Last Day in Nicaragua and First Day in Costa Rica

Yesterday, we spent our time getting ready to leave for Costa Rica. We got our TicaBus tickets from Rivas, Nicaragua to San Jose, Costa Rica, and we got our taxi lined up to take us from San Juan del Sur to Rivas. However, this did not go quite as planned. When we got back from lunch, the lady at our hotel told us that a taxi had come for us, arranged by Casa Oro, and that we needed to go straighten it out. We went over to Casa Oro, and they said that they had read the sheet wrong (it said 7:45 AM on July 3) and had sent a taxi at 1:45 PM on July 2. This morning, we were waiting for the taxi at our hotel, but it still did not come. I asked the people working at our hotel about it around 7:55, and they started looking for the phone number for Casa Oro, but it was taking a long time, and we had to be in Rivas (about 15-20 miles away) by 8:30, so we just walked over to Oro to try to get everything worked out. They had misunderstood my 7 for a 1, and were planning to send a taxi at 1:45 again that day! I don’t know what they thought about the AM vs. PM, but there was definitely a miscommunication. The girl called our taxi right away, and we left around 8:10. We got to Rivas just a little after 8:30, but the TicaBus still had not come by, so everything was ok.

More events of yesterday… Our goal was to get rid of all the cordobas we still had, and Jeff didn’t have any at all that day except for change, and I had gotten rid of all of mine by early in the morning, except for change. However, it rained for the majority of the day, and my raincoat folds up into a pouch sort of thing. When we left for lunch, I decided to wear my jacket, and when I unrolled it, I found 1000 cordobas ($50) stuffed inside! I had put them there for safe keeping while we were in Granada, but had completely forgotten about them. I would have been very unhappy if I had made it all the way back to the US with that! We spent most of them, on lunch, supper, snacks for the road, etc, but at the end of the night, we still had some left, so I went back to the convenience store that we always used, and asked if I could swap it out for dollars. Since it was just a small amount, the lady agreed, so now I just have a little bit of change left.

Back to our voyage today… the TicaBus picked us up a little before 9, but early this morning, and for the majority of the day, Jeff was sick from food poisoning again. I really don’t understand why I wasn’t, because we ate EXACTLY the same things yesterday… spaghetti for lunch, and we split a pizza for supper. While we were waiting for the bus, in the sun, he felt really bad, and when we started riding, he was afraid he would get carsick. We weren’t far from the Costa Rican border, and we each had 3 papers to fill out. Jeff couldn’t read or write or he would have gotten sick, so I filled out his for him, and he just signed his name. The problem was, they came to take them up before I finished filling out mine. We only had to turn in 2 of the forms at that time, so Jeff turned in his, and I turned in my 1 completed form, but couldn’t turn in my customs form yet, but they just kept going. I never ended up turning it in, so I guess it wasn’t a problem. Our first stop was the place to leave Nicaragua. Here, we took a survey about tourism in Nicaragua, and we bought cashews. There were lots of people selling cashews in San Juan del Sur the first week we were there, but we never bought any. Then, we were hungry at the beach one of the days that we surfed, so we bought a small bag there and loved them. We looked for more since Sunday, but could never find anyone selling them again. We were very excited to find them today. The TicaBus people handled our passports, and they started handing them back out when it was time to get back on the bus. Jeff’s name got called, and he got his passport and boarded the bus, but the stack was getting thinner and thinner, and they hadn’t called me. Finally they did; my passport was maybe 3 from the bottom of the stack. We continued on to the Costa Rican checkpoint, where we got off, got our passports stamped, went back to the bus, got all of our luggage off, and went to have it checked. They checked almost everyone’s luggage, but Jeff and I were towards the end of the line, and when it was our turn to be checked, they just waved us away. I guess we look like trustworthy people or something. Also, when we got our passports stamped, we turned in our health form, but they gave mine back to me, but kept everyone else’s. I still have it now; I guess Costa Rica just didn’t want any of my papers!

On the bus, we saw the Israeli guy who rode the shuttle with us from Guatemala to El Salvador and got detained due to the wrong dates being on his passport stamps. We talked to him some, and found out that it took him a week to get all that mess straightened out, but they finally let him go without paying any outrageous fines. (See the post from Saturday, June 13.)

On the bus, we had to watch Hannah Montana. No discussion needed.

We got to San Jose around 5:30, picked up our bags, and started looking for our hotel. We already had reservations at Hotel Cacts, and we asked one of the taxi drivers about it, but it was less than a block away, and right across from a police station. Inside, the receptionist was very nice and helpful; definitely one of the most helpful people we have met on our trip. She told us about a really good place to eat dinner, and called to make sure our shuttle was going to pick us up in the morning, which was very reassuring after the fiasco we had this morning. Tomorrow we are going to the Arenal Volcano, and we should be there a few days before heading to the Caribbean coast of Panama! I’ll update from Arenal next. ~Laura