad to get back to London (which I plan to do about a week before the trip, so I'm not overly rushed). In particular I haven't been able to do a test pack of my new backpack yet, since the bulk of my travel gear is in London. I'm sure it will be fine - it isn't that different in nominal capacity from the Laser 35 which broke - but still.
0259 I did do a brief web search re compact cameras the other day, but although I wouldn't say it's a certainty, it does seem increasingly the case that the smartphone has killed the market for the sort of cheap (£100-ish new) compact camera I currently have. There are maybe a few available, but most of them are no-name brands and they may or may not be any good at all, and they're not cheap enough that I fancy buying one on the offchance. (Maybe they're not quite no-name enough that there could be honest reviews.) The compact cameras that are made by recognisable brands are super expensive, I guess because only hardcore photographers buy them now, although one site did suggest secondhand might help (but I suspect they'd still be more than I'd want to pay, especially for something that could fairly easily be lost, broken or stolen).
I do find myself wondering if using my existing compact camera is going to give off a vibe of "poor tourist, doesn't even have a smartphone, not worth mugging" or "rich tourist, that must be one of those £500 compact cameras they make nowadays, probably a solid gold iPhone Pro Max Ultra 23 in his pocket too, jackpot!".
I'm not saying it's a novel thought even for me, and I probably won't stick to it religiously anyway, but it probably bears repeating that some photos really don't need to be taken. Any well known and probably even merely "well known enough to get a mention in a guide book" landmark is going to have dozens, hundreds or thousands of photos online, almost certainly available "free" (given I only want to look at them myself). Of course, taking my own picture is nice, because it makes it "personal" even if it's not up to pro quality, and sometimes it's nice to have these more scenic pictures printed up and stick them on the wall for a bit of decoration. But maybe there's no need to go nuts taking loads of photos of these "standard" things if it's a hassle or reduces "immersion"; one or two is enough to remind me "oh yeah, I went there on date X". The cooler (from a personal POV) photos are the ones of ordinary-ish stuff that just happens to catch your eye as unusual or interesting, which might well be similar to photos hundreds of other people have taken, but which you'd never be able to find and which wouldn't have the same "I actually saw this, isn't it neat how the sun is reflecting off that boat window (or whatever)" feeling if they weren't yours.
1357 FWIW I got (the 2018 edition, sadly) "Lonely Planet Costa Rica" guide in my electronic library app; I had put a hold on it just on the offchance it was useful but it said 6 weeks estimate IIRC. Anyway. I haven't looked at it yet and given it's 2018 I may not take it too seriously; normally a few years old travel guide would be OK-ish, but with The Event between then and now all bets are off. It did occur to me that since there is an electronic library version of 2018 edition, there might actually be an ebook of the 2021-or-whatever edition even if LP's own website doesn't want to sell it, but I just had a look on Amazon and they're not offering a Kindle version of this edition, just the paperback.
Gut feeling is I will probably buy one of the electronic versions of the 2022 Rough Guide (their own overpriced epub one or the Amazon Kindle edition) but I'm not rushing into it.
1616 Bought myself some (rather overpriced) solid stick deodorant. I've been looking for solid stick sunblock (or whatever the hell it's called - sunscreen? sun lotion? sun cream? searching for it always seems harder than necessary as a result of this ambiguity) but can't find any; I'll just have to take creamy stuff as usual. This isn't a huge deal, I'm trying to reduce liquids for both weight and volume in the carry on liquids bag reasons, but I have one or maybe two small 50ml sunblock bottles I can refill which aren't too problematic in the bag, and not having to put the deodorant in there will help with space. I may have taken solid stick deodorant before, I can't remember.
I had a look in Sports Direct to see if they had their long-sleeved "running" T-shirt in blue (which they do on their web site), but I couldn't even see the small/medium black one of these I spotted in the shop the other day. I might try to find one of these in the London shops when I'm back there. I did see some thinnish synthetic zipped "jackets" which were vaguely interesting-looking, but I already have the fleece+associated shell-ish waterproof-ish jacket and I don't really want to be carrying even more stuff or buying things on a whim, but maybe worth bearing in mind for a future trip. (Maybe "windbreaker" is the right term for these lightweight thinnish jacket things, I'm not sure. I think those ones in Sports Direct might have been described as running something-or-others, but not sure.)
Was having a quick play/closer examination (for manufacturing defects I might not have noticed before) with new backpack earlier. I am not sure it has any means of attaching a water bottle on the outside. Not a huge problem if it doesn't, but given it's relatively small this is something I would sort of like to do if I'm in transit, since putting the bottle inside the bag takes up space and carrying it in hand is slightly annoying, although if it's not a big bottle not too big a deal. For all I know there may be some hidden "feature" I haven't observed for this anyway.
6th Jan Starting to read "The world awaits" by Paul Otteson on archive.org, another onebag.com recommendation (I've semi-neglected its book recommendations before, despite having taken the site as almost a personal travel bible, probably in part because archive.org's free book lending service wasn't as good or simply wasn't known to me in the past). I am quite liking the tone so far, it actually seems to describe the sort of experience I'd want but don't always quite get, and although (probably something that comes from my perceptions as much as any reality) there's still a very slight "smugness" about (paraphrasing unfairly) how great and sociable and generally successful in all travel areas the author is, I have fairly high hopes this is going to be a decent, interesting and useful read. (And of course, especially for something more "philosophical" than "information about location X" like this - it's not a guide book to country X or region Y - would I really want to read it if the author *wasn't* confident and had something useful to impart? I suppose that might be kind of interesting, but not necessarily useful.)
What I'm already finding interesting (perhaps not novel, I'm not sure) in the first few pages is a kind of "permission" to say "yes, I do want to do challenging and even risky things". I very much *do* value safety, but at the same time it sometimes feels as thought it's "wrong" to seek out adventurous or apparently adventurous things, as though it would be "posing" or something. For whatever reason, something in the guide book about a not-very-touristy train which runs once a week somewhere in the region of the Chile-Bolivia border springs to mind - that sounded really cool, but I kind of talked myself out of it based on a mixture of "I don't have a sleeping bag, so I might freeze to death or at least lose body parts" and "isn't it a bit wanky to want to do something like that just because it sounds kind of adventurous?".
0254 TWA observation about the "home base approach" to travelling is interesting. As with a lot of this stuff, it's kind of obvious but only when pointed out. The idea that you park yourself in one place *and sleep there most nights* for something like a week or more while taking trips out to nearby stuff during the day, some of them perhaps fairly far-reaching, somehow feels quite novel. I think I have a tendency - one I stumbled into, rather than deliberately choosing - to try to relocate myself into accommodation in any place more than an hour or two away from my current accommodation if I want to see/do stuff in that place. In some ways this "move accommodation a lot" option seems quite good, but it does also add more of the hassles of physically relocating more often, and there's probably a sense of continuity to be had from staying at the same presumably nice-ish and/or cheap-ish "base camp" for a while. F33W touched on the hassles caused by physically relocating too much when it advocated making long-ish stays in the same places; this now feels like a similar point to TWA's, just stated differently. I'm constantly moaning about how I feel extra-vulnerable in transit, because if I do get robbed or just lose my bag somehow, practically everything is gone, whereas once I am actually checked into some accommodation I have at least divided my belongings between those on me and those back in my room. Avoiding this feeling might well be a good trade-off for taking some longer day journeys to nearby places, not to mention that it might actually be more satisfying to make those day journeys in their own right. (For example, I might feel happier taking a third class bus or whatever you call it if I'm just carrying a daypack with maybe a change of underwear and a toothbrush in case I get stranded before I can get home, whereas if I'm lugging all my worldly possessions I might feel that's a bit risky and/or uncouth - my bag's not huge, but it's still probably big enough to piss people off if it's really crowded.)
1552 TWA is a bit flowery in its prose at times, and of course there's the obligatory screed about colonialism and "Eurocentric greed"; it's not so much that I think colonialism is/was a good thing, as much as this speaks to me of a certain need to show active disapproval of it. Meh. As always, try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. [Thinking about this a bit more, it's maybe the use of words like "Eurocentric". Would colonialism be hunky-dory if non-Eurocentric greed is the motivating factor? No? Well then, does "Eurocentric" mean anything except to adopt the appropriate buzzwords for showing your tribal membership?]
1805 No change in Costa Rica travel advice on FCDO site. Still get a bit of a heart-in-mouth feeling when I load the page, dreading some new coronavirus rules.
2252 Just submitted "advance passenger information" on BA website.
7th Jan 0147 Just checked FCDO, heart in mouth at seeing an update. Fortunately it doesn't affect me, although I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me nervy - new coronavirus restrictions on travellers from China and some nearby countries.
8th Jan 1510 For no particular reason haven't read any more of TWA or any other travel books recently. I am feeling intermittently vaguely jittery about the trip. This morning I also woke up no so much feeling jittery but feeling "if I spend four nights in Alajuela, and then four nights in some random place nearby, and so on, I am not going to see/do *anything* 'important' on the trip". I don't think that's necessarily accurate - the time doesn't quite just go in that way, and if I am enjoying it then it's fine if it does, but still, the thought was there. This obviously touches on stuff I've read in F33W and TWA.
Just checked FCDO CR page, no updates.
1533 Doing a quick accommodation search for the dates I'm already booked for in Alajuela, to see how prices/availability have changed. OK, the place I'm actually booked into is still available, the notional price is 28% higher than I'm paying, but I am not logged in to booking.com right now and there would probably be a 15% discount, which would mean the price currently shown is about 10% higher than I booked for (and I may have got some special promotional discount on the site as a whole). There's obviously still 11 days to go, so this is earlier than I would like to be making reservations ahead during the trip, but it's still vaguely encouraging that the whole country isn't rapidly selling out.
1556 I'm sure it's just a kind of pedantry on my part, but I find it vaguely amusing TWA's steps for obtaining a passport are:
1. Be or become a citizen of the U.S.
2. Obtain your birth certificate
3. Get some passport photos taken
4. Find and go to the right office
2-4 are actual actions you might reasonably take. 1 is more like a prerequisite for this particular checklist than a step, and having it presented as a step just has a comic effect. Nothing wrong with a book being written for a US audience, but the way this is expressed, it's as if this is general advice and anyone anywhere in the world wishing to obtain a passport should first become a citzen of the US as a necessary prerequisite.
1911 Intermittently reading TWA. It does remind me that I should probably be a bit bolder about flagging down buses outside "official" stops. I'm not usually (and don't really intend to be) "in the middle of nowhere" needing a bus, but the example that springs to mind is being in Puerto Iguazu trogging half an hour plus into town just to get on a bus to the falls at the bus station in town, even though my accommodation was just off the road all those buses go along to get to the falls. I should have tried flagging down a bus on the street.
2228 More TWA. Feeling a bit jittery TBH. Reading the (not specifically scary or novel) stuff about getting sick in TWA raises that obvious spectre. The reality of course is that mostly speaking, anything *really* bad that could happen abroad could happen at home anyway - it's really crappy, but it's not specific to travel. And while a bout with some form of vomiting or diarrhea for a few days is hardly fun, I've been through it before and it isn't the end of the world.
TWA continues to be subtly smug but I'm probably just over-sensitive.
2244 Finished TWA. I skimmed some of the more philosophical stuff towards the end. The guy clearly has some experience and useful things to say. On the other hand - and bear in mind I'm perhaps more jaded from today's increasingly fucked up social media black and white guilt tripping etc than I would have been had I read this a few years ago, or in 1996 - there's just enough of the smugly self-righteous "politically correct" (*not* the right phrase, but it will do) attitude on display that I find myself coming to his moral arguments with a raised guard and a "yeah, yeah, what a surprise *you* feel this way" attitude of my own, which is probably a bit unfair, as there does seem to be some genuine subtlety in what he's saying. Meh. Doesn't matter. There were certainly some useful thoughts and so forth in there, and even though it's neither novel nor surprising, it's fascinating to see this written in 1996 on the cusp of the internet taking off with all the stuff about poste restante and telegrams and so forth.
9th Jan 0017 Not novel, but I do need to remember (easier said than done) that really the single most important thing to do in terms of enjoying the trip is to avoid constantly feeling terrible because I "should" be:
- doing more stuff
- meeting more people
- "having more fun"
- making more of the opportunity
- not so damn lazy
- more confident
- better at speaking/understanding Spanish
- braver
- etc etc
I do need to push myself a little bit so I don't just huddle up in the centre of my comfort zone, but this kind of "musturbation" :-) is completely counter-productive.
And I'm sure there are going to be at least a few mornings when I wake up with that intense (but brief) sense of despair/homesickness/whatever, but that's not the end of the world, nor is it actually something that only happens when I'm abroad.
0048 Looking at LP CR on archive.org (2016 edition; I have IIRC 2018 on library app on phone, but it's much nicer to read on big screen and I doubt the basic geography has changed much) I am very much thinking my initial plan is a slow-ish wander NW - first stop Alajuela, then maybe Poás region which LP CR says for cloud forest hikes, heading along Cordillera de Tilarán [accents on first use only, probably, as is my general lazy policy] towards Volcán Arenal.
Looking at LP CR, Alajuela seems to be the obvious base for Poas (park as well as the volcano itself) but it's 1.5h by bus each way which could get old fast, yet it's not that obvious there's anywhere nearer that is going to be super convenient. I guess the best option is probably to putter along through some of the other towns in the region (e.g. Grecia) and see what they're like and maybe not get too fixated on this or any other specific park.
The thing to do with wrt Poas is probably (after a day or two in Alajuela to settle down a bit) to force myself to get up early and take the bus to Poas and back for a long-ish day out; I might get lucky and get there in time to see the view from the top before it gets cloudy, if not I can try to do a bit of freelance walking. 2016 LP CR says the bus back leaves at 2:30pm, which feels a bit early, although it may well be there are lots of other buses. Apparently (and this seems reasonable) it's best to go on a weekday, which is worth bearing in mind. That said, it probably wouldn't hurt to go on a weekend. At least that guide book makes out the offered tours to the volcano get there as late as the bus and therefore aren't really worth it, and since it's probably fairly easy it might also be that taking the bus on my own initiative would be a good starting point for building up my confidence.
0143 Re-reading early parts of Guatemala blog and while I think I did show a fair degree of self-awareness, it's also a bit disconcerting just how fucked up I was about personal safety and conflicting advice about taxis and so on. I'm not sure there's an easy answer to this but perhaps just remembering how that was and maybe also trying not to get too hung up on safety advice (*especially* when it's inconsistent) will help. I have to say that generally speaking my personal feeling is still that I'd *much* rather walk than get into a taxi if there's any suggestion at all a taxi could be iffy - I *might* get mugged while walking, but that feels like the worst realistic case, whereas getting into a taxi could potentially see me kidnapped or taken off somewhere and beaten in the course of being robbed. I don't say that's *likely*, but still. And of course with the taxi there's also the potential of a row (perhaps even escalating to violence) if the driver tries to insist on an outlandish fare, and/or the risk of getting shoved out of the car in the middle of the ride after an argument about pricing and not really knowing where you are.
0203 It is interesting to see I was worried about ice in drinks at least early in Guatemala. I had a vague mental impression that this wasn't in practice worth worrying about in most parts of Latin America these days, but it may be that I've made that up out of nothing. I suppose it's possible I will witness my attitude to this change over time, if I continue to read forwards through the old entries. It's by no means all bad but it does feel a bit depressing to see how kind of stressed out and on edge I was a lot of the time.
0216 Jeez, I do actually on the whole have fond memories of my Guatemala trip but it really doesn't look like I enjoyed myself much for the first couple of weeks as I read the blog. It does look like I kind of had some background "family" stuff going on given the odd mention of news from parents, which may not have helped, but I wasn't actively blaming that for how I felt at the time so who knows. To be fair, those 2-3 nights out in Antigua worked out fairly well by chance, the Pacaya day trip was decent, I did enjoy Cerro de la Cruz and it was sort of cool to meet my Spanish teacher, but there was also a lot of nerviness in Antigua, quite a bit of general feeling low and Panajachel in particular seems to have been a bit rough emotionally for no obvious reason. And I haven't read up to there yet, but heading into Xela I'm about to get seriously upset by the bloody Spanish teacher at the first school there. I clearly did enjoy myself at points during the first bit of the trip but there were undeniably a lot of shitty moments as well. It's not clear these were anyone's fault but my own, but still, I obviously didn't set out to be in a bad mood and yet one thing and another clearly weren't conducive to really feeling comfortable.
To repeat myself, I do think I get far too overly obsessed about personal safety; especially where advice is utterly inconsistent I perhaps need to try to be a bit more happy-go-lucky.
I also can't help feeling I was massively over-tipping all the time, but I'm never fucking sure what to do and there's usually a bevy of inconsistent advice, not helped by those fellow "rich country" writers who seem to feel you have a personal moral obligation to overpay enormously just because you can.
It isn't quite the same as this over-tipping type stuff, but IIRC both TWA and F33F both seemed to be quite firm on saying "no" to randoms demanding money off you (baksheesh etc) for nothing at all, despite their obviously relatively liberal leanings. They also didn't seem to feel there was necessarily anything "wrong" with objecting to paying the "tourist" price for things if you were actually able not to, as opposed to that attitude I would (imagine; this is probably unfair) see on something like the travel stackexchange where there's going to be a horde of people telling you shouldn't resent paying massively inflated prices because it's nothing to you and is a lot for them.
Although it's maybe motivated reasoning on my part, I can't help feeling there's rather a smug patronising element to a lot of this "you should pay more, because you're a rich first world person" shit. If someone e.g. charges me X for a meal and local tipping practice requires me to pay (say) 1.1X, why "should" I pay 1.2X or whatever out of some kind of vague guilt/pat-the-poor-little-third-world-guy-on-the-head-and-smile-patronisingly way? I have waffled about this before, I just came across something about it in the early Guatemala blog. Also I remember a Colombian woman telling me I had massively over-tipped at a cafe we had a coffee and croissant in late-ish at night (apart from maybe generally over-tipping, in this specific case I felt a bit guilty because it had been practically empty when we turned up and I had a probably correct feeling that they had only stayed open because we were there) in Medellin.
0307 Still reading Guatemala blog, although I half hate doing it. I didn't remember I felt so crappy with the first Spanish school so early on; I thought there was a little bit of a honeymoon period first.
Obviously there was all sorts of other stuff in the background (not necessarily anything specific, just general life/emotional context) when I did the Guatemala trip, I've probably changed a bit since then and there's no reason to think I'm going to fall into the same pattern of behaviour etc etc. It is probably a good thing to be re-reading this and remembering these day-by-day details that have got lost in the (probably broadly accurate) more positive but fuzzier recollections I have of that trip. And it's not as if the Guatemala trip is "special" or necessarily more relevant than others; it's just the one I happened to pick to re-read.
1840 Just checked FCDO, no updates.
2310 To kind of repeat stuff I said earlier, although it's easier said than done I think I need to try to remember/"accept" that I'm likely to feel a bit nervy/on edge for the first 1/2/3 weeks of the trip and not get worked up about it.
Wrt tipping I've subsequently read past some advice my second Guatemalan Spanish teacher gave me which did seem to imply I had been over-tipping rather heavily earlier in the trip.
10th Jan 2007 Just checked FCDO, no updates.
11th Jan 0058 Bit intermittently edgy about trip; probably doesn't help that I'm still visiting parents and so there's also the "saying goodbye to them soon" aspect. I had planned to go back to London today but a sudden discovery on Friday of some half-decent possible travel clothes via mail order (which may save some running around in London, or at least reduce the importance of that) and delays with the order turning up has caused me to postpone. This isn't exactly bad, but at the same time I kind of just want to get this "goodbye" over with.
I am obviously kind of looking forward to the trip, at the same time it's - and I think to some extent this is only natural - a bit stressful/worrying, especially during this "it's not too late to prepare, but time is getting short" stage. Once I'm on the plane I'm on the plane and that's that in terms of preparation. I can't, for example, do a test pack of my new bag, check everything fits and see what stuff I still need to buy until I'm back in London.
FCDO site still has no updates, not that I'd really expect any after checking only a few hours ago, but still. There's no denying the possibility of a sudden devastating rule change doesn't add to my level of comfort.
Have been slowly reading my own Guatemala blog, but it's very slightly depressing somehow. To just keep repeating myself - but maybe it will help it stick - I need to not put pressure on myself to be a certain way or do certain things, *especially* during the first couple of weeks when I am still finding my feet.
1431 No update on FCDO.
1640 No update on FCDO. There also don't seem to be any upcoming strikes announced yet that will affect my return to London or my trip to the airport; I'm not sure, but I have a vague idea there's supposed to be a certain amount of notice for strikes, so with a little bit of luck I may be in the clear in this aspect, although I'm not counting my chickens yet.
12th Jan 0009 Booked train to go back to London on Friday; the usual "saying goodbye" concerns, but at the same time as I said the other day, accidentally dragging out this goodbye isn't really helping.
Having a quick look on booking.com for my Alajuela dates to see how the prices and availability have changed. This is still not quite as short notice as I'd like to be booking during the trip itself, but it is getting into a similar kind of range. Anyway, if I haven't got confused the place with included breakfast which I toyed with but felt was maybe a smidge un-central for my initial stay is still available at £59 for 4 nights (single room) and there's another small double room (single bed!?) 0.5 miles from the centre for £86 for 4 nights. The place I'm actually staying is more expensive than when I booked it, but still, this is vaguely reassuring. I could also have a whole private apartment for £97 for 4 nights. These prices are also without being logged in (in part for pseudo-anonymity, in part as I don't want the fact I already have a booking for these nights to confuse matters), so there's maybe 10-15% "genius" discount off these prices. As I say, this is a very rough experiment but it is vaguely reassuring that short notice bookings don't automatically mean you're screwed. And of course in general I will have some flexibility in choosing to go to places where there's better prices or availability when I have no specific plans. FWIW absolute cheapest on booking.com is £50 (pre-discount) for 4 nights in a 10 bunk dorm, which obviously isn't super appealing but is something I would consider "intermittently" for the experience and to keep costs down.
I am sort of looking forward to the trip but there's a lot of "gah, running out of time to prepare" (even though there's very little I *must* prepare) and "saying goodbye to family" stuff at the moment and it's hardly unalloyed joy. FCDO has not updated, fingers crossed as always.
I'm just repeating myself but the suggestion (from F33W at least, which I am very slowly re-reading - I was in a bit of a hurry to consume it all last time, this time I am less eager but also reading perhaps with a bit more attention, maybe) to use somewhere comfortable as a base to visit nearby stuff rather than checking into 10 hotels in 10 nights is something I'm sort of interested to try. As I probably said, this kind of feels like hard work in some sense by involving longer round trips away from and back to base, but the flip side is that it would reduce stressful "moving with all my possessions" days, and some of the round trips might well be a bit of an experience in themselves and I may be able to relax into them a little more if I'm just carrying a daypack or whatever.
I do wonder if Costa Rica is perhaps going to be an "easy" destination to visit, given how well-developed its tourist infrastructure seems to be. I don't know if this is true or not. I also don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing; I don't want to try to set myself up as a "real traveller" etc etc, but I also don't want to do nothing but shuttle round on tourist buses between big ticket items listed in the guide book. I'm sure it will be fine, I'm just waffling.
Although the bulk of the clothes ordered on Saturday (not Friday, as I think I wrote) haven't turned up yet, some did turn up today and I've got two pretty decent lightweight loose-but-not-baggy long-sleeved T-shirts. I hope most of the rest of the clothes are going to turn up tomorrow (Thursday, technically "today"), which is kind of why I've finally booked the train for Friday, but since I now probably have ~4 long-sleeved tops in decent condition I'm less bothered about the possibility of the rest of the clothes turning up after I've gone back to London. I will still probably pop over to one or two shops in London, but it's definitely more of a "nice to have"/bit of walking to try to get me in shape for the trip, rather than a pseudo-necessity. It doesn't matter if I end up with too many half-decent tops, as I'm sure they will keep just fine for a future trip.
1959 No FCDO update.
2310 No FCDO update.
The clothes all turned up today. Not all of them are great but some of them are pretty good and I've probably got a full set for the trip now, although as I've said before I may also go to some local shops in London on the offchance. However, it's been an utter mare parcelling everything up to go back - it's all from different Debenhams "concessionaire" brands so they have to go back in individual parcels. The return process is subtly different for each. For one of them they didn't provide us with a packing slip showing what the items were, and we've had to guess (albeit plausibly) that the Debenhams order number will be recognised by them. The working printer here has been packaged up to return for a warranty repair so the only printer we have is one with a knackered ink head and half of the return parcels require printing a barcode heavy returns label (which frankly is never going to scan) or printing a QR code to have scanned in a shop and they will print a label, but my dad is returning these and we don't think he is going to manage that. So we've printed a load of shitty labels and are just hoping. I am going back tomorrow, Dad is borrowing the car so Mum can't drive me anywhere to take stuff in, Dad isn't happy about all this and I've now got to go to a local newagents tomorrow to drop one in there and give them a code for printing a label. I've also got to walk to the station, which isn't normally a huge deal, but of course I'll have two bags with me tomorrow as I have all my "regular" stuff plus these clothes and various other supplies I bought here. It's taken probably a couple of hours fucking around with the returns. It *has* been borderline worth it as on the whole I have got a couple of pretty good and a couple of decent-ish tops, but still, hardly a fun experience.
13th Jan 2208 Check FCDO a few times today, no update.
14th Jan 0135 No FCDO update. Have been going over packing list and checking stuff and doing a pseudo-practice pack, though I am getting a bit bogged down (albeit necessarily) checking things still work (SD cards, USB cables, elastic bands) or are in date (medicines) and haven't got that far. It's fine. I didn't get a huge amount of sleep last night, I really should go to bed and then hopefully I can do a bit of light shopping for some of the stuff I'm missing tomorrow.
1630 No FCDO update. Been out to do a little bit of shopping for trip, didn't get everything I wanted but a few bits and pieces. Things feeling a bit out of control, it's fine, the reality is that anything I haven't already done is not make-or-break, but still.
I am anticipating some awkwardness during the trip with WhatsApp if I want/need to share a somewhat disposable local number with people I meet. I am taking two phones, my K1 runs stock Android and already has WA on with my "normal" UK number, which various friends use (occasionally) to contact me, so I can't just ditch it. (If I could, I wouldn't be using WA in the first place.) The other phone will be my G5 on Lineage OS which I don't *want* WA on, and which probably can't run it. The K1's WA "slot" is occupied, in theory it *might* be possible to run WA on the G5 if I have a local SIM in it with a local number, but I'm not holding my breath. As I say, I don't really *want* WA on my G5 in general on privacy grounds. During the trip it's not such a huge deal as it's only temporary, but still not ideal. I may be able to use the web version of WA on the G5, not sure. Not a huge deal and we'll see how it goes.
2215 No FCDO update. Also checked CR tourist website.
Done a test shave to see if the shaving oil I have is still OK (no expiry date on bottles) and I forgot to read the instructions and didn't wet my face first. Oh well. I only cut myself in four or five small places, which is probably about normal anyway. ;-)
15th Jan 0057 FWIW I just double checked and my normal non-sunglasses glasses have a UV-400 coating. I also did a quick websearch and MTF says sun block is widely available (if maybe expensive; twice the price of the US for one example) in Costa Rica, so I'm not going to weigh myself down with a huge supply (especially since mine - despite lacking an expiry date - may be old and less effective than it's supposed to be for all I know), just enough to get me through the first week or so probably.
Checking the glasses order reminded me that I have some reading glasses. I hardly ever wear them so I'm certainly not going to take them away with me, but at least I have now actively thought about this instead of it just happening without thinking. (To be fair, if I wore them regularly I'm sure I'd remember to think about taking them with me. I can't see why my sight should dramatically change in the next few months or why anything I do on holiday is going to make wanting the reading glasses more likely than it is during my life here in the UK; if anything I'll be spending less time looking at computers/books and more time outdoors.)
1710 No FCDO update. I should maybe stop saying that and just take it as read I'm checking a lot. ;-)
Popped over to Decathlon and Boots at Canada Water, managed to get a rather pricey long-sleeved (85%) merino T-shirt in a darkish orange at Decathlon and some extra (possibly unnecessary, but it won't go off) underwear, and a few medical things at Boots. There's a chance I am done with shopping for the trip now, so I may manage to finally do a proper test pack tonight if I can get my act together.
2153 Being very slack but gradually doing a test pack. Just tried doing some laundry with the green soap bar; gut feeling is this works OK and since it saves weight and general hassle of taking the liquid laundry soap I normally do, I'll probably chance it. I'm sure I can be something suitable over there if this actually turns up to be a nightmare for some reason.
16th Jan 1235 E-mail from BA with the usual "you're flying soon" guff. Used their link to check Covid stuff and it says I don't need proof of vaccination and I don't need to wear a face mask at the airport or on the plane. This could still change, but fingers crossed.
Made a slight effort to get up a little earlier than usual today, not much but something. I am a bit edgy about getting up for the flight, if I'm not careful I will get zero sleep that night. This isn't the end of the world but it's not likely to be good for my mental state that morning. I should probably start a fairly serious "get up a couple of hours earlier each day" thing right now, given how soon the flight is.
No FCDO updates either.
I can't check in online until 24h before the flight. It says I should arrive at the airport no more than three hours before the flight, which is about what I expected but still hardly great with an 11am-ish flight. Checking in isn't too big a stress - I just hope my printer works - given I paid to reserve seats, but still.
1256 Flight is 1105 so I "need" to be there for 0805. Fingers crossed it looks like I've escaped strike-related problems on the trains. Looks like it will be £12.50 for a train from London Bridge and there's quite a lot of them. The 0735 arrived at Gatwick 0804 so is the last "safe if I'm playing it strictly by the book" option. There's the 0715 before that. TfL website says it's 18 minutes from my local station to London Bridge. So in reality I probably "need" to be leaving my flat about 0650, which should see me at London Bridge with a moderate safety margin (although I plan to buy my ticket there rather than buy it in advance) for the earlier train. I probably therefore need to be getting up about 6, maybe a bit earlier if I can force myself and want to feel less rushed. This is sucky but not utterly terrible I suppose. It is going to be dark out when I'm leaving though (which feels a bit crappier shutting the flat up etc), as civil twilight doesn't start until 0717.
It is vaguely possible I'll trog over to a nearby station on Wednesday and buy the train ticket LBG-GTW then; this will save a minute or two on Thursday morning, and since the NRE site suggests that *all* trains from LBG are covered by this £12.50 ticket it's not as if I'm likely to suddenly feel I want/need to buy a more expensive ticket because things have gone a bit wrong. I though Gatwick Express was both expensive and served London Bridge, but looking on their website it's only to Victoria (and probably always has been and I just got confused) and it probably is still expensive but I haven't checked.
Actually there's no need to go over to a station, is there? I can buy this ticket online and print it myself or have it on my phone. That way in the event (touch wood) there *is* a crisis of some kind, I can probably get my money back via electronic form-filling more easily.
Writing about all this makes me feel a bit jittery about things going wrong and missing the flight, but touch wood it all looks OK so far. Getting up that early isn't great - I'm sure I'm going to wish I wasn't going away when I wake up that morning to the alarm screaming it's head off after I've had an hour or two's sleep - but as I say it could be worse.
17th Jan 0004 Finally done a test pack of new bag. Luggage scale says 5.9kg with most but not everything in - most notable item excluded is the fleece, which I will be wearing during the flight and may or may not want to pack into the bag a lot of the time. Was something like 4.5kg without the shell jacket and trousers, although that doesn't seem quite right as my notes say they weigh just under 1.1kg. This includes an empty water bottle (for filling at the airport) but doesn't include any water. With the (empty pockets) fleece it comes to 6.35kg; before putting the fleece in the bag was full to just about the "normal" collar (and it may be I haven't got the packing quite optimal), the fleece occupies the space provided by the "extension" collar so makes the bag a bit taller, but that's not a huge deal - during a flight, which is when the dimensions matter most, I would be wearing the fleece anyway.
0210 No FCDO update. Should probably go to bed if I'm going to try to shift my getting up time earlier.
I am taking 62g (roughly half a bar) of the green solid laundry soap; no idea if this will be right, but making a note so I'll be able to judge better after using it on this trip.
0844 No FCDO update.
I set the harder to ignore physical alarm clock for 10. It went off a few minutes ago and I forced myself out of bed and got dressed. I then notied it was 0841 by the bedside clock. The physical alarm clock showed something like 1013. I have no idea what the fuck happened. This isn't "off by an hour because I didn't set it back", and I'm pretty sure it was set correctly yesterday. Surely it wouldn't run *fast* if the battery is dying? Unfortunately I dropped it while turning the switch off (or something; I'm not feeling 100% as usual when forcing myself out of bed early so maybe I've forgotten) so maybe that did something to confuse matters. Fuck knows. I was a bit tempted to go back to bed after seeing it was so early, but that seems silly - given I have to be up so damn early on Thursday, even getting up this early by accident still leaves me with nearly 3h to be bridged and more like 4h if I want to go for the "not rushed" option.
This feels shit but it's just a transient thing, I'll feel find in half an hour or so and I'm telling myself I won't be forcing myself up stupidly early most of the time during the trip. The time zone shift works in my favour too - it will (touch wood) feel natural to sleep until (say) 9am CR time when it's actually 3pm body clock (London) time after I arrive. On that basis I might actually expect to be waking up 7am-ish or earlier CR time, although if I've been short of sleep for a few nights (the night I just had, plus the next two nights here in London when I'm pushing my getting up time earlier) it may well be I'm wanting to sleep til 3pm or later body clock time anyway. Hard to say. Obviously I am likely to feel tired and go to bed earlier after getting up earlier today, but even if that just instantly works perfectly, the fact I am still going to have to push my getting up time earlier the next couple of days means there will probably still be a net lack of sleep.
I honestly feel pretty crappy. It is cold (13C according to desk thermometer) as heating wasn't on automatically and getting up early always does this to me and I've been bashing out this crap instead of having a coffee or whatever. I don't have that "oh fuck the world is bleak and horrible" feeling I'll probably have on Thursday because at least I don't have to actively "do" anything once I've got up early today, but I do still feel a bit shit.
0944 Been intermittently reminding myself over last day or two that although I sort of just want to slack off and watch crap on YT or browse the web or whatever (and I am doing quite a bit anyway), I need to focus on trip preparations of one kind or another (packing type stuff but also sorting out things here at home so I don't have to worry about them while I'm away) as a priority because I have limited time to do them, they will improve quality of life during the trip *and* because even if the trip was an absolute whirl of socialising, I'm *still* likely to have a fair number of evenings hanging around alone in my accommodation with nothing to do but read/watch YT on phone. This *isn't* as nice as being at home and doing the same thing because I lack a nice computer with a big screen (and if I didn't already waffle about this, I *did* flirt with the idea of getting a laptop, but I decided I'd rather keep the weight and theft-bait down in the interests of easier travel, as this trip is intended to be more of a "wander" than a "go stay in a single place for months" trip), but still, I will be doing it as I can't be out every single night. (And of course at home I can do more "creative" stuff on the computer rather than consuming content, which isn't really an option on the phone.)
1318 Doing quick search for Alajuela accommodation on booking.com for the dates I've already booked, as a sanity check for how affordable/available accommodation is at short notice. I'm not logged in so no Genius discount. The place I'm already booked at is showing at ~£25/night and there are a couple of private apartments ~1.2 miles from the centre (not bothered looking at map, but that doesn't sound terrible) at £96 for the four nights. So this is vaguely reassuring; this is two days away from now and there's still stuff at acceptable prices.
1628 Just tested (leaving it til last minute) and my USB OTG cable+USB card reader seems to work fine with both my G5 and K1, the K1 using a micro-B-to-C adapter. I wasn't going to take the adapter with me as I have a USB A-to-C cable for charging the K1, but it doesn't weigh much and I *may* (really not sure) want to be able to use both phones for getting photos off the camera memory cards. (For example, I still haven't decided, but I may upload at least a subset of photos to Google Photos so I can share the album with family/friends. And it may turn out I decide I'm happy to let Google have *all* the photos in return for a dire straits backup of everything. And anything involving Google Photos needs to go via the K1.) In theory if I'm taking the adapter I could ditch the A-to-C cable to save space/weight, but in practice I don't trust these (fairly cheap) adapters, which I have used a lot over the last year or so at home, to be completely reliable, and it is going to be a fairly big deal if I find myself unable to charge the K1 reliably. Of course I could buy an A-to-C cable over there if necessary, but finding one that isn't massively overpriced and of half-decent quality isn't necessarily trivial, so I think the extra weight (19g; I know it's not much, but it adds up) of the A-to-C cable is worth it. In the longer term, of course, I may well only be carrying devices which use USB C, but that's not the case now - of my three USB devices, two (noise-cancelling headphones and the G5) both have micro-B sockets, with just the K1 rocking the latest hip USB C. This is the (very minor) downside to deliberately using old and/or cheap equipment instead of constantly upgrading to the latest thing.
FCDO still OK, as is visitcostarica.com.
Quick web search turns up https://sjoairport.com/en/llegando-sjo/atm-en/ which suggests there are Scotiabank ATMs at carousel 5 and BAC ATMs at carousel 2 at the airport in San Jose. So at least I now have a rough idea where to go. I would have though there'd be more than that, and maybe there are (perhaps this doesn't show the land-side ones, off the top of my head), but worth knowing. *Very* quick web search suggests that airport ATMs, if operated by actual banks rather than foreign exchange companies, are no more or less expensive than other ATMs. So I should probably make an effort to use any air-side ATMs if I get the chance, because there just might not be any land side and it's also probably a little more secure as random local thieves presumably can't just hang around air side to watch who withdraws cash. (Absolute worst case and I forget or just cannot get any cash at the airport, I have a small amount of cash USD which AFAICT from a web search the other day is still legal tender and which from what I understand of Costa Rica I am going to have no trouble using to pay for a taxi, even if I get stiffed on the rates. I need to pay cash at the accommodation but once I've checked in I can at least drop my bag and so forth before heading out to an ATM, and I assume the host/owner/whatever will be only to anxious to advise on ATM locations nearby.)
Might seem silly but wondering whether I'll splurge on a beer or two at Gatwick. If I do, I want to be paying by card so I'm not lumbered with UK coins as change which I'll be unable to spend until I get home and have to lug around for two months. I generally prefer to pay cash, but this feels like a smart exception.
Another site I found roughly confirms those ATMs, although locations may not be quite the same. The airport is apparently pretty small with two terminals and one runway, although I guess that's hardly tiny and it could still be quite confusing to navigate.
Incidentally, although this is silly and I almost certainly wouldn't do it, Google Maps shows it's well under 3km (closer to 2, depending on route) from the airport to my accommodation and says I could walk it in ~half an hour. Good to have options anyway. I wouldn't do this to save money on arrival (it's borderline conceivable that if I happened to be in the same accommodation on returning, I would walk it then, as I'd have a better idea of safety and I could do it in daylight etc - but on arrival when I'm feeling tired, unfamiliar with the country and I have all my belongings with me, no), only if there's some massive fuckfest with the taxis (e.g. there's a national strike on, all the taxi drivers somehow appear shifty as fuck when I speak to them or they all claim to have no idea where I need to go) would I do it. It wouldn't be utterly insane, it will probably be ~7-8pm at this point, we're not talking the middle of the night, but it's just there as a last ditch option.
2119 Feeling a bit pushed for time, trying to do "final" pack. I have been printing a few things and just remembered I need to check stuff with the Alajuela accommodation. There's no sign on the property but there are some photos and instructions for how to use a combination lock to get in, fingers crossed. I have sent them a (polite) message asking about the code. I do already have the wifi passwords so push comes to shove I can probably get internet access while I'm standing outside the property.
2312 Probably final liquids bag is 434g. Not great but not terrible. This excludes the weight of the solid laundry soap. I have two sample-size tubes of toothpaste in there and TBH some of the medicical ointments feel like things I probably won't need (the hydrocortisone cream in particular is something I don't think I've bothered with before, we'll see how I get on with it) and in a way it's a shame I can't be taking half-full tubes of them, but I'm obviously not literally throwing half of a tube away just to get there. Most of these are things I need sufficently little (at least recently) that I either have no already opened still-in-date supplies at home from normal use and/or what I do have is sufficiently empty and/or manky looking I really feel better taking a fresh tube.
2333 Bag is being packed with 2x190g of mixed nuts, so that will be included in any final weighing.
18th Jan 0012 I think I'm going to at least start moving towards bed. I haven't finished packing but this is a kind of re-pack, I already checked most stuff etc, so it's not critical and probably more important not to stay up all night.
While poking at the grey trousers I started to worry they're a little bit more worn than I thought. This is probably just pre-trip nerves, they're probably fine, they're definitely not falling apart and it's too late to do anything about it now anyway.
0710 Just got up. Yawning like mad. Had a bath last night as kind of last opportunity for a while, probably got to bed about 0145. Not ideal but not terrible. I did wonder about getting up at 5 or 5:30 today but it felt like overdoing it (this was last night when setting alarms, not this morning; I did semi-snooze in bed for 5-10 mins and was awake without the alarm about 0645). FCDO advice still OK.
0740 FWIW I feel broadly OK if a little tired. Vaguely thinking (not that I feel stressed right now, but I expect I will later/tomorrow) that as I've already said a dozen times, I just need to take the whole trip fairly easily but in particular break it down into little chunks tomorrow:
- get up OK :-), maybe have some breakfast and get to the airport here
- get to the accommodation at the other end
- *maybe* pop out for dinner, but given I expect to be tired-ish and I will have had food of one kind or another during the day (albeit not conventional "meals"), perhaps just go almost straight to bed
- sleep as much as I want and not force myself to get up - this should feel luxurious after three straight days without this
- find somewhere for breakfast/lunch - again, I hope this will feel vaguely luxurious after the disruptions of the travel day
- have a fairly easy day but getting in a decent amount of walking (exercise+seeing the place) around Alajuela
0902 FTR if I haven't already said and forget later, I have taken the helmet holder (just a loose bit of net) and hip belt off the backpack. I don't think I really need either of these, the helmet holder in particular, and it's not at all obvious this is something I could repurpose to hold something else. The hip belt does have a small zipped pocket in it but it's not a tremendously useful bit of storage, the bag is lighter without it, it's one less thing flapping around (there are already a slightly alarming number of miscellaneous compression straps and gadget holders that aren't useful to me hanging off it; one or two of these are detachable but they're light enough that I am leaving them on in case I think of something to do with them, if I end up detaching them and carrying them inside that's not the end of the world. The bag is light enough with my luggage that I don't think the hip belt is really necessary to "spread the load", and it's small enough that even if I did some kind of trek with it full of some kind of gear I just can't see it getting that heavy, plus I could probably hire a backpack which was heavier duty if it was really necessary.
1309 Forgot to say, but having read Beyond Backpacking it was kind of weird to go into Decathlon and see all the hiking gear and the "you need this and you need that" kind of advertising. I'm not saying none of the stuff is necessary, but in a strange way it felt kind of less intimidating seeing all this stuff - maybe something along the lines of "perhaps this is more about selling me stuff rather than the basic idea of hiking actually being so insanely challenging it requires all this gear", even if that's probably an excessive reaction on my part.
1321 Got code for accommodation. No FCDO or VCR updates.
1326 Haven't packed fully but I have semi-tidied up all the miscellaneous "not packed and not intending to take" junk that was lying around which helps check there's nothing important for the trip hiding among it. As I think is usual, I am massively dithering about how many spare plastic bags of various sizes to take. These obviously don't weigh much but they do add up, their cumulative volume likewise adds up and I don't need an infinite quantity. On the other hand, they are useful, they do wear out fairly rapidly and it's really hard to buy them in the middle of a trip in whatever size would be most useful, *particularly* in small quantities (so I end up buying a box of 20 resealable plastic bags when I need one or two and lugging the box round because I don't like to throw it out).
I've also checked the pockets of the coat I normally wear (that I'm not taking) for anything I might have missed and emptied out my "old" (it may well still be used for some trips) Voyeaguer bag which I also take back and forth to my parents' regularly to make sure there's nothing hiding in it.
1506 No FCDO/VCR updates.
1523 Checked in online. Double checked FCDO/VCR as I ticked the "I comply with the entry requirements" box, just in case this makes a difference in the event of any compensation/assistance claim in the (touch wood) event of a last-minute change in rules.
Suddenly paid more attention to VCR saying the immigration officer will want to see a return ticket. I would have had this on my phone but I am printing out the relevant page of my flight itinerary just in case.
1814 Checking to see I have offline maps and a marker for the accommodation and OSM shows I am 5429 miles from the accommodation. :-)
Going to try sending this now so I can test posting to blog from my phone, and I will probably put any subsequent ramblings in the London-Costa Rica post to follow.
19th Dec 0131 Just waffling some more to catch up on already-happened stuff.
I had a quick poke at flights on Sunday night, having at some point half-decided that Costa Rica was the preferred option on my short list (but without any really solid reason, except "I haven't been there before"). Another poke on Monday night. None of the comparison sites I used seemed to be willing to cooperate and allow me to easily say "I don't want to transit the US or Canada", even though my primary reason - you have to get a transit visa, which costs money and takes time, so you can find yourself in limbo (e.g. by the time you get the visa, the flight price has gone up - or you book the flight to fix the price, then don't get the visa) - seems to be something surely many people will be worried about. I guess maybe most of their users are American so they don't care.
I found a flight via Madrid but no one would sell it me unless I flew into Madrid for an ~24h layover before flying out. This makes no sense with the number of flights there must be from London-Madrid - *no* other flight had an acceptable 3-4h-ish connection time and spare seats at a decent price? - but that's what it looked like.
So long story slightly shorter, in the end I splurged slightly on direct BA flights Gatwick-San Jose and back. This has a generous 23kg hand baggage allowance (which I'm going to come nowhere near) but no checked baggage (which I can live with, but it means I can't bring any alcohol back as a "souvenir", because Terrorism). Seat selection is also not free, even 24h before checkin, which feels chiselling, but although some information I saw while deciding whether to book or not seemed to suggest it would be £40/flight to reserve a seat, in the end I actually reserved a seat (on 18th, a few days after the booking) each way for £26/flight, which isn't *great* but isn't too bad. I didn't get super cushy seats but TBH except for paying nearly £100/flight to sit in the emergency exit row, none of the pricier seat options looked tremendously desirable. I picked something at the back (fingers crossed there's no terrible turbulence, though I guess I'll never know whether it's *slightly* better sitting over the wing or *loads* better, as for any particular turbulence event I'll only ever be sitting in one place, and I don't fly enough to do some kind of mental averaging out) with the aisle on my right (since I'm right handed), which is absolutely the main thing and really the only reason I'm willing to pay for seat selection (the aisle, not specifically aisle on the right). It's been a long time since I flew but I skimmed a few websites for tips on seat selection in case they jogged my memory (they didn't really) but apparently picking an aisle/window seat at the back can increase your chances of the middle seat(s) being empty as almost no one is going to choose a middle seat at the back. I have no idea if the airline might tend to allocate seats to those who don't pay in these shittier areas even if the flight's half empty, but anyway, worth the punt. I don't mind the possible noise from being near the toilet and I figure it might (vague memories seem to back me up on this) feel a bit more spacious back there because of the lack of further seats behind me. (I deliberately didn't pick the very last row as the seats wouldn't recline; I don't care too much about reclining myself, but if the person in front of me reclines, I want to be able to "pass it on" by reclining myself.)
I was of course dithering about booking the flights. I happened to notice on Monday while dithering that BA had a "reserve the seats and price for 72 hours for £10, refundable if you do book, and if the price goes down you still get that lower price too" option, which I dithered a bit about in turn and then took. That gave me three days to "play" with the idea of having committed to the flight, and I did book on the Thursday afternoon. My admiration for this rather nice offer was tempered a bit by receiving a confusingly (deliberately or incompetently?) worded e-mail just after midnight saying "just 24 hours to book" when I actually had ~47 hours left (it even quoted the deadline I expected), which made me worry I'd got confused and was going to accidentally miss the deadline or be forced into giving up some of my 72h dithering time, but overall it's a nice feature. So I sort of booked the flights on Monday evening, but I actually properly booked them on Thursday afternoon, then I (probably) had another 24h to cancel and get a full refund so I was still forcing myself to think "do I want these flights or not?" on Friday afternoon before the 24h window ran out. I started looking at the seat booking on Saturday night but since things didn't look like they were in any danger of selling out I slept on it and only booked those on Sunday night.
The flight times aren't bad - the departure from Gatwick is ~11am, which probably means leaving the flat at 5am or something horrible (and worse if there are train strikes that day; it's not clear yet) but could be worse, and I get into San Jose late-ish afternoon, so there may be daylight for the transit. Returning from San Jose the flight leaves about 6pm, so I don't have to be rushing around like crazy early in the morning on the last day or hanging around the airport from early afternoon until midnight or anything. And of course having a direct flight is always vaguely nice.
20th Dec 2103 Still not caught up on all the stuff that already happened but I'm checking over my clothes. I think the two pairs of trousers (black and charcoal) from the last trip are still fine - they (and anything else new) only had 5 weeks' wear, of course. Dark+light blue isocool long-sleeved top seems fine. The two dark blue isocool long-sleeved tops are both a bit weirdly "horizontally lined" at the same place on the back - I have to assume some kind of friction, but I can't think what exactly. They are probably wearable but would ideally replace them (or it, depending how many I want to take).
Of the two thin long-sleeved merino wool tops, the grey one got mended (pretty nicely) as it tore while I was in Colombia - may or may not want to take that. The blue one looks OK, there's maybe just the tiniest hint of wear under one of the armpits which might be where the grey one went, but I wouldn't like to swear it's not just discolouration. I always felt a bit dubious about wearing these, mainly because of my prejudice against wool, even though they are actually pretty fine. They are also a bit tight (not "not fitting", just "not loose") and that may not be ideal for keeping cool and/or against mosquitoes - really not sure though.
Dark and light grey (two separate) Quechua short-sleeved T-shirts look to be in reasonable condition, although broadly speaking I prefer long-sleeved.
Bright red Domyos short-sleeved T-shirt looks in good condition, possibly never worn. I have a bright blue one of these too which has some small stains (presumably food or something which didn't come off fully in the wash), and also a darkish red unbranded short-sleeved T-shirt which shows discolouration under armpits and some small probably-food stains - those are both probably wearable (and the underarm discolouration is probably irrelevant, unless it's actual wear and the material might go, but I suspect not - probably sweat/deodorant bleaching) but perhaps very slightly scruffy with those small stains on.
I had a look at the PackTowl the other day and it seems to be in reasonable condition. Fleece (black) also looks in good condition.
Shell jacket (black) looks in good condition - it has some whitish marks in slightly odd places that are probably scuffs. It is possible I didn't wash this when I got back from the last trip, although I probably did - I washed everything else, but since it's all a little musty from being in a bag in the cupboard for three years I am sticking stuff in the wash again tonight once I've been over it.
Shell trousers (black) again in good condition - not too surprising as they've only been worn a handful of times IIRC.
Underwear looks good too, although I do seem to have one never-used pair FWIW.
This isn't counting the "old" travel clothes (beige Rohan trousers, beige combat-ish trousers, blue short-sleeved Rohan collared shirt) which are perhaps a bit worn and/or perhaps not a good idea wrt "fashion" anyway.
21st Dec 0015 Checking misc travel supplies so I can order what I don't need; doing this late-ish at night because can't check once I go up to visit parents. I seem to have two bottles of shaving oil, one nearly full - can't see a best before date so I assume this doesn't go off. I have a full bottle of saltidin anti-mosquito spray (still sealed in plastic bag it came in) but it expired in 2021 :-( It might work but when there's a small risk of getting malaria or dengue or whatever if it doesn't work I'm reluctant to take the chance, so I'll have to buy some more.
For the record, I already have a new unused toothbrush and disposable razor which I can take with me, I don't need to buy new ones. The water purification tablets I always take and almost never use (since they're not perfect, they're just "just in case") are still in date as well.
0316 Just noticed the grey merino top has a small-ish hole in it. I wasn't planning on taking it away with me really, but this definitely knocks that out. AFAICT having just checked it again the blue one still looks fine, although this does make me wonder about the durability of these (maybe the grey one was just unlucky though?) as they were new before the Colombia trip and if memory serves (blog could confirm) the grey one developed the big hole and got repaired while I was in Barranquilla fairly early on (and before any kind of "trekking" that might have put extra strain on it). I was thinking of - and still might - buying a new one or two of these, assuming they're still on sale (as I think they are). Anyway, I'll chew it over.
22nd Dec 2256 Not done anything specific re trip but will contnue with wafflings about already done stuff. I'll double check this as I write and then it's done. Had a look at the vaccination advice for Costa Rica a few days ago, none are "advised" but you should consider diptheria, hepatitis A, rabies and tetanus. Let's put rabies to one side - I may or may not faff with this, but *if* I just need to get a booster for it *and* I can get that done at a reasonable cost before I go away I may, otherwise I may not - as I've said before, you still need shots if you get bitten and I don't plan on doing anything specifically risky in this area. OK, I don't have my vaccination booklet here with me so I can't finally double-check this and be done with it, but in short I believe I already have all the others. Ah, the blog entry from September 2018 covers this anyway. Yes, the booklet shows hepatitis A running out in August 2016 but the nurse told me I didn't need it, and it looks from the web as though two shots is now considered to be valid for 20 years or life. And I had tetanus/diptheria/polio in September 2018 valid for 10 years. My typhoid vaccination from then will have expired, but typhoid is not mentioned on the NHS Fit for Travel page for Costa Rica so I guess that's fine. And the whole country is low risk for malaria, there are other mosquito-borne illnesses for which there's no vaccine or other preventive medication, but it's basically just a case of trying to be diligent with mosquito repellent and hoping - I don't need to be trying to coax a doctor into letting me pay for anti-malaria drugs. So except for the vague possibility of a rabies booster I'm sorted there.
A quick look at NHS page about rabies vaccination seems to suggest that one booster dose might be considered if I was vaccinated more than a year ago (which I was, of course), but it doesn't give any details on how much time can have elapsed between the initial three dose course and the booster. The Boots rabies vaccination page seems to imply that you can have a booster dose after one year, but it has to be after one year almost exactly. The Superdrug website says a) there's a national shortage of the vaccine b) that the rabies vaccine [none of these sites says "rabies vaccine type X", incidentally] protects you for 10 years but if you're working with animals or otherwise at higher risk, more frequent boosters might be recommended. Given the "may be considered" wording on the NHS website, it and Superdrug are vaguely consistent, although the NHS website is silent on how long the vaccine lasts instead of saying 10 years.
I'm not super happy about this but gut feeling is I am not going to try to see anyone about this rabies booster. Meh. WHO rabies map shows Costa Rica as medium risk. The Fit for Travel site (which links to it) sort of implies it's not necessary and that it is necessary - if you will be "travelling to...a county.. where rabies is considered a risk" (not any specific level of risk) you should "consider" it, but then things like "trekking, cycling or running" only seem to be treated as relevant if you're going to a "high risk" country. Meh.
OK, I found: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rabies-post-exposure-treatment-timing-of-vaccine-booster/guidelines-on-timing-of-rabies-boosters-based-on-antibody-levels It says "Routine booster doses are not recommended for most travellers. A single booster dose of vaccine can be considered, following a risk assessment, in those who have completed a primary course more than one year before and are travelling again to a high risk (enzootic) area." I am *not* travelling to a high risk area, assuming this uses similar terminology to that WHO map.
My natural caution is making this a bit of a fuckfest but it really doesn't look like the travel advice makes this a particular necessity - it's not, for example, in the "courses or boosters usually advised" advice for Costa Rica, which is where I started this caution loop. And since, as I think I've already said, you still need urgent treatment after a bite from a possibly infected animal even if you are vaccinated/boosted, it's not as if having the vaccine (which I have had - it's just that my booster state is a little vague) is all that comforting. I honestly don't know what happens if you're on some trek (thinking of that three day hike I did in Colombia, for example) and a suspicious bite happens, it feels vaguely ridiculous to think special steps are going to be taken to get you to a doctor ASAP, but maybe that happens, or maybe it should. Really don't know. This is obviously actually entirely outside my area of expertise (which isn't purely medical, it's also about "how easy it is to find someone who can treat you" - and presumably even if pretty back-of-beyond areas there could well be some sort of treatment available at rural surgeries or whatever, I just don't know), but as I say I think really it doesn't look like I'm being strongly advised to have it, and I *may* qualify as already having had it anyway.
Just had quick look (via Google; didn't go there directly, it just came up in the results) on the CDC website and it's totally at odds with NHS advice for Guatemala, e.g. malaria medication is recommended for some areas and typhoid vaccination *is* recommended. Fuck knows, there's probably a huge amount of grey area here and no one really knows.
29th Dec 1736 Still need to finish writing up some of the earlier stuff, but will also try to keep this up to date-ish. Been pretty slack but I need to have a skim over a guide book or something and sketch out a rough itinerary - I will almost certainly abandon it at some point, but I want to have some kind of rough plan to keep me going until something turns up to change it. In particular, I need to sort out accommodation for the first few nights and get my head straight about how to get there from the airport, and I need to form some vague plans first.
Looking on archive.org there's a 2015 guide book for CR on there so I will skim that and bash down a few thoughts. I "should" probably enjoy planning out the trip and looking at all the exciting things I can do, but as I've probably said before I don't. Oh, FWIW, archive.org is also replete with "how to retire to Costa Rica" books, which feels mildly alarming in a "it's going to be *so* fucking expensive because of all the rich retirees" way. In no particular order, as stuff catches my eye:
- It might be nice to visit Lake Nicaragua, although the map in the guide book implies it is entirely within Nicaragua rather than forming part of the border itself. But potentially doable, of course.
- Guide book says busiest weeks are Christmas and Easter; if true, while I am going in the peak dry season, I may at least avoid the absolute worst of high demand etc.
- Trying not to take the guide book's details too seriously - it's a 2015 edition, so it's naturally out of date, plus there's been the Incident since then. However, it does suggest there are tourist shuttles between the more popular destinations, which might be a good option, and that buses are probably OK too.
- Ziplining/canopy tours. Guide book says these originated in CR, which may explain why it seems to have so many of them. I get a vague feeling the "adrenaline" aspect of this is maybe a bit of a more recent thing and that it's possible to do this without having your stomach ejected through your throat. Hmm, yes, later parts of the book draw a distinction between "classic" and "extreme" canopy tours; applying a small discount from the book's text in the vague hope that it's trying to flatter the reader with their adventurousness ;-), the former is probably (insurance permitting) something I could have a go at.
- Canyoning (assuming this isn't all ultra-hardcore) might be an option. Guide book implies dry season isn't the best, OTOH it may not be a bad thing from a novice POV.
- Hiking is an obvious option, though there's the usual concern about finding a tour and/or getting to somewhere in order to walk myself (if it's short enough to do in a day).
- Given I can't swim, rafting doesn't massively appeal. I also think this is more a wet season thing. Snorkeling and scuba diving is obviously right out!
- Not necessarily up my street, but apparently one of the two most famous mascaradas of the year will happen while I'm there - in Barva in late March.
- The local food (i.e. what's probably available in cheap unpretentious restaurants, I hope :-) ) looks pretty decent by my standards.
- Volcanos are an attractive idea. No idea if it's still true but this guide book says you can hike to the rim of Rincón de la Vieja.
- Guide book makes San Jose sound pretty unattractive in general, but says it is safe during the day and has some interesting stuff but hardly a must see. Gut feeling is that I would probably be better off visiting it at the end of the trip, as I need to be there for the airport, and if I *do* get mugged or something it's not going to spoil the whole trip. In my skimming so far I haven't found an obvious non-day-trip location (a bit analogous to Antigua in Guatemala - close enough to the capital to be easy to access straight off the plane and touristy/safe) to head out to as soon as I land, though.
- Poás Volcano National Park near San José sounds good.
- I wasn't thinking properly at the time but I'm sure I read some comments on climates varying across the country, and I should look into this so I visit different parts at as close to optimal times as I can. (OTOH, I am perhaps irrationally a bit concerned about being there during peak season in the first place, so maybe going at slightly the wrong time to individual regions might pay off. ;-) )
- Monteverde sounds promising - "most stunning and accessible cloud forest", although "big crowds during high season" - so maybe RÃo Celeste or Rincón de la Vieja. These are all probably in broadly the same region. Guidebook also suggests beautiful but less spectacular San Gerardo de Dota as an alternative, but with the wording "avoiding tourists" maybe it's ultra difficult to get round rather than just not so busy. Shouldn't read too much into it.
- Arenal/Lake Arenal sounds good, although perhaps overly busy. (I'm not too against a "touristy" area, *especially* not to start with, but as I keep saying, the prospect of ultra-high prices, shortage of accommodation and massive crowds doesn't appeal.)
- RÃo Celeste looks good, and the book says it's off-the-beaten path, which may mean "impossible to get to if you don't drive", but still. Yes, I think it's a car-only destination.
- Got to be honest, I think I'm taking this information in at far too detailed a level. Almost everything is going to sound "yeah, that's worth doing", and it probably is. But especially given the outdated information (albeit not insanely so), it's much better to sort out the precise "I'll go to place X and do tour Y" stuff once I'm at or near place X. No real harm reading this stuff, but what I really want here is a broad plan. Part of this might be forming a suitable route between warm and cold parts of the country. If I'm coming in from the UK winter, maybe I want to go somewhere warm-ish first. Then again, cloud forest might not come as such a shock to the system if I go there "straight" from UK winter. Probably doesn't really matter that much.
- Starting to feel the need to avoid to put any pressure on myself here. Need to not turn this into a nightmare of feeling I'm not doing enough etc etc.
- Chirripó might be cool if it's not too hard for me; probably not too bad, obviously I would need to go with a tour. Maybe not, given the guide book says you need a sleeping bag and no way am I buying one and lugging it out from the UK with me. Maybe this sort of thing might be provided on a tour, although it's probably too personal an item.
- Llanos de Cortés waterfall. Although maybe not ideal during dry season?
2007 Had a break from that to have a Spanish lesson. Let me just fill in some of the older stuff rather than continue ploughing through the guide book.
I looked into travel insurance shortly after reserving the flights for 72 hours and got a nasty shock. Despite being one of the cheapest on the Colombia trip, M&S quoted me >£500 for Costa Rica and even another insurer I tried was quoting something >£250. I could have paid this but I really didn't want to, it felt insane. Luckily I poked around a bit more and LV quoted me £140-ish, which I subsequently took up a few days later just after I'd actually booked the flights. The LV policy was multi-trip, but I'm unlikely to get much extra benefit from it - it's not inconceivable I'll do a month or two's trip at some point during the rest of the insured year, I suppose, but not super likely. The M&S policy wasn't multi trip, but that's only because their multi trip policies topped out at 31 days, whereas the LV policy allowed up to 90. I'm not bowled over with the amazing value of a £140-ish policy, but I suppose it's not too bad.
No, I've got confused. £140 is what I paid M&S for the Colombia trip, the LV quote which I took up was nearly £160. Not terrible and certainly if you take the £250/£500-ish quotes as the baseline it is amazing.
I ordered myself a new ultralight bag just before Christmas; it hasn't arrived yet and I keep getting text messages about it being delayed, but fingers crossed it will turn up soon. As always all these kind of things seem oriented towards mountaineering or "serious hiking", whereas I mainly want it as a general travel bag, but I think it will be fine. (I probably already said, but the last lightweight bag developed tears during the Colombia trip - its first - and I got a full refund under the guarantee, which was nice but also annoying. I think the basic idea of the lightweight bag paid off well and the benefits outweighed (ha) the disadvantages. I didn't want to buy a new bag straight away as I had no idea when I would next travel and I didn't want to start the clock ticking on any guarantee the new bag had when I wasn't going to be actively using it.)
I think that's all the stuff I did earlier which I haven't yet written about now documented. I still need to put in some more online orders (e.g. for a new bottle of saltidin spray) and I need to decide what I'm doing about buying some extra clothes/shoes, of course, but I've written about what I've actually done/checked so far.
2042 Back on the guide book. Feeling a bit down TBH. Getting this feeling I am neither old and rich enough nor young and adventurous enough for Costa Rica. ;-) I suspect this is just one of those passing feelings but FWIW.
Just waffling, and I have no idea how practical this is nor am I ruling anything out, but:
- I really just need to go and putter around a bit and see what happens and what/where I do/don't like.
- It would be nice (a bit like Paraty) if I could find some cheap beach-ish (though that's the most likely variant, TBH some other attractive "natural feature" like a lake would be a fine substitute for a beach) place where I can get cheap food, have the odd beer and not do very much for a week. I doubt I'd actually spend much if any time "on the beach" itself, but you know, that kind of vibe. If I actually felt safe, I think it would be fine if I was the only tourist there, I don't care if it's quiet.
- It would be good to get some kind of walking in, as I did in various forms in Colombia and Guatemala. This might well include some volcano stuff. I am fairly sure this is doable without insane amounts of expense or having to own a sleeping bag or hire a car.
Those aren't essential. Anything else is just a bonus, the main thing is probably just to see if I can get a feel for the place and which bits of it do/don't suit me.
Actually - and I have no idea if this is possible - although of course it's maybe a bit chilly, it would be nice if there was an actual town in the cloud foresty kind of regions where I could stay for (say) a week in a cheapish hostel or whatever and have the odd beer or two at night admiring the view, a bit like the places I visited on that three day trip out of Santa Marta except without it being so remote you're hiking up there, spending a single night and then off again the next morning.
Finished that guide book, or at least first skim. It was "Costa Rica: the complete guide" by James Kaiser. It *didn't* have the vaguely Lonely-Planet style details - which may be on his website, but I haven't looked - which I could probably do with checking out, because a simple mostly factual couple of column inches about transport from the airport and where you can get to easily might well resolve my "so where do I start for a low-stress arrival?" question.
Do need to bear in mind that apart from my own mental quirks, the guide book naturally reflects the author's own quirks and a certain "yay, this is so fun and amazing" vibe which is expected from travel writing. I shouldn't let the combination of all this put me off, what really matters is what it's like when I'm actually there.
To be scrupulously fair, CR:TCG does seem to make an effort to address both "eco-travellers" and "fun-and-sun" types, which is in its way an improvement over the tone of LP type books.
2117 Just shoved an amazon order in for 100ml of saltidin spray. I have the semi-regular Christmas free trial of Prime so there's no point holding off putting the order in. I think I only took 100ml with me last time anyway, but I do really need to try to keep the weight of liquids I'm taking with me down so I don't want to be taking 2x100ml, I will just have to accept maybe paying over the odds and maybe having to buy DEET spray when I replenish my supply of insect repellent locally. FWIW that guide book was a lot more chilled about the need for insect repellent over most of the country than the health advice I recently read, although it's possible I just misinterpreted it and of course it may have outdated information. At least with insect repellent I assume the locals do use it (unlike high SPF sunblock) so there's at least a chance of getting it at a half-decent price.
I did have a look for non-liquid insect/mosquito repellent before Christmas, but didn't find anything super promising. There were various wipes and things that probably don't count as liquids for airport security purposes, but they were expensive and they all seemed to offer 2-3 hours protection compared to 12 hours for the spray, so the weight/protection ratio is probably not in their favour. [And I'm unlikely to remember to reapply these wipes every 2-3 hours and having to carry some around to do that could be annoying; the spray is a little more spray-and-forget-about-ti.]
I am not planning on taking a mosquito net either. I bought one for my first-ever long trip in 2009, never used it and stopped carrying it a few trips ago IIRC (I'm sure the blog can clarify if it ever mattered). It's probably lost its insect repellent qualities by now, but AFAIK it is probably still "solid" with no holes in the net and might be usable, or of course I could buy another one (and probably would if I needed one). But nothing I've seen has recommended one, and it's bulky and heavy and in the absence of such recommendations I'm not taking one. I can presumably buy one out there in the unlikely event it does turn out to be necessary or at least desirable.
archive.org also has Lonely Planet Costa Rica from 2016, so let's have a poke at this. I feel kind of compelled to do this, yet also not really in the mood and approach it with a vague sense of dread. Let me just flip straight to any advice on where to go to once you've landed. (I did incidentally take a quick look at LP website. They seemed to want to sell me a paper book for ~£17, but I couldn't see any obvious sign of any ebooks. Maybe if I dug more I'd have found it.)
Right, LPCR says there is an Interbus shuttle between the airport and San José hotels. So if I want or choose to stay in San José to start with, something like that is probably relatively stress free. Gut feeling is I'm still better off spending time in SJ at the end of the trip, but a few days at the start isn't necessarily a bad idea.
I am just skimming the book a bit now and Alajuela is apparently "a good base for exploring the countryside to the north", and is near the international airport (5-10 min drive in a taxi). If it's not a horrifically crime-ridden place, it may well be a decent initial option, especially if I could maybe get a cheap hostel there with a pick up arranged from the airport. Parque Nacional Volcán Poás (not going to be bothering with those accents...) is 37km north of Alajuela which might be doable as a daytrip (perhaps even self-organised) from Alajuela, for example. This might be a nice easy start to the trip without too much stress (except getting up early enough to get to the crater before the clouds roll in...) and in a presumably rather smaller place like Alajuela getting an onward bus to a subsequent destination would hopefully feel less stressful than doing it in San José (again, I honestly can't see that accent getting used consistently; I already haven't been).
Must admit I was hoping for a guide to regional climate by month in the LP guide but can't find one. Let me re-skim CR:TCG for what it had to say on this. Right, it says in North Pacific region, dry season lasts up to six months Nov-May. South Pacific dry season is just three months Jan-March. Caribbean coast has no clearly defined dry season. I am not sure this means all that much to me. It maybe semi-argues for preferring to visit South Pacific region first so as to be more likely to be there in dry season, but I already get the impression from the guide book that non-dry season still has stuff to do and it's not as if a few days at the end of March/start of April are going to be ultra wet etc etc. Caribbean coast is rainy year round but Feb/Mar are relatively drier months. So it probably makes sense to avoid going there at the start of the trip. But really I probably don't need to pay over-much attention to this aspect; even if it turns out I could have gone to place X at a slightly better time within the window offered by my visit, it's unlikely to be a make-or-break aspect. I also half feel (looking at the guide book) like it might be nice to go in e.g. May, which it calls "the most underrated month", when it might be quiet and cheap. Perhaps worth bearing in mind for the future, although if I *did* do a May-ish trip in 2023 I'd probably all else being equal want to go to a different country.
LP guide also has some suggested itineraries, a couple of which start out heading north from SJ, and some of which look like they could be joined together. I don't necessarily want to do that, but it might provide a "just until something else comes to mind" starting point.
I must say I feel a little better for having read some of this. Up and down a bit tonight I guess.
I might well do a bit more skimming of the guide book later but I will stop (I sort of want to and I sort of don't) for now. I am not going to rush into booking something in Alajuela right now, but maybe in the next day or two I will have a look. Fuck it, let me just have a quick poke on hostelworld or whatever now to see if there's anything at all.
OK, "everything" seems to be dozens of km from the city centre, I wonder if this is measuring from the centre of SJ or something as I don't think Alajuela is that big. Hmm, maybe not, maybe they just don't have anything in Alajuela. Maybe I don't really care. I can have (although it's selling out fast) a single private shared bathroom for £15.89/night in Grecia, which is apparently an hour by bus from San Jose (although not necessarily easy to get to direct from the airport when I'm tired). As always, not saying I won't stay in any dorms (as part of a "try not to be a complete wuss"+"keep costs down" thing, and occasionally it seems to be a near-necessity) but certainly not intending to do that when I first arrive. That place actually looks pretty decent, but they aren't obviously offering airport transfers and while I may well go there early in the trip, it doesn't seem to be quite what I want right now. That said, the prices are vaguely reassuring!
Another place does seem to be in Alajuela (albeit perhaps on the outskirts, although I don't think the distances being shown are from Alajuela) and will do SPSB for £21/night, and the listing does mention airport transfers but with no details and no prices.
FTR the outdated guide books do seem to suggest tap water is nearly always safe to drink in CR. I would want to check some more up to date sources first. As I think I've said before, it feels like what's always caught me out before with regard to getting the shits etc is drinking the tap water - although to be fair, I've usually done that when it hasn't been explicitly been advertised as safe.
There's another place on hostelworld at £33.65 with private bathroom (incidentally it says 13% tax not included, and I suspect this *may* be the case for all of these, but can't be helped) which is a bit pricey, but it's apparently 2km from the airport. They don't advertise airport transfers, but - although this feels a bit expensive TBH - for such a short distance and a tiny bit of research on where/how to get proper taxis at the airport, I could probably handle doing that solo.
booking.com? OK, there's stuff available. Annoyingly I can't see a way to filter out dorms, but just eyeballing the list there's e.g. a single room at £45 inc taxes for 3 nights (with free cancellation - several of these do have that though - until the night before) in Alajuela a couple of miles from the airport. Again no airport transfer but subject to doing a little bit of research I am probably capable of arranging a taxi over that kind of distance without too much trouble. Uber claims to be available FWIW, although I don't really want to rely on having a working SIM at the airport.
Quick rather inconclusive poke around on the web suggests there are official orange taxis with a yellow triangle on the side at the airport, which have proper licences and will use the meter. That web site says Uber cars can't get near the airport and you have to get them down the street, which may or may not be up to date.
Incidentally CR:TCG did have an "etiquette" guide which actually wasn't too smugly, err, "politically correct" for want of a better word. And it said you should be almost comically gentle with car doors when shutting them.
In the rest of the country outside the airport taxis are red instead of orange, still with a yellow triangle on the door.
mytanfeet.com (!?) apparently written by a Costa Rican says by law all official taxis must use the meter and the local name for it is "MARIA". This site also makes the point that (as I had read about in TCG) as there aren't really any addresses in CR (!, but people keep saying it so presumably it is true) you can't just give the taxi driver an address. But maybe they know hotels, and I would hope the hotel websites will give a suitably local-intelligible address substitute.
I don't much like the way mtf.com says you absolutely can't wing it with booking things last minute during high season. Hmm. I don't fucking want to be booking all my individual stays now. I guess I will if nothing else have to keep an eye on sites like hostelworld even once I actually have booked my initial accommodation so I can see how much availability is changing day-by-day.
I would have liked to see something a little more concretely reassuring but this does suggest that I probably can get a taxi from the airport to Alajuela without it being too stressful.
mtf.com does also say something about how Costa Rica can be as expensive as North America, it's not cheap. This is also a bit worrying. However, I suspect/hope this and the advice about booking in advance is perhaps aimed at more upscale travel. I find it hard to believe I could get a single room for £16/night in the US, even in rural areas, for example.
booking.com keeps saying I'm eligible for a "genius" discount if I log in, and I do have an account, so it's possible the prices would be 5-10% lower than I've been seeing, I don't know yet.
I think I am going to sleep on this but the basic idea of booking a few nights in Alajuela now, keeping an eye on availability so I can see how much I need to try to plan ahead (but I really can't see myself booking a string of short stays before I leave and just "hoping" that doesn't get annoying and/or doesn't fit badly with bus schedules/routes) with other bookings and doing the airport transfer in a simple local taxi does sound like a plan. I can then probably use Alajuela as a base for some local-ish stuff (perhaps extending my initial stay to do that) and/or move on from there with some fairly short bus hops to places like Grecia or whatever.
Oh, I just spotted the bit of text I half remembered but couldn't see in TCG - Jan-March are the best months to visit the South Pacific with its longer rainy season. But that's kind of what the other bit of text I did quote says, and given I return early in April anyway I don't think this is really a huge concern.
30th Dec 0043 Oh, and the "etiquette" thing about CR waiters not wanting to disturb you and gringo customers not wanting to ask the waiter for the bill sounds familiar from e.g. Guatemala. Also to a lesser extent (this is perhaps more of a problem with me being a bit shy/diffident, though maybe not) the related thing about "poor" service (by NA standards, at least) where you need to attract the waiter's attention if you want something because they will leave you alone otherwise.
1601 Insect repellent spray and new backpack arrived today. Not had a really good play with the new backpack but it seems OK. (Deuter Guide Lite 30, for the record.)
2200 Done a very small amount of additional web searching about Alajuela and have slept on it and I think the plan of getting accommodation there and getting a taxi from the airport is fairly decent. It may well be dark when I get out of the airport but it isn't going to be the middle of the night or anything either, which helps. Apparently Alajuela is the second largest city in the country, but I think it's still vastly smaller than San Juan and probably isn't too rough. I am thinking I will look into actually booking a ho(s)tel tomorrow, I don't really want to look today. I might book for four nights rather than the three I initially (without much thought) considered - the first night is immediately after the flight so there isn't really much of that day "left", and that gives me three full days to potter round/buy a local SIM/maybe do a day trip to somewhere/decide where I'm going next and or if I want to extend in Alajuela.
I *haven't* looked too closely into this, but some maps I've seen imply that San Juan has a metro system and that a (presumably outlying) station is probably a 5-10 minute taxi ride from Alajuela, so if I wanted to (although gut feeling is I wouldn't, right at the start of the trip) I could probably use taxi+metro to get into San Juan for a day or two out while actually staying in Alajuela.
I have to say that taking three or four days in Alajuela at the start of the trip feels a little bit "excessive" - my mind turns on those "visit a fair chunk of the country in 2 week" itineraries in the LP guidebook. But I *don't* have to rush, I don't like rushing, I am unlikely to be insanely bored during three "full" days in Alajuela and it will give me a chance to settle down, get over my initial "everyone is going to try to mug me because I'm a tourist" jitters and so forth. I'm still "being there" even if I'm not doing stereotypical tourist stuff and for all I know there will (for example) be a cool little bar just down the street from my ho(s)tel with live music on Saturday night or something like that.
Feeling surprisingly jittery about not having got the Alajuela accommodation booked. But I think it's broadly sensible to sleep on this and do it fresh tomorrow, and if the only thing standing between me and no availability or insane prices is a day or two at this point, I'm fucked, because I will not be able to be booking accommodation as I go a few days ahead. I suppose to some extent once the trip actually starts I can exhibit some flexibility (I was going to go to town X next but there's no cheap accommodation so I'll go to near-ish town Y instead) which isn't really an option here as I've identified Alajuela as singularly convenient for getting to from the airport, but still, I am booking ~3 weeks ahead at this point.
31st Dec 1523 I've booked accommodation of some sort (I think it's a vaguely family-run thing) fairly centrally in Alajuela for four nights from 19th January for ~£80 including taxes. No free breakfast, I could have had something for £60 for four nights with a (presumably basic) breakfast included, but it was a bit out of the town centre and I figured I'd probably be better more centrally. I have free cancellation on this until a day or two before I'm due to fly anyway. I checked booking.com, hostelworld and expedia and in this case booking.com were easily the best; hostelworld had a very limited selection and expedia seemed to have a limited selection too but hide it by offering me places in San Jose, not to mention that expedia's places were generally pricier. booking.com flip-flopped from telling me I have to pay in cash with CRC or USD on arrival during the booking (I got a guide price in GBP, which is fine) to saying USD in the booking confirmation. I guess they probably will take CRC anyway. I understand USD is fairly widely availble in CR but I also don't know to what extent it might actually be "preferred" and to what extent it's offered for the convenience of the many US tourists and expats and CRC is preferred and you risk getting stiffed on exchange rates if you're using USD. All else being equal I'd rather not be having to deal with two different types of currency (I'm thinking mainly of getting the coins mixed up; two different types of note may not be too problematic), but we'll see how it goes. I may - depending on how much I'm rushing at the airport and what's available - get both USD and CRC out at the airport and try to hold the USD in notes as an "emergency" reserve.
Still, while I do still feel a bit edgy that it's going to be impossible to book other stuff at short notice, it does feel vaguely good to have this booking arranged, and the free cancellation is a nice touch.
TBH it's super unclear if the accommodation has a private bathroom and/or a private kitchen and/or non-24h reception, but none of the half-decently priced options seemed very clear on this and I can live with any of the variants.
Just noticed booking.com has a probably-ad for an airport taxi booking service which will (with a 10% discount!) see me in a people carrier one-way from £31.23. I understand an actual airport taxi will be more like £10 tops (which still feels a bit excessive for a five minute trip, but there's always a premium at airports) and gut feeling is that having deliberately picked accommodation near the airport I am not willing to pay an extra £20 for a very small extra peace of mind element to this.
1646 Quick web search finds possibly-unauthoritative web site saying that USD is widely accepted but it is a bit touristy, bills larger than USD20 may not be accepted and you will typically get your change in CRC. So although I could see potential exchange rate fuckery both ways (e.g. a tour is priced *only* in USD, but I want to pay in CRC and they apply a crappy exchange rate from USD to CRC in the hope I won't notice), it is probably OK to mainly use CRC.
I have had some automated-ish e-mails from the accommodation booking, it all looks very self-check-in-y and "the neighbour will take your money if you arrive at certain times" but it's probably fine, and there is a CR-style "directions for taxi driver" given (I asked for this, but maybe they always include it as these mails look automated).
3rd Jan 0117 Quick look on Lonely Planet website suggests the lack of any ebook price for the "Costa Rica" guide book means it doesn't exist. However, their "Central America travel guide" has a chapter on Costa Rica which I could buy for £2.99 as a PDF. This isn't too excessive, and it would be nice to have something up-to-date I can keep on my phone (i.e. zero mass) for reference. What's annoying is I'd vaguely like to see the "Plan your trip" and "Understand Central America and Survival Guide" chapters, but I don't really consider those worth £2.99 each. It would be nice if these were available for 50p each or something, but what do I know?
I feel intermittently a bit jittery about the upcoming trip. Hardly suprising. It also feels like I'm not "prepared", but the reality is that although I do want to buy more stuff (e.g. clothes, a few miscellaneous supplies), I don't absolutely need to - the trip won't be ruined if I don't. I don't think buying these things is entirely gratuitous, they're not 100% "want" and 0% "need", but they're probably more 50-50 on that spectrum.
I *may* actually have an outdated copy of the ancestor of that LP CA guide book on paper in my flat, I'm not sure. (I may be thinking of "*South America* on a shoestring.) archive.org also has the 2013 edition of the ancestor ("CA on a shoestring") and TBH since those "would like to read" chapters are probably not that variable across time nor really that desirable (I imagine it's mostly political crap or stuff I can and probably already have found in other random guide books/on the web) I may just content myself with reading the old versions of those on archive.org and just buy the one chapter. It's not as if I regard LP as having some uniquely insightful perspective on things; what I'm really paying for is an up-to-date-ish reference which I can access without needing internet access and to provide a reasonably trustworthy opinion on things like the safety of region X and town Y, without drowning in a sea of conflicting and unknown-trustworthiness opinions found via random web searches. (I do also wonder just how up to date the LP guide is; it could easily be a year or two old. But still, that's not terrible.)
0203 On a random note, I just checked the hand luggage rules and disposable razors are allowed in hand luggage. Small scissors (blades under 6cm) are as well, so I *could* take some nail scissors, but since I can't rule out the possibility of taking other flights with different rules I'll probably just make do with nail clippers. Nail scissors aren't tremendously expensive but being forced to chuck a pair out at security would grate more than a disposable razor I've already had a use or two out of.
Tweezers are allowed, having been browsing onebag.com intermittently to refresh my memory I have toyed (not for the first time) with getting some (mainly for insect bites, albeit this hasn't been a big concern in practice so far), but a decent-ish pair seems to be about £10 and it feels like the sort of item I might be forced to toss at security somewhere (perhaps even in the UK, if some random security inspector decides they don't like my face or whatever, despite what the rules nominally say).
0248 If I didn't already say, I don't have any specific goal to take Spanish classes on this trip. If I find somewhere I like for whatever reason (it just feels nice, it's a good base for lots of surrounding area activities, whatever) I may well spend several weeks there. Signing up for "full time" Spanish study may or may not come into this (e.g. I like place X and the fact I could do Spanish lessons there makes staying feel more "useful"). I do intend (subject to availability) to go to language exchanges where available and not ridiculously inconvenient, because it's social and it's a good way to practice. But formal classes will depend on how things go. If Costa Rica is not particularly cheap, it would probably end up being group classes as in Colombia, and (perhaps I'm over-sensitive) I'd probably rather not do that if it's just going to mean lots of political shit in the class discussions and maybe even with other students - one "plus" about group classes would be the social aspect of meeting people, but if I feel politically awkward that's not going to happen.
0359 Not actually checked them out, but for the record, onebag.com has (on its links page, natch) some accommodation sites listed which I don't think I've used personally and which may be worth checking out.
0404 Flicking around on https://web.archive.org/web/20110706181617/http://www.ease.com/~randyj/rjlife5.htm (as linked from onebag.com), I'm intrigued and vaguely reassured to see the author recommending taking days off when you just do a few chores, read and relax during a trip. Admittedly I'm probably lazier than that, as I'm typically only doing half days of "tourism" thanks to getting up so late a lot of the time, but still.
Skimming a bit more of that site - though I really need to go to bed, and I actually clicked on the link to it from onebag.com in the hope of advice re street touts etc (have sort of found something) - there's a bit of an off-putting smug "real traveller" vibe, the sort of thing which I tend to perceive in a distilled kind of way in guidebooks, especially those aimed at a younger crowd. Meh. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. (Also, to be honest, while I guess I shouldn't absolutely write myself off, part of what annoys me here is that the tone is all "yeah, experiences and meeting people and belonging and shit" and *I can't do that*. Well, obviously "experiences" to some extent, everyone experiences stuff all the time and I can pay for a tour or whatever just like anyone else, but not the 'authentic' stereotypical traveller experiences.)
OK, https://web.archive.org/web/20110706182436/http://www.ease.com/~randyj/secure4.htm#touts does look useful wrt touts. I might as well point out that while any advice here is welcome, what really concerns me are unsolicited personal contacts that are perhaps a precursor to an attempted mugging or something similar - it is annoying to be constantly turning down people trying to sell you sunglasses or water, but (as I think I've said before) these guys have to make a living somehow, they're not doing anything wrong and as long as they take no for an answer they're not really a big problem. It's the difference between the hundreds of random itinerant vendors in the walled city in Cartagena vs that fucking big guy trying to do some sort of (IIRC - not checked old blog entries, but sure I wrote about this) bead selling scam which felt like it had vague overtones of possible violence down the slightly quieter back streets of the walled city.
Hmm, reading that secure4.htm page. It's interesting and feels useful-ish, but it doesn't seem to address mugging type issues; I don't want to be pickpocketed, but although it's worth being reminded, I kind of already follow the page's advice that (except when I'm in transit and have everything with me) the realistic worst case of being pickpocketed is nuisance, not disaster. The reminder to "Learn to be rude!" is also appreciated; IIRC last time I looked for advice on this (probably while I was in Cartagena) I was coming across endless "look at it from their perspective" smug-arse vaguely politically correct advice on stackexchange and similar. Thinking about it now, Cialdini's "Influence" probably makes a similar point - if someone is actively trying to manipulate you by relying on social conventions about rudeness/reciprocation, you should feel exempt from respecting those rules because they're trying to cheat.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110706181352/http://www.ease.com/~randyj/secure1.htm#xstoc seems interesting and kind of reassuring. I also kind of know a lot of this stuff, both from experience (I may not be a "real traveller" etc etc, but I have spent a moderate amount of time abroad and very little seriously bad stuff, especially in the way of crime, has happened so far touch wood etc etc) and from general reading, but I know I worry about this sort of stuff far more than I need to.
I'm just waffling, but although violence is actually the thing I worry about most, getting robbed/mugged when I'm carrying everything with me in transit is also a major concern.
This site makes the same observation as one of Anders Ansar's reports that (with his super light travel style; far too extreme for me, I think) when you're walking around with no luggage, you look like a much less tempting target - it's less obvious you're a tourist, and more to the point it's much less likely you have lots of nice stuff worth stealing on you. I might vaguely hope my relatively small bag offers me some advantages here.
This site (I'll call it F33W - Footloose and Fancy-Free in the Third World) also advises taking your valuables like your passport with you in a money belt when you go out except in very remote areas with bandits or whatever, because the chances of anyone robbing you at a level that will take these "hidden" valuables is way less than the risk of someone stealing them from your hotel room. I actually can't remember what I "normally" do. I probably (but I haven't tried to find old blog entries about this) generally leave them in the hotel room/dorm locker unless I feel it's particularly unsafe. I'm not necessarily revising this plan and to some extent there's an element of playing it by ear, but I can't help feeling F33W's argument has some validity.
The advice that travelling on the cheap is good protection from theft, because you're not showing off your wealth, is probably something I've thought of before myself, but it is vaguely reassuring too.
1426 Not sure if it's a coincidence from reading all that (albeit reassuring-ish) safety/security stuff on F33W last night but I woke up with a minor case of the heebie-jeebies the morning. Don't feel too bad now. Reading some more of F33W (as I'm pretty sure there's a fair amount of gold in there, albeit buried in annoyingly self-confident smugness about being "on the Road" and "real travellers" and so forth). Will intermittently waffle about it here. Interesting he says on a new trip even he has to start out fresh and it takes several weeks to get rid of feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. And that he says you should aim to arrive at your first destination in the daytime rather than the middle of the night, check into a comfortable hotel even if it's more expensive than you will usually pay, staying in arrival point for several days or even a week is stuff I've already thought about for myself (unless I read it on here years ago and forgot). Of course, he also says to find the local travelers' hangouts and join this community, which is obviously not something I'm going to do, but as I say, the fact he's writing a lot of stuff which I *do* agree with and maybe even concluded on my own (perhaps feeling a little bit guilty/lazy/pathetic for concluding it) is both reassuring and suggests there's lots of good stuff I could learn or re-learn from this site. I have probably skimmed it in the past but I'm realising it's not absolutely enormous and I am planning on trying to read the whole thing.
Note that in some countries his observation "there really are local buses and local hotels" but "you'd feel like a fool using them since 'no one' else does" strikes a bit of a chord. Not that they *weren't* exactly local buses, but when I took some of the tourist shuttle buses in Guatemala it felt a bit like "taking the easy option" rather than using the cheaper ex-US-schoolbus type buses, but it also felt like the "normal" thing to do. Although I did use some of the EUS buses, and as I say it's not as if all or even most of the people on the shuttle buses were other tourists.
2030 Continuing to intermittently read F33W, finding it by turns fascinating and irritating. It's actually a lot bigger than I realised, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing - I quite like a long read if it's mostly entertaining. One thing it is making me think is that it definitely makes more sense to visit San Juan late in the trip rather than early, not just for the reason that that way if I *do* get mugged or something it won't spoil the rest of the trip, but also because after a few weeks in the country I will be feeling that bit more confident (I remember that happening in Guatemala, for example), my Spanish will have warmed up a bit (and I'll have had chance to get use to any local accent or quirks) and as a result the chances of things going south will be reduced.
2105 It's not a criticism as such - the site has been taken down and has to be read via archive.org, and onebag.com linked to it pointing this out - but F33W is in some ways an intriguing period piece - e.g. ATMs really are almost everywhere now. And there are some things that might be outdated or might just be something I've somehow managed to miss out on and I'm really not sure which - e.g. the claim that there will be any number of occasions when you need to produce a flashlight, cup and spoon (not necessarily simultaneously!). I agree a flashlight is useful, but I don't think I've ever needed a cup or spoon or thought "well, it would be nice if I had one". (I *have* wished I had a tin opener and had to buy one.) Reading further, this is apparently for cases of communal cookery (presumably out in the middle of nowhere), which sounds vaguely plausible but feels a bit "extreme".
I keep seeing phrases in F33W which I remember from onebag.com. I wonder which came first?
2252 Feeling a bit guilty for spending time reading F33W instead of doing something more productive, but hey, at least it's got me thinking about the trip.
I am reminded (but it's not entirely novel) about the possibility of not taking a separate camera and making do with just my smartphone(s) or "no camera", depending how you want to view it. My current compact camera is a bit beaten up (the lens cover occasionally jams, IIRC) but the last time I checked it does work, and it was a decent-ish (not amazing) one when new etc, and it probably takes better photos than my non-expensive smartphones. I do also sort of feel a bit "safer" whipping the camera out to take a quick photo; I'd much rather someone stole the camera than my smartphone, not so much as a matter of cost (back home, a new camera would probably be £80+, whereas I buy smartphones secondhand and e.g. my G5 cost me under £40) as on difficulty of replacement - a smartphone isn't *just* hardware, there's the data on it, there's the config for the various apps, etc. The K1's camera isn't bad in its way, and the G5's camera works fairly well but it doesn't always seem to auto-focus nicely, although if I started using it seriously and regularly I might get into a way of using it that skirts these quirks - as it is I use it infrequently and just end up taking half a dozen photos and hoping, but I could in theory experiment with it.
It would be nice if my compact camera was USB chargeable, but as it is I have to take a separate battery charger. Gut feeling is that I will probably take it with me, but maybe try to experiment a bit with taking photos on phone too. I'm reluctant (even if I could find one; I guess compact cameras are much more niche than they used to be) to spend money on a new camera which would be USB chargeable when I'm already toying with ditching the separate camera anyway.
I suppose in principle I could (probably not for this trip, I'm just speculating) take an *extra* (third) smartphone with me to serve primarily as a compact camera replacement; it would then be USB chargeable and would of course function as a spare smartphone if I lost one of my others. That camera replacement smartphone could be something I wouldn't normally pick, as what I'd mainly care about was the balance of price and camera quality.
There is also the perennial "do I focus too much on trying to take 'nice' photos instead of really observing for myself?" dilemma.
2331 F33W does talk about renting sleeping bags if necessary, so presumably they are not "too personal" for this to be ridiculous. I don't know that I would want or need to do this, but it does suggest that that hike up the high mountain might be an option if I wanted to.
2343 "Two Years Behind the Rear Axle" as a suggested title for a travel book (from F33W, of course) made me smile. I actually had no idea the front of the bus was supposed to be more comfortable. Maybe this is more of an issue with crappy buses than well-maintained coaches.
Also interesting to see scopolamine is mentioned in F33W as used in motion sickness patches! I haven't checked to see if this is still true. If so, presumably the dose makes a huge difference.
4th Jan 0059 FWIW the (perhaps rather dated, at least in most countries) F33W mention of countries where you have to declare foreign currency on entry and exit and it's compared with official receipts when you changed that money at official banks to check you didn't use the black market reminds me of the similar thing with erosion+food in/amount excreted receipts in HHGTTG. I obviously "sort of" got this joke beforehand, but I do wonder if it was intended in part as a reference/parody of this real-world thing, which I wouldn't have noticed before (at least not when I first read the books, and perhaps not until just now).
0122 I am not big on haggling in general, nor do I shop for very much stuff, but F33W is intersting on this. The "tactic" of saying "I am not buying today, but when I come back tomorrow/next week/just before I fly home, I may buy" and perhaps getting them to write down a price on a business card or similar feels worth remembering, if only for situations like those in India where I was forced into letting someone show me loads and loads of goods I'm not interested in then guilt-tripped into buying *something* because they invested so much time in me (even though I didn't initiate the process).
0131 F33W observation - for all that it's rather old and I suspect things are easier now - that simple things like buying a train ticket or doing laundry can take most of a day is rather heartening, because this feels true and it always makes me wonder if I'm just being ridiculously inefficient or lazy (e.g. comparing myself to someone on one of the "see half the country in two weeks" suggested itineraries in the guide book). I probably am a bit inefficient and/or lazy, but maybe not quite as much as I sometimes suspect.
This is perhaps a bit of a recurring theme. In among the little bits that make me feel jealous or in some way inadequate, a lot of F33W seems to be expressing stuff I already know/agree with/discovered for myself but presenting it with confidence as the voice of experience/reason, whereas I was probably more inclined to regard it as symptoms of my own flaws (laziness/lack of confidence/assertiveness/planning/etc).
It really must have been both exhilarating and a bit scary/lonely to have travelled in an era without cheap universal e-mail, where you'd give your friends and family a list of planned poste restante boxes to write back to you etc.
0245 Finished F33W (at least whichever version, probably the latest, was linked from onebag.com). Not read the travel anecdotes but I may do at some point. Overall an impressive and useful piece of work, and I've probably been a little unfair at some of the perceived smugness. I still feel the author massively overstates the ease of meeting people, particularly other travellers, but still. I liked it enough that I've downloaded the (perhaps even older?) all-in-one Word document version and printed it to a PDF to take with me for reference.
Not a novel observation but reading F33W sort of reminds me that I have a tendency to assume locals just hate me automatically because I'm a tourist, which is probably overly negative. Growing up in a UK seaside town I know a lot of the locals here don't like tourists, but at least nowadays I personally don't really despise them. And while the locals abroad may or may not exactly love me automatically either, if I'm not rude without being provoked, make an effort with the language (a relatively strong point for me in Spanish-speaking countries), etc, there's no real reason to assume I'm actively disliked by everyone. Some, sure, that's inevitable, for good or bad reasons.
1915 I keep writing San Juan when I mean the capital of Costa Rica, which is San José. Not going to correct the errors above in the interest of "honesty", but making a note here. A very quick web search suggests there is a San Juan in Costa Rica.
2209 Jeez. Just noticed the Lonely Planet Central America travel guide which I was thinking about buying the Costa Rica chapter of for £2.99 is 10th Edition Jul 2019 - next edition due Nov 2024. I'm really not sure it's worth it, I'm sure half the businesses mentioned will have been destroyed during the pandemic, ditto for the bus routes etc. Their "Costa Rica" guide is 14th Edition Nov 2021 and explicitly says all businesses have been re-checked wrt pandemic effects, but it simply isn't available as an ebook.
Rough Guides have five different guide books covering Costa Rica available as ebooks. "Rough Guide to Costa Rica" is £13.99 as epub and has a 15/09/2022 publication date, although there's no obvious "yes, we checked everything" selling point. "Insight Guides Costa Rica" £12.99 published 31/07/2019 - definitely not. Also it says "Insight Guide" is a pictorial travel guide in magazine style; this doesn't sound like the sort of thing I want anyway. "Insight Guide Explore Costa Rica" £6.99 epub, published 30/11/2018 - definitely not, also why the hell are there *two* different Insight Guides for the same country? "Insight Guides Central America" £12.99 epub published 30/11/2017 - FFS! Not even checking "Insight Guide Pocket Caribbean Ports of Call" (£4.99).
So *maybe* - I could probably check reviews of it elsewhere - the Rough Guide is worth having, although £13.99 isn't nothing. If I *really* used the guide book heavily it would be fine, but it tends to be more something I skim or just dig the odd fact out of (like the location of the ATM at Guatemala City airport). Also, annoyingly (ebook feels like it ought to be cheaper) amazon.co.uk are selling the 2022 edition as a physical paperback for £13.49. Ah, and the Kindle edition for £8.99. I'd *rather* have an epub than a Kindle edition, but still, the saving is there. Anyway, the amazon.co.uk page says it has ben "fully updated post-COVID-19"; you'd think Rough Guides might actually say that themselves on their own site...
FWIW Amazon actually offer a free ebook with every purchase of a printed book; it may be (not sure, but I did see something a bit like this on a dated page in a websearch) RG themselves do this too. So in principle I could pay £13.49 for the paperback and get the ebook as a bonus, rather than pay £13.99 just for the ebook. OTOH, the reality is I don't *want* a paperback - I have loads of books already, these go out of date and it's not as if I have months left before the trip when having a "free" paperback copy around might encourage me to browse it for a few minutes here and there.
5th Jan 0018 Intermittently reading some of Anders Ansar's travel light reports I purchased back in 2010-ish. Mostly a bit extreme for me. However, the observation that you can use a TV in your room to play music via bluetooth is both obvious in hindsight and interesting - I had toyed with buying and taking a short 3.5mm stereo plug-to-plug lead, since once or twice I've had accommodation with a small hifi in and it would have been nice to be able to listen to my phone through it. But these days any accommodation nice enough to have such a thing is likely to have a reasonably modern TV and there's I think a fair chance I could use it as a glorified bluetooth speaker. It's also not as if I've often had this option to use a stereo, so I think for now I definitely won't buy and take the 3.5mm lead. (Plus if I did, no doubt I'd find myself constantly in accommodation with stereo systems that have phono aux inputs, just to spite me. :-) )
Feeling a bit jittery re trip but also sort of looking forward to it. In a strange way while I dread the flight date creeping up on me a bit like a dental appointment, once it arrives that's sort of "it", I just have to make the best of it and don't have to worry about preparations and shopping and so forth. I'm currently visiting parents and it will be both good and bad to get back to London (which I plan to do about a week before the trip, so I'm not overly rushed). In particular I haven't been able to do a test pack of my new backpack yet, since the bulk of my travel gear is in London. I'm sure it will be fine - it isn't that different in nominal capacity from the Laser 35 which broke - but still.
0259 I did do a brief web search re compact cameras the other day, but although I wouldn't say it's a certainty, it does seem increasingly the case that the smartphone has killed the market for the sort of cheap (£100-ish new) compact camera I currently have. There are maybe a few available, but most of them are no-name brands and they may or may not be any good at all, and they're not cheap enough that I fancy buying one on the offchance. (Maybe they're not quite no-name enough that there could be honest reviews.) The compact cameras that are made by recognisable brands are super expensive, I guess because only hardcore photographers buy them now, although one site did suggest secondhand might help (but I suspect they'd still be more than I'd want to pay, especially for something that could fairly easily be lost, broken or stolen).
I do find myself wondering if using my existing compact camera is going to give off a vibe of "poor tourist, doesn't even have a smartphone, not worth mugging" or "rich tourist, that must be one of those £500 compact cameras they make nowadays, probably a solid gold iPhone Pro Max Ultra 23 in his pocket too, jackpot!".
I'm not saying it's a novel thought even for me, and I probably won't stick to it religiously anyway, but it probably bears repeating that some photos really don't need to be taken. Any well known and probably even merely "well known enough to get a mention in a guide book" landmark is going to have dozens, hundreds or thousands of photos online, almost certainly available "free" (given I only want to look at them myself). Of course, taking my own picture is nice, because it makes it "personal" even if it's not up to pro quality, and sometimes it's nice to have these more scenic pictures printed up and stick them on the wall for a bit of decoration. But maybe there's no need to go nuts taking loads of photos of these "standard" things if it's a hassle or reduces "immersion"; one or two is enough to remind me "oh yeah, I went there on date X". The cooler (from a personal POV) photos are the ones of ordinary-ish stuff that just happens to catch your eye as unusual or interesting, which might well be similar to photos hundreds of other people have taken, but which you'd never be able to find and which wouldn't have the same "I actually saw this, isn't it neat how the sun is reflecting off that boat window (or whatever)" feeling if they weren't yours.
1357 FWIW I got (the 2018 edition, sadly) "Lonely Planet Costa Rica" guide in my electronic library app; I had put a hold on it just on the offchance it was useful but it said 6 weeks estimate IIRC. Anyway. I haven't looked at it yet and given it's 2018 I may not take it too seriously; normally a few years old travel guide would be OK-ish, but with The Event between then and now all bets are off. It did occur to me that since there is an electronic library version of 2018 edition, there might actually be an ebook of the 2021-or-whatever edition even if LP's own website doesn't want to sell it, but I just had a look on Amazon and they're not offering a Kindle version of this edition, just the paperback.
Gut feeling is I will probably buy one of the electronic versions of the 2022 Rough Guide (their own overpriced epub one or the Amazon Kindle edition) but I'm not rushing into it.
1616 Bought myself some (rather overpriced) solid stick deodorant. I've been looking for solid stick sunblock (or whatever the hell it's called - sunscreen? sun lotion? sun cream? searching for it always seems harder than necessary as a result of this ambiguity) but can't find any; I'll just have to take creamy stuff as usual. This isn't a huge deal, I'm trying to reduce liquids for both weight and volume in the carry on liquids bag reasons, but I have one or maybe two small 50ml sunblock bottles I can refill which aren't too problematic in the bag, and not having to put the deodorant in there will help with space. I may have taken solid stick deodorant before, I can't remember.
I had a look in Sports Direct to see if they had their long-sleeved "running" T-shirt in blue (which they do on their web site), but I couldn't even see the small/medium black one of these I spotted in the shop the other day. I might try to find one of these in the London shops when I'm back there. I did see some thinnish synthetic zipped "jackets" which were vaguely interesting-looking, but I already have the fleece+associated shell-ish waterproof-ish jacket and I don't really want to be carrying even more stuff or buying things on a whim, but maybe worth bearing in mind for a future trip. (Maybe "windbreaker" is the right term for these lightweight thinnish jacket things, I'm not sure. I think those ones in Sports Direct might have been described as running something-or-others, but not sure.)
Was having a quick play/closer examination (for manufacturing defects I might not have noticed before) with new backpack earlier. I am not sure it has any means of attaching a water bottle on the outside. Not a huge problem if it doesn't, but given it's relatively small this is something I would sort of like to do if I'm in transit, since putting the bottle inside the bag takes up space and carrying it in hand is slightly annoying, although if it's not a big bottle not too big a deal. For all I know there may be some hidden "feature" I haven't observed for this anyway.
6th Jan Starting to read "The world awaits" by Paul Otteson on archive.org, another onebag.com recommendation (I've semi-neglected its book recommendations before, despite having taken the site as almost a personal travel bible, probably in part because archive.org's free book lending service wasn't as good or simply wasn't known to me in the past). I am quite liking the tone so far, it actually seems to describe the sort of experience I'd want but don't always quite get, and although (probably something that comes from my perceptions as much as any reality) there's still a very slight "smugness" about (paraphrasing unfairly) how great and sociable and generally successful in all travel areas the author is, I have fairly high hopes this is going to be a decent, interesting and useful read. (And of course, especially for something more "philosophical" than "information about location X" like this - it's not a guide book to country X or region Y - would I really want to read it if the author *wasn't* confident and had something useful to impart? I suppose that might be kind of interesting, but not necessarily useful.)
What I'm already finding interesting (perhaps not novel, I'm not sure) in the first few pages is a kind of "permission" to say "yes, I do want to do challenging and even risky things". I very much *do* value safety, but at the same time it sometimes feels as thought it's "wrong" to seek out adventurous or apparently adventurous things, as though it would be "posing" or something. For whatever reason, something in the guide book about a not-very-touristy train which runs once a week somewhere in the region of the Chile-Bolivia border springs to mind - that sounded really cool, but I kind of talked myself out of it based on a mixture of "I don't have a sleeping bag, so I might freeze to death or at least lose body parts" and "isn't it a bit wanky to want to do something like that just because it sounds kind of adventurous?".
0254 TWA observation about the "home base approach" to travelling is interesting. As with a lot of this stuff, it's kind of obvious but only when pointed out. The idea that you park yourself in one place *and sleep there most nights* for something like a week or more while taking trips out to nearby stuff during the day, some of them perhaps fairly far-reaching, somehow feels quite novel. I think I have a tendency - one I stumbled into, rather than deliberately choosing - to try to relocate myself into accommodation in any place more than an hour or two away from my current accommodation if I want to see/do stuff in that place. In some ways this "move accommodation a lot" option seems quite good, but it does also add more of the hassles of physically relocating more often, and there's probably a sense of continuity to be had from staying at the same presumably nice-ish and/or cheap-ish "base camp" for a while. F33W touched on the hassles caused by physically relocating too much when it advocated making long-ish stays in the same places; this now feels like a similar point to TWA's, just stated differently. I'm constantly moaning about how I feel extra-vulnerable in transit, because if I do get robbed or just lose my bag somehow, practically everything is gone, whereas once I am actually checked into some accommodation I have at least divided my belongings between those on me and those back in my room. Avoiding this feeling might well be a good trade-off for taking some longer day journeys to nearby places, not to mention that it might actually be more satisfying to make those day journeys in their own right. (For example, I might feel happier taking a third class bus or whatever you call it if I'm just carrying a daypack with maybe a change of underwear and a toothbrush in case I get stranded before I can get home, whereas if I'm lugging all my worldly possessions I might feel that's a bit risky and/or uncouth - my bag's not huge, but it's still probably big enough to piss people off if it's really crowded.)
1552 TWA is a bit flowery in its prose at times, and of course there's the obligatory screed about colonialism and "Eurocentric greed"; it's not so much that I think colonialism is/was a good thing, as much as this speaks to me of a certain need to show active disapproval of it. Meh. As always, try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. [Thinking about this a bit more, it's maybe the use of words like "Eurocentric". Would colonialism be hunky-dory if non-Eurocentric greed is the motivating factor? No? Well then, does "Eurocentric" mean anything except to adopt the appropriate buzzwords for showing your tribal membership?]
1805 No change in Costa Rica travel advice on FCDO site. Still get a bit of a heart-in-mouth feeling when I load the page, dreading some new coronavirus rules.
2252 Just submitted "advance passenger information" on BA website.
7th Jan 0147 Just checked FCDO, heart in mouth at seeing an update. Fortunately it doesn't affect me, although I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me nervy - new coronavirus restrictions on travellers from China and some nearby countries.
8th Jan 1510 For no particular reason haven't read any more of TWA or any other travel books recently. I am feeling intermittently vaguely jittery about the trip. This morning I also woke up no so much feeling jittery but feeling "if I spend four nights in Alajuela, and then four nights in some random place nearby, and so on, I am not going to see/do *anything* 'important' on the trip". I don't think that's necessarily accurate - the time doesn't quite just go in that way, and if I am enjoying it then it's fine if it does, but still, the thought was there. This obviously touches on stuff I've read in F33W and TWA.
Just checked FCDO CR page, no updates.
1533 Doing a quick accommodation search for the dates I'm already booked for in Alajuela, to see how prices/availability have changed. OK, the place I'm actually booked into is still available, the notional price is 28% higher than I'm paying, but I am not logged in to booking.com right now and there would probably be a 15% discount, which would mean the price currently shown is about 10% higher than I booked for (and I may have got some special promotional discount on the site as a whole). There's obviously still 11 days to go, so this is earlier than I would like to be making reservations ahead during the trip, but it's still vaguely encouraging that the whole country isn't rapidly selling out.
1556 I'm sure it's just a kind of pedantry on my part, but I find it vaguely amusing TWA's steps for obtaining a passport are:
1. Be or become a citizen of the U.S.
2. Obtain your birth certificate
3. Get some passport photos taken
4. Find and go to the right office
2-4 are actual actions you might reasonably take. 1 is more like a prerequisite for this particular checklist than a step, and having it presented as a step just has a comic effect. Nothing wrong with a book being written for a US audience, but the way this is expressed, it's as if this is general advice and anyone anywhere in the world wishing to obtain a passport should first become a citzen of the US as a necessary prerequisite.
1911 Intermittently reading TWA. It does remind me that I should probably be a bit bolder about flagging down buses outside "official" stops. I'm not usually (and don't really intend to be) "in the middle of nowhere" needing a bus, but the example that springs to mind is being in Puerto Iguazu trogging half an hour plus into town just to get on a bus to the falls at the bus station in town, even though my accommodation was just off the road all those buses go along to get to the falls. I should have tried flagging down a bus on the street.
2228 More TWA. Feeling a bit jittery TBH. Reading the (not specifically scary or novel) stuff about getting sick in TWA raises that obvious spectre. The reality of course is that mostly speaking, anything *really* bad that could happen abroad could happen at home anyway - it's really crappy, but it's not specific to travel. And while a bout with some form of vomiting or diarrhea for a few days is hardly fun, I've been through it before and it isn't the end of the world.
TWA continues to be subtly smug but I'm probably just over-sensitive.
2244 Finished TWA. I skimmed some of the more philosophical stuff towards the end. The guy clearly has some experience and useful things to say. On the other hand - and bear in mind I'm perhaps more jaded from today's increasingly fucked up social media black and white guilt tripping etc than I would have been had I read this a few years ago, or in 1996 - there's just enough of the smugly self-righteous "politically correct" (*not* the right phrase, but it will do) attitude on display that I find myself coming to his moral arguments with a raised guard and a "yeah, yeah, what a surprise *you* feel this way" attitude of my own, which is probably a bit unfair, as there does seem to be some genuine subtlety in what he's saying. Meh. Doesn't matter. There were certainly some useful thoughts and so forth in there, and even though it's neither novel nor surprising, it's fascinating to see this written in 1996 on the cusp of the internet taking off with all the stuff about poste restante and telegrams and so forth.
9th Jan 0017 Not novel, but I do need to remember (easier said than done) that really the single most important thing to do in terms of enjoying the trip is to avoid constantly feeling terrible because I "should" be:
- doing more stuff
- meeting more people
- "having more fun"
- making more of the opportunity
- not so damn lazy
- more confident
- better at speaking/understanding Spanish
- braver
- etc etc
I do need to push myself a little bit so I don't just huddle up in the centre of my comfort zone, but this kind of "musturbation" :-) is completely counter-productive.
And I'm sure there are going to be at least a few mornings when I wake up with that intense (but brief) sense of despair/homesickness/whatever, but that's not the end of the world, nor is it actually something that only happens when I'm abroad.
0048 Looking at LP CR on archive.org (2016 edition; I have IIRC 2018 on library app on phone, but it's much nicer to read on big screen and I doubt the basic geography has changed much) I am very much thinking my initial plan is a slow-ish wander NW - first stop Alajuela, then maybe Poás region which LP CR says for cloud forest hikes, heading along Cordillera de Tilarán [accents on first use only, probably, as is my general lazy policy] towards Volcán Arenal.
Looking at LP CR, Alajuela seems to be the obvious base for Poas (park as well as the volcano itself) but it's 1.5h by bus each way which could get old fast, yet it's not that obvious there's anywhere nearer that is going to be super convenient. I guess the best option is probably to putter along through some of the other towns in the region (e.g. Grecia) and see what they're like and maybe not get too fixated on this or any other specific park.
The thing to do with wrt Poas is probably (after a day or two in Alajuela to settle down a bit) to force myself to get up early and take the bus to Poas and back for a long-ish day out; I might get lucky and get there in time to see the view from the top before it gets cloudy, if not I can try to do a bit of freelance walking. 2016 LP CR says the bus back leaves at 2:30pm, which feels a bit early, although it may well be there are lots of other buses. Apparently (and this seems reasonable) it's best to go on a weekday, which is worth bearing in mind. That said, it probably wouldn't hurt to go on a weekend. At least that guide book makes out the offered tours to the volcano get there as late as the bus and therefore aren't really worth it, and since it's probably fairly easy it might also be that taking the bus on my own initiative would be a good starting point for building up my confidence.
0143 Re-reading early parts of Guatemala blog and while I think I did show a fair degree of self-awareness, it's also a bit disconcerting just how fucked up I was about personal safety and conflicting advice about taxis and so on. I'm not sure there's an easy answer to this but perhaps just remembering how that was and maybe also trying not to get too hung up on safety advice (*especially* when it's inconsistent) will help. I have to say that generally speaking my personal feeling is still that I'd *much* rather walk than get into a taxi if there's any suggestion at all a taxi could be iffy - I *might* get mugged while walking, but that feels like the worst realistic case, whereas getting into a taxi could potentially see me kidnapped or taken off somewhere and beaten in the course of being robbed. I don't say that's *likely*, but still. And of course with the taxi there's also the potential of a row (perhaps even escalating to violence) if the driver tries to insist on an outlandish fare, and/or the risk of getting shoved out of the car in the middle of the ride after an argument about pricing and not really knowing where you are.
0203 It is interesting to see I was worried about ice in drinks at least early in Guatemala. I had a vague mental impression that this wasn't in practice worth worrying about in most parts of Latin America these days, but it may be that I've made that up out of nothing. I suppose it's possible I will witness my attitude to this change over time, if I continue to read forwards through the old entries. It's by no means all bad but it does feel a bit depressing to see how kind of stressed out and on edge I was a lot of the time.
0216 Jeez, I do actually on the whole have fond memories of my Guatemala trip but it really doesn't look like I enjoyed myself much for the first couple of weeks as I read the blog. It does look like I kind of had some background "family" stuff going on given the odd mention of news from parents, which may not have helped, but I wasn't actively blaming that for how I felt at the time so who knows. To be fair, those 2-3 nights out in Antigua worked out fairly well by chance, the Pacaya day trip was decent, I did enjoy Cerro de la Cruz and it was sort of cool to meet my Spanish teacher, but there was also a lot of nerviness in Antigua, quite a bit of general feeling low and Panajachel in particular seems to have been a bit rough emotionally for no obvious reason. And I haven't read up to there yet, but heading into Xela I'm about to get seriously upset by the bloody Spanish teacher at the first school there. I clearly did enjoy myself at points during the first bit of the trip but there were undeniably a lot of shitty moments as well. It's not clear these were anyone's fault but my own, but still, I obviously didn't set out to be in a bad mood and yet one thing and another clearly weren't conducive to really feeling comfortable.
To repeat myself, I do think I get far too overly obsessed about personal safety; especially where advice is utterly inconsistent I perhaps need to try to be a bit more happy-go-lucky.
I also can't help feeling I was massively over-tipping all the time, but I'm never fucking sure what to do and there's usually a bevy of inconsistent advice, not helped by those fellow "rich country" writers who seem to feel you have a personal moral obligation to overpay enormously just because you can.
It isn't quite the same as this over-tipping type stuff, but IIRC both TWA and F33F both seemed to be quite firm on saying "no" to randoms demanding money off you (baksheesh etc) for nothing at all, despite their obviously relatively liberal leanings. They also didn't seem to feel there was necessarily anything "wrong" with objecting to paying the "tourist" price for things if you were actually able not to, as opposed to that attitude I would (imagine; this is probably unfair) see on something like the travel stackexchange where there's going to be a horde of people telling you shouldn't resent paying massively inflated prices because it's nothing to you and is a lot for them.
Although it's maybe motivated reasoning on my part, I can't help feeling there's rather a smug patronising element to a lot of this "you should pay more, because you're a rich first world person" shit. If someone e.g. charges me X for a meal and local tipping practice requires me to pay (say) 1.1X, why "should" I pay 1.2X or whatever out of some kind of vague guilt/pat-the-poor-little-third-world-guy-on-the-head-and-smile-patronisingly way? I have waffled about this before, I just came across something about it in the early Guatemala blog. Also I remember a Colombian woman telling me I had massively over-tipped at a cafe we had a coffee and croissant in late-ish at night (apart from maybe generally over-tipping, in this specific case I felt a bit guilty because it had been practically empty when we turned up and I had a probably correct feeling that they had only stayed open because we were there) in Medellin.
0307 Still reading Guatemala blog, although I half hate doing it. I didn't remember I felt so crappy with the first Spanish school so early on; I thought there was a little bit of a honeymoon period first.
Obviously there was all sorts of other stuff in the background (not necessarily anything specific, just general life/emotional context) when I did the Guatemala trip, I've probably changed a bit since then and there's no reason to think I'm going to fall into the same pattern of behaviour etc etc. It is probably a good thing to be re-reading this and remembering these day-by-day details that have got lost in the (probably broadly accurate) more positive but fuzzier recollections I have of that trip. And it's not as if the Guatemala trip is "special" or necessarily more relevant than others; it's just the one I happened to pick to re-read.
1840 Just checked FCDO, no updates.
2310 To kind of repeat stuff I said earlier, although it's easier said than done I think I need to try to remember/"accept" that I'm likely to feel a bit nervy/on edge for the first 1/2/3 weeks of the trip and not get worked up about it.
Wrt tipping I've subsequently read past some advice my second Guatemalan Spanish teacher gave me which did seem to imply I had been over-tipping rather heavily earlier in the trip.
10th Jan 2007 Just checked FCDO, no updates.
11th Jan 0058 Bit intermittently edgy about trip; probably doesn't help that I'm still visiting parents and so there's also the "saying goodbye to them soon" aspect. I had planned to go back to London today but a sudden discovery on Friday of some half-decent possible travel clothes via mail order (which may save some running around in London, or at least reduce the importance of that) and delays with the order turning up has caused me to postpone. This isn't exactly bad, but at the same time I kind of just want to get this "goodbye" over with.
I am obviously kind of looking forward to the trip, at the same time it's - and I think to some extent this is only natural - a bit stressful/worrying, especially during this "it's not too late to prepare, but time is getting short" stage. Once I'm on the plane I'm on the plane and that's that in terms of preparation. I can't, for example, do a test pack of my new bag, check everything fits and see what stuff I still need to buy until I'm back in London.
FCDO site still has no updates, not that I'd really expect any after checking only a few hours ago, but still. There's no denying the possibility of a sudden devastating rule change doesn't add to my level of comfort.
Have been slowly reading my own Guatemala blog, but it's very slightly depressing somehow. To just keep repeating myself - but maybe it will help it stick - I need to not put pressure on myself to be a certain way or do certain things, *especially* during the first couple of weeks when I am still finding my feet.
1431 No update on FCDO.
1640 No update on FCDO. There also don't seem to be any upcoming strikes announced yet that will affect my return to London or my trip to the airport; I'm not sure, but I have a vague idea there's supposed to be a certain amount of notice for strikes, so with a little bit of luck I may be in the clear in this aspect, although I'm not counting my chickens yet.
12th Jan 0009 Booked train to go back to London on Friday; the usual "saying goodbye" concerns, but at the same time as I said the other day, accidentally dragging out this goodbye isn't really helping.
Having a quick look on booking.com for my Alajuela dates to see how the prices and availability have changed. This is still not quite as short notice as I'd like to be booking during the trip itself, but it is getting into a similar kind of range. Anyway, if I haven't got confused the place with included breakfast which I toyed with but felt was maybe a smidge un-central for my initial stay is still available at £59 for 4 nights (single room) and there's another small double room (single bed!?) 0.5 miles from the centre for £86 for 4 nights. The place I'm actually staying is more expensive than when I booked it, but still, this is vaguely reassuring. I could also have a whole private apartment for £97 for 4 nights. These prices are also without being logged in (in part for pseudo-anonymity, in part as I don't want the fact I already have a booking for these nights to confuse matters), so there's maybe 10-15% "genius" discount off these prices. As I say, this is a very rough experiment but it is vaguely reassuring that short notice bookings don't automatically mean you're screwed. And of course in general I will have some flexibility in choosing to go to places where there's better prices or availability when I have no specific plans. FWIW absolute cheapest on booking.com is £50 (pre-discount) for 4 nights in a 10 bunk dorm, which obviously isn't super appealing but is something I would consider "intermittently" for the experience and to keep costs down.
I am sort of looking forward to the trip but there's a lot of "gah, running out of time to prepare" (even though there's very little I *must* prepare) and "saying goodbye to family" stuff at the moment and it's hardly unalloyed joy. FCDO has not updated, fingers crossed as always.
I'm just repeating myself but the suggestion (from F33W at least, which I am very slowly re-reading - I was in a bit of a hurry to consume it all last time, this time I am less eager but also reading perhaps with a bit more attention, maybe) to use somewhere comfortable as a base to visit nearby stuff rather than checking into 10 hotels in 10 nights is something I'm sort of interested to try. As I probably said, this kind of feels like hard work in some sense by involving longer round trips away from and back to base, but the flip side is that it would reduce stressful "moving with all my possessions" days, and some of the round trips might well be a bit of an experience in themselves and I may be able to relax into them a little more if I'm just carrying a daypack or whatever.
I do wonder if Costa Rica is perhaps going to be an "easy" destination to visit, given how well-developed its tourist infrastructure seems to be. I don't know if this is true or not. I also don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing; I don't want to try to set myself up as a "real traveller" etc etc, but I also don't want to do nothing but shuttle round on tourist buses between big ticket items listed in the guide book. I'm sure it will be fine, I'm just waffling.
Although the bulk of the clothes ordered on Saturday (not Friday, as I think I wrote) haven't turned up yet, some did turn up today and I've got two pretty decent lightweight loose-but-not-baggy long-sleeved T-shirts. I hope most of the rest of the clothes are going to turn up tomorrow (Thursday, technically "today"), which is kind of why I've finally booked the train for Friday, but since I now probably have ~4 long-sleeved tops in decent condition I'm less bothered about the possibility of the rest of the clothes turning up after I've gone back to London. I will still probably pop over to one or two shops in London, but it's definitely more of a "nice to have"/bit of walking to try to get me in shape for the trip, rather than a pseudo-necessity. It doesn't matter if I end up with too many half-decent tops, as I'm sure they will keep just fine for a future trip.
1959 No FCDO update.
2310 No FCDO update.
The clothes all turned up today. Not all of them are great but some of them are pretty good and I've probably got a full set for the trip now, although as I've said before I may also go to some local shops in London on the offchance. However, it's been an utter mare parcelling everything up to go back - it's all from different Debenhams "concessionaire" brands so they have to go back in individual parcels. The return process is subtly different for each. For one of them they didn't provide us with a packing slip showing what the items were, and we've had to guess (albeit plausibly) that the Debenhams order number will be recognised by them. The working printer here has been packaged up to return for a warranty repair so the only printer we have is one with a knackered ink head and half of the return parcels require printing a barcode heavy returns label (which frankly is never going to scan) or printing a QR code to have scanned in a shop and they will print a label, but my dad is returning these and we don't think he is going to manage that. So we've printed a load of shitty labels and are just hoping. I am going back tomorrow, Dad is borrowing the car so Mum can't drive me anywhere to take stuff in, Dad isn't happy about all this and I've now got to go to a local newagents tomorrow to drop one in there and give them a code for printing a label. I've also got to walk to the station, which isn't normally a huge deal, but of course I'll have two bags with me tomorrow as I have all my "regular" stuff plus these clothes and various other supplies I bought here. It's taken probably a couple of hours fucking around with the returns. It *has* been borderline worth it as on the whole I have got a couple of pretty good and a couple of decent-ish tops, but still, hardly a fun experience.
13th Jan 2208 Check FCDO a few times today, no update.
14th Jan 0135 No FCDO update. Have been going over packing list and checking stuff and doing a pseudo-practice pack, though I am getting a bit bogged down (albeit necessarily) checking things still work (SD cards, USB cables, elastic bands) or are in date (medicines) and haven't got that far. It's fine. I didn't get a huge amount of sleep last night, I really should go to bed and then hopefully I can do a bit of light shopping for some of the stuff I'm missing tomorrow.
1630 No FCDO update. Been out to do a little bit of shopping for trip, didn't get everything I wanted but a few bits and pieces. Things feeling a bit out of control, it's fine, the reality is that anything I haven't already done is not make-or-break, but still.
I am anticipating some awkwardness during the trip with WhatsApp if I want/need to share a somewhat disposable local number with people I meet. I am taking two phones, my K1 runs stock Android and already has WA on with my "normal" UK number, which various friends use (occasionally) to contact me, so I can't just ditch it. (If I could, I wouldn't be using WA in the first place.) The other phone will be my G5 on Lineage OS which I don't *want* WA on, and which probably can't run it. The K1's WA "slot" is occupied, in theory it *might* be possible to run WA on the G5 if I have a local SIM in it with a local number, but I'm not holding my breath. As I say, I don't really *want* WA on my G5 in general on privacy grounds. During the trip it's not such a huge deal as it's only temporary, but still not ideal. I may be able to use the web version of WA on the G5, not sure. Not a huge deal and we'll see how it goes.
2215 No FCDO update. Also checked CR tourist website.
Done a test shave to see if the shaving oil I have is still OK (no expiry date on bottles) and I forgot to read the instructions and didn't wet my face first. Oh well. I only cut myself in four or five small places, which is probably about normal anyway. ;-)
15th Jan 0057 FWIW I just double checked and my normal non-sunglasses glasses have a UV-400 coating. I also did a quick websearch and MTF says sun block is widely available (if maybe expensive; twice the price of the US for one example) in Costa Rica, so I'm not going to weigh myself down with a huge supply (especially since mine - despite lacking an expiry date - may be old and less effective than it's supposed to be for all I know), just enough to get me through the first week or so probably.
Checking the glasses order reminded me that I have some reading glasses. I hardly ever wear them so I'm certainly not going to take them away with me, but at least I have now actively thought about this instead of it just happening without thinking. (To be fair, if I wore them regularly I'm sure I'd remember to think about taking them with me. I can't see why my sight should dramatically change in the next few months or why anything I do on holiday is going to make wanting the reading glasses more likely than it is during my life here in the UK; if anything I'll be spending less time looking at computers/books and more time outdoors.)
1710 No FCDO update. I should maybe stop saying that and just take it as read I'm checking a lot. ;-)
Popped over to Decathlon and Boots at Canada Water, managed to get a rather pricey long-sleeved (85%) merino T-shirt in a darkish orange at Decathlon and some extra (possibly unnecessary, but it won't go off) underwear, and a few medical things at Boots. There's a chance I am done with shopping for the trip now, so I may manage to finally do a proper test pack tonight if I can get my act together.
2153 Being very slack but gradually doing a test pack. Just tried doing some laundry with the green soap bar; gut feeling is this works OK and since it saves weight and general hassle of taking the liquid laundry soap I normally do, I'll probably chance it. I'm sure I can be something suitable over there if this actually turns up to be a nightmare for some reason.
16th Jan 1235 E-mail from BA with the usual "you're flying soon" guff. Used their link to check Covid stuff and it says I don't need proof of vaccination and I don't need to wear a face mask at the airport or on the plane. This could still change, but fingers crossed.
Made a slight effort to get up a little earlier than usual today, not much but something. I am a bit edgy about getting up for the flight, if I'm not careful I will get zero sleep that night. This isn't the end of the world but it's not likely to be good for my mental state that morning. I should probably start a fairly serious "get up a couple of hours earlier each day" thing right now, given how soon the flight is.
No FCDO updates either.
I can't check in online until 24h before the flight. It says I should arrive at the airport no more than three hours before the flight, which is about what I expected but still hardly great with an 11am-ish flight. Checking in isn't too big a stress - I just hope my printer works - given I paid to reserve seats, but still.
1256 Flight is 1105 so I "need" to be there for 0805. Fingers crossed it looks like I've escaped strike-related problems on the trains. Looks like it will be £12.50 for a train from London Bridge and there's quite a lot of them. The 0735 arrived at Gatwick 0804 so is the last "safe if I'm playing it strictly by the book" option. There's the 0715 before that. TfL website says it's 18 minutes from my local station to London Bridge. So in reality I probably "need" to be leaving my flat about 0650, which should see me at London Bridge with a moderate safety margin (although I plan to buy my ticket there rather than buy it in advance) for the earlier train. I probably therefore need to be getting up about 6, maybe a bit earlier if I can force myself and want to feel less rushed. This is sucky but not utterly terrible I suppose. It is going to be dark out when I'm leaving though (which feels a bit crappier shutting the flat up etc), as civil twilight doesn't start until 0717.
It is vaguely possible I'll trog over to a nearby station on Wednesday and buy the train ticket LBG-GTW then; this will save a minute or two on Thursday morning, and since the NRE site suggests that *all* trains from LBG are covered by this £12.50 ticket it's not as if I'm likely to suddenly feel I want/need to buy a more expensive ticket because things have gone a bit wrong. I though Gatwick Express was both expensive and served London Bridge, but looking on their website it's only to Victoria (and probably always has been and I just got confused) and it probably is still expensive but I haven't checked.
Actually there's no need to go over to a station, is there? I can buy this ticket online and print it myself or have it on my phone. That way in the event (touch wood) there *is* a crisis of some kind, I can probably get my money back via electronic form-filling more easily.
Writing about all this makes me feel a bit jittery about things going wrong and missing the flight, but touch wood it all looks OK so far. Getting up that early isn't great - I'm sure I'm going to wish I wasn't going away when I wake up that morning to the alarm screaming it's head off after I've had an hour or two's sleep - but as I say it could be worse.
17th Jan 0004 Finally done a test pack of new bag. Luggage scale says 5.9kg with most but not everything in - most notable item excluded is the fleece, which I will be wearing during the flight and may or may not want to pack into the bag a lot of the time. Was something like 4.5kg without the shell jacket and trousers, although that doesn't seem quite right as my notes say they weigh just under 1.1kg. This includes an empty water bottle (for filling at the airport) but doesn't include any water. With the (empty pockets) fleece it comes to 6.35kg; before putting the fleece in the bag was full to just about the "normal" collar (and it may be I haven't got the packing quite optimal), the fleece occupies the space provided by the "extension" collar so makes the bag a bit taller, but that's not a huge deal - during a flight, which is when the dimensions matter most, I would be wearing the fleece anyway.
0210 No FCDO update. Should probably go to bed if I'm going to try to shift my getting up time earlier.
I am taking 62g (roughly half a bar) of the green solid laundry soap; no idea if this will be right, but making a note so I'll be able to judge better after using it on this trip.
0844 No FCDO update.
I set the harder to ignore physical alarm clock for 10. It went off a few minutes ago and I forced myself out of bed and got dressed. I then notied it was 0841 by the bedside clock. The physical alarm clock showed something like 1013. I have no idea what the fuck happened. This isn't "off by an hour because I didn't set it back", and I'm pretty sure it was set correctly yesterday. Surely it wouldn't run *fast* if the battery is dying? Unfortunately I dropped it while turning the switch off (or something; I'm not feeling 100% as usual when forcing myself out of bed early so maybe I've forgotten) so maybe that did something to confuse matters. Fuck knows. I was a bit tempted to go back to bed after seeing it was so early, but that seems silly - given I have to be up so damn early on Thursday, even getting up this early by accident still leaves me with nearly 3h to be bridged and more like 4h if I want to go for the "not rushed" option.
This feels shit but it's just a transient thing, I'll feel find in half an hour or so and I'm telling myself I won't be forcing myself up stupidly early most of the time during the trip. The time zone shift works in my favour too - it will (touch wood) feel natural to sleep until (say) 9am CR time when it's actually 3pm body clock (London) time after I arrive. On that basis I might actually expect to be waking up 7am-ish or earlier CR time, although if I've been short of sleep for a few nights (the night I just had, plus the next two nights here in London when I'm pushing my getting up time earlier) it may well be I'm wanting to sleep til 3pm or later body clock time anyway. Hard to say. Obviously I am likely to feel tired and go to bed earlier after getting up earlier today, but even if that just instantly works perfectly, the fact I am still going to have to push my getting up time earlier the next couple of days means there will probably still be a net lack of sleep.
I honestly feel pretty crappy. It is cold (13C according to desk thermometer) as heating wasn't on automatically and getting up early always does this to me and I've been bashing out this crap instead of having a coffee or whatever. I don't have that "oh fuck the world is bleak and horrible" feeling I'll probably have on Thursday because at least I don't have to actively "do" anything once I've got up early today, but I do still feel a bit shit.
0944 Been intermittently reminding myself over last day or two that although I sort of just want to slack off and watch crap on YT or browse the web or whatever (and I am doing quite a bit anyway), I need to focus on trip preparations of one kind or another (packing type stuff but also sorting out things here at home so I don't have to worry about them while I'm away) as a priority because I have limited time to do them, they will improve quality of life during the trip *and* because even if the trip was an absolute whirl of socialising, I'm *still* likely to have a fair number of evenings hanging around alone in my accommodation with nothing to do but read/watch YT on phone. This *isn't* as nice as being at home and doing the same thing because I lack a nice computer with a big screen (and if I didn't already waffle about this, I *did* flirt with the idea of getting a laptop, but I decided I'd rather keep the weight and theft-bait down in the interests of easier travel, as this trip is intended to be more of a "wander" than a "go stay in a single place for months" trip), but still, I will be doing it as I can't be out every single night. (And of course at home I can do more "creative" stuff on the computer rather than consuming content, which isn't really an option on the phone.)
1318 Doing quick search for Alajuela accommodation on booking.com for the dates I've already booked, as a sanity check for how affordable/available accommodation is at short notice. I'm not logged in so no Genius discount. The place I'm already booked at is showing at ~£25/night and there are a couple of private apartments ~1.2 miles from the centre (not bothered looking at map, but that doesn't sound terrible) at £96 for the four nights. So this is vaguely reassuring; this is two days away from now and there's still stuff at acceptable prices.
1628 Just tested (leaving it til last minute) and my USB OTG cable+USB card reader seems to work fine with both my G5 and K1, the K1 using a micro-B-to-C adapter. I wasn't going to take the adapter with me as I have a USB A-to-C cable for charging the K1, but it doesn't weigh much and I *may* (really not sure) want to be able to use both phones for getting photos off the camera memory cards. (For example, I still haven't decided, but I may upload at least a subset of photos to Google Photos so I can share the album with family/friends. And it may turn out I decide I'm happy to let Google have *all* the photos in return for a dire straits backup of everything. And anything involving Google Photos needs to go via the K1.) In theory if I'm taking the adapter I could ditch the A-to-C cable to save space/weight, but in practice I don't trust these (fairly cheap) adapters, which I have used a lot over the last year or so at home, to be completely reliable, and it is going to be a fairly big deal if I find myself unable to charge the K1 reliably. Of course I could buy an A-to-C cable over there if necessary, but finding one that isn't massively overpriced and of half-decent quality isn't necessarily trivial, so I think the extra weight (19g; I know it's not much, but it adds up) of the A-to-C cable is worth it. In the longer term, of course, I may well only be carrying devices which use USB C, but that's not the case now - of my three USB devices, two (noise-cancelling headphones and the G5) both have micro-B sockets, with just the K1 rocking the latest hip USB C. This is the (very minor) downside to deliberately using old and/or cheap equipment instead of constantly upgrading to the latest thing.
FCDO still OK, as is visitcostarica.com.
Quick web search turns up https://sjoairport.com/en/llegando-sjo/atm-en/ which suggests there are Scotiabank ATMs at carousel 5 and BAC ATMs at carousel 2 at the airport in San Jose. So at least I now have a rough idea where to go. I would have though there'd be more than that, and maybe there are (perhaps this doesn't show the land-side ones, off the top of my head), but worth knowing. *Very* quick web search suggests that airport ATMs, if operated by actual banks rather than foreign exchange companies, are no more or less expensive than other ATMs. So I should probably make an effort to use any air-side ATMs if I get the chance, because there just might not be any land side and it's also probably a little more secure as random local thieves presumably can't just hang around air side to watch who withdraws cash. (Absolute worst case and I forget or just cannot get any cash at the airport, I have a small amount of cash USD which AFAICT from a web search the other day is still legal tender and which from what I understand of Costa Rica I am going to have no trouble using to pay for a taxi, even if I get stiffed on the rates. I need to pay cash at the accommodation but once I've checked in I can at least drop my bag and so forth before heading out to an ATM, and I assume the host/owner/whatever will be only to anxious to advise on ATM locations nearby.)
Might seem silly but wondering whether I'll splurge on a beer or two at Gatwick. If I do, I want to be paying by card so I'm not lumbered with UK coins as change which I'll be unable to spend until I get home and have to lug around for two months. I generally prefer to pay cash, but this feels like a smart exception.
Another site I found roughly confirms those ATMs, although locations may not be quite the same. The airport is apparently pretty small with two terminals and one runway, although I guess that's hardly tiny and it could still be quite confusing to navigate.
Incidentally, although this is silly and I almost certainly wouldn't do it, Google Maps shows it's well under 3km (closer to 2, depending on route) from the airport to my accommodation and says I could walk it in ~half an hour. Good to have options anyway. I wouldn't do this to save money on arrival (it's borderline conceivable that if I happened to be in the same accommodation on returning, I would walk it then, as I'd have a better idea of safety and I could do it in daylight etc - but on arrival when I'm feeling tired, unfamiliar with the country and I have all my belongings with me, no), only if there's some massive fuckfest with the taxis (e.g. there's a national strike on, all the taxi drivers somehow appear shifty as fuck when I speak to them or they all claim to have no idea where I need to go) would I do it. It wouldn't be utterly insane, it will probably be ~7-8pm at this point, we're not talking the middle of the night, but it's just there as a last ditch option.
2119 Feeling a bit pushed for time, trying to do "final" pack. I have been printing a few things and just remembered I need to check stuff with the Alajuela accommodation. There's no sign on the property but there are some photos and instructions for how to use a combination lock to get in, fingers crossed. I have sent them a (polite) message asking about the code. I do already have the wifi passwords so push comes to shove I can probably get internet access while I'm standing outside the property.
2312 Probably final liquids bag is 434g. Not great but not terrible. This excludes the weight of the solid laundry soap. I have two sample-size tubes of toothpaste in there and TBH some of the medicical ointments feel like things I probably won't need (the hydrocortisone cream in particular is something I don't think I've bothered with before, we'll see how I get on with it) and in a way it's a shame I can't be taking half-full tubes of them, but I'm obviously not literally throwing half of a tube away just to get there. Most of these are things I need sufficently little (at least recently) that I either have no already opened still-in-date supplies at home from normal use and/or what I do have is sufficiently empty and/or manky looking I really feel better taking a fresh tube.
2333 Bag is being packed with 2x190g of mixed nuts, so that will be included in any final weighing.
18th Jan 0012 I think I'm going to at least start moving towards bed. I haven't finished packing but this is a kind of re-pack, I already checked most stuff etc, so it's not critical and probably more important not to stay up all night.
While poking at the grey trousers I started to worry they're a little bit more worn than I thought. This is probably just pre-trip nerves, they're probably fine, they're definitely not falling apart and it's too late to do anything about it now anyway.
0710 Just got up. Yawning like mad. Had a bath last night as kind of last opportunity for a while, probably got to bed about 0145. Not ideal but not terrible. I did wonder about getting up at 5 or 5:30 today but it felt like overdoing it (this was last night when setting alarms, not this morning; I did semi-snooze in bed for 5-10 mins and was awake without the alarm about 0645). FCDO advice still OK.
0740 FWIW I feel broadly OK if a little tired. Vaguely thinking (not that I feel stressed right now, but I expect I will later/tomorrow) that as I've already said a dozen times, I just need to take the whole trip fairly easily but in particular break it down into little chunks tomorrow:
- get up OK :-), maybe have some breakfast and get to the airport here
- get to the accommodation at the other end
- *maybe* pop out for dinner, but given I expect to be tired-ish and I will have had food of one kind or another during the day (albeit not conventional "meals"), perhaps just go almost straight to bed
- sleep as much as I want and not force myself to get up - this should feel luxurious after three straight days without this
- find somewhere for breakfast/lunch - again, I hope this will feel vaguely luxurious after the disruptions of the travel day
- have a fairly easy day but getting in a decent amount of walking (exercise+seeing the place) around Alajuela
0902 FTR if I haven't already said and forget later, I have taken the helmet holder (just a loose bit of net) and hip belt off the backpack. I don't think I really need either of these, the helmet holder in particular, and it's not at all obvious this is something I could repurpose to hold something else. The hip belt does have a small zipped pocket in it but it's not a tremendously useful bit of storage, the bag is lighter without it, it's one less thing flapping around (there are already a slightly alarming number of miscellaneous compression straps and gadget holders that aren't useful to me hanging off it; one or two of these are detachable but they're light enough that I am leaving them on in case I think of something to do with them, if I end up detaching them and carrying them inside that's not the end of the world. The bag is light enough with my luggage that I don't think the hip belt is really necessary to "spread the load", and it's small enough that even if I did some kind of trek with it full of some kind of gear I just can't see it getting that heavy, plus I could probably hire a backpack which was heavier duty if it was really necessary.
1309 Forgot to say, but having read Beyond Backpacking it was kind of weird to go into Decathlon and see all the hiking gear and the "you need this and you need that" kind of advertising. I'm not saying none of the stuff is necessary, but in a strange way it felt kind of less intimidating seeing all this stuff - maybe something along the lines of "perhaps this is more about selling me stuff rather than the basic idea of hiking actually being so insanely challenging it requires all this gear", even if that's probably an excessive reaction on my part.
1321 Got code for accommodation. No FCDO or VCR updates.
1326 Haven't packed fully but I have semi-tidied up all the miscellaneous "not packed and not intending to take" junk that was lying around which helps check there's nothing important for the trip hiding among it. As I think is usual, I am massively dithering about how many spare plastic bags of various sizes to take. These obviously don't weigh much but they do add up, their cumulative volume likewise adds up and I don't need an infinite quantity. On the other hand, they are useful, they do wear out fairly rapidly and it's really hard to buy them in the middle of a trip in whatever size would be most useful, *particularly* in small quantities (so I end up buying a box of 20 resealable plastic bags when I need one or two and lugging the box round because I don't like to throw it out).
I've also checked the pockets of the coat I normally wear (that I'm not taking) for anything I might have missed and emptied out my "old" (it may well still be used for some trips) Voyeaguer bag which I also take back and forth to my parents' regularly to make sure there's nothing hiding in it.
1506 No FCDO/VCR updates.
1523 Checked in online. Double checked FCDO/VCR as I ticked the "I comply with the entry requirements" box, just in case this makes a difference in the event of any compensation/assistance claim in the (touch wood) event of a last-minute change in rules.
Suddenly paid more attention to VCR saying the immigration officer will want to see a return ticket. I would have had this on my phone but I am printing out the relevant page of my flight itinerary just in case.
1814 Checking to see I have offline maps and a marker for the accommodation and OSM shows I am 5429 miles from the accommodation. :-)
Going to try sending this now so I can test posting to blog from my phone, and I will probably put any subsequent ramblings in the London-Costa Rica post to follow.
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