July 27th: Drive to San Jose

Yet again we woke up early (our average this trip has been about 7am... don’t know whether I’m proud of that or feeling kind of silly about it). Our plan this morning was to pack up early, check out and go to Tamarindo one last time. When we were there the first time, while we were on the beach, we were approached by a guy who taught Caphoira classes. Apparently it’s some kind of mix between martial arts and dancing (Nick has done it before). We got pretty excited about it because at the time, it was just what we had been looking for (aka something fun, different, and athletic). The guy gave us a card for one of his classes at 9am Saturday morning. We had been planning on going since we heard about it. Up early, everything packed and ready to go, we took another look at the map and realized there was no direct route from Tamarindo back to the highway, in fact we would have to backtrack the hour back to Coco. Debating on whether or not to extend our driving day by another 2 hours for one class, we finally decided against it. Nick, being the driver and feeling guilty about saying no to a class that I was excited to go to, then didn’t have the heart to say no when I asked if we could hangout in the courtyard by the front desk to blog (That’s where we got internet). Although, I phrased my request by telling him I wanted to get him coffee at the little cafe next to the front desk :)... just trying to make up for all the tea I have been subjecting him to.

Throughout this trip, and even before the trip, but more-so since we have been here, Nick and I will break out in spontaneous drumming battles in the car. It’s kind of awesome. And by kind of, I mean REALLY awesome. Our favorite song to do it to has been One Republic - Counting Stars (which not surprisingly has been named our song of the trip). Listen to it. It will make you want to drum, especially when you are thinking about it. When we drove down to check out, we sat in the parking lot as our song came on. Music on blast and intense drumming in full swing, we rocked out in Jimmy. So much so that we got attention and applause from a passerby. Needless to say, her life is better for having witnessed our concert.

Perfect morning in full sunshine. It’s always perfect weather on the days that we leave. We relaxed with our coffee in anticipation of our drive. We blogged... and finally got around to booking our bungee jump :).... yes. Tomorrow morning we will be jumping off of a bridge.

Knowing exactly where to go, we hit the road! But we only got about a half hour down the road before Nick saw signs for the largest art gallery in Costa Rica.... so of course we had to go check it out.

It was in fact the largest art gallery in Costa Rica. We were greeted by a handful of very welcoming, friendly and informative people. We were handed waters when we walked in and were shown around as if we were millionaires that could actually afford anything in the gallery. We wandered around the 15 different rooms of art. Carlos Hiller’s artwork was the first that we saw, and ended up being our favorite in the entire gallery. He specializes in underwater scenes and all of them are REALLY good and painted in really bright colors. After looking around, stopping to get Nick a pulled pork sandwich and chatting to the very friendly Chicago natives that worked there, we went back to look at more of Hiller’s work. It just so happened that when we returned to his room that Hiller himself was there talking to the owner. She introduced us to Hiller and we spent the next 20 minutes or so with him, walking around and listening to his stories about his paintings and murals, his techniques, his painting process and going into detail answering all of mine and Nick’s questions. Really awesome person with a really cool story. He may very well be the most famous artist in Costa Rica. And we met him. We exchanged cards. No biggy. If you are interested, you should go to his website and check out his bio. 

Not including our gallery stop, we made it to San Jose in a record 3 and a half-ish hours. Better than we had been hoping. This is where our story goes a little sour...

Before we left, we looked up directions to our hotel Barcelo, which basically showed us that we had to exit the main Pan-American highway (highway 1) onto another highway (highway 39) and then Barcelo was RIGHT off the exit. In San Jose, major hotels have signs along the highway so we should have been just fine finding it. Oh how wrong we were. “Barcelo stay straight on highway”.... “Barcelo stay straight”.... “Barcelo next exit”.... so then we exit.... “Barcelo 1km”..... so we kept driving.... annnnd kept driving.... 5km later, Nick and I just look at each other in silence. In the convoluted mess of San Jose, we managed to turn around and back track onto the highway.... “Barcelo stay straight”.... “Barcelo next exit”..... we exit..... No signs... No Barcelo.... Commence 1 and a half hours of driving around and around in circles... on and off highway 1.... on and off highway 39.... passing signs that say we are 1 KILOMETER away from our hotel... we went left... we went right... we stayed straight... and backtracked... over and over again... we stopped for directions that still got us nowhere in the right direction. We decided to wander off on our own disregarding any signs and just driving towards the big buildings that we thought looked like hotel central.... that got us completely turned around in the ghetto of all ghettos of San Jose. Imagine the streets of downtown Seattle but with super windy roads and intersections that had both stop signs and stop lights.... do you go when the light is green?? Because locals seem to disregard both. An equal amount of people and cars on the street, with no apparent rules and a very sketchy and uncomfortable out of place feeling made us want to get out of there quick. We had a long and stressful drive just to re-find ourselves back within 1km of our hotel. Both of us completely irritated and Nick stressed out from driving with the crazies, we pulled over again to hopefully talk to someone who could give us real directions. Thank you parking attendant at the Best Western. Literally not even half a mile away, we found the impossible to find Barcelo. 

Tired, hungry and cranky, we checked in and walked into our room to find that the receptionist had given us a room that was already occupied.... that could have been real awkward. Just one more hiccup. Getting a room that we could actually stay in, we unloaded and flopped down on our gloriously comfy king size bed to take some deep breaths and let go of a little frustration before mustering up the energy to think about dinner. Nick absolutely refused to get back into the car to drive anywhere else for dinner despite my plea to go to Denny’s which we knew how to get to (It was right next to the Best Western). So instead we stayed to have dinner at the hotel. Not wanting to spend $80+ for dinner, we chose the cheaper of the hotel restaurants... and not wanting to spend $60, we decided against the buffet and just ordered a meal. Good call. The food really wasn’t that great, and it took forever. 

Too tired to function at this point, we called it a night, went back to our room and fell asleep on a cloud :)