FAQs

How was your trip?

Great.

Really? You're hardly tan at all.

I know, I know. Right before I left, I read this big article in the New York Times about how very, very bad the sun is for you and how it instantly ages you twenty years and then you get wrinkles and cancer and die. Then my roommate, who was born in Costa Rica, finished it off by insisting that I wear sun block there at all times, especially between noon and three pm, when I should also stay inside, just to be safe. I was in fact in an open kayak for a few brilliant midday hours and resigned to getting cooked to a crisp despite layers of SPF 30, but I guess the stuff works.

You went during rainy season. How bad was the weather?

Not bad at all, considering. It started pouring just as the hostel shuttle started the 45 minute drive from the airport, and continued for a few hours. I thought I might have made a horrible mistake. It didn’t rain much again until the last day, halfway through a three-hour horseback ride, which was definitely a mistake. But that’s another story.

As we sometimes get a few warm days or weeks of “Indian summer” in the winter, they sometimes have “little summer,” a patch of nice weather during rainy season. It seems like I caught that.

Where did you stay?

In eight days, five hotels, from an $11 a night dorm room in a hostel near the volcano, to a gorgeous $70 dollar room with a hammock and an amazing view. It averaged to about 40 bucks a night. I could have gone much, much cheaper or infinitely more expensive. I liked how it worked out.

A hostel? Aren’t you getting a little old for that?

I planned to spend the first few nights in hostels just to save money, but traveling alone in a place where I don’t know anyone, I’d do it again for the sake of meeting people and exchanging advice. Over breakfast, some guy from Italy plopped down at the table next to me and a girl from Canada, and sketched in my notebook a little map showing the way to some free hot springs in La Fortuna, the next city I was visiting. I exchanged email addresses with a guy from Brooklyn who promised a report from the Caribbean coast, as I was still unsure if I should go there or not.

Why Costa Rica?

A few friends recommended it as a great spot, and a little reading suggested it was a relatively easy place to travel solo. Sounded like a good combination of interesting culture, active activities, and relaxing beach. Also, I’d never been to Latin America, and it seemed like a gentle introduction.

It also seemed like, and was, a nice compromise between a boring beach vacation and a hardcore backpacker journey.

Who were you traveling with?
Just me.

Really? Weren’t you lonely?

Hardly at all. I found myself wishing for a little more solitude more times than for more company. The only thing I worried would be quite lonely was meals, especially dinner. In eight nights, I ended up eating alone… once. And a couple from Idaho invited me to join them halfway through. Once people realized that I was traveling alone, they were quick to invite me to join in for dinner, drinks, and even a zip line tour.

So why were you by yourself, anyway?

It wasn’t my first choice. I’d been hoping for a long time for a romantic getaway, and had put off taking a vacation for at least a year, because I thought it would be too depressing to travel alone when what I wanted was to be with somebody. But after a while, I thought it would be even more depressing not to travel because of that. Friends who would have been fun to go with couldn’t coordinate schedules with my typical last minute (lack of) planning.

What were the other tourists like?

The people I ran across were a very nice crowd. Almost all Americans – I saw one French couple, one Dutch, and a Japanese girl. Quite a few honeymooners. Most probably between 25 and 35, and - I may be projecting – looking for a vacation that was culturally interesting but not a constant challenge. People were quick to strike up conversations about where they’d been and what they were doing.

Were there many ex-pats?

A few. The retired couple from Idaho, who had sold everything and moved there to buy a restaurant and a house. A gay couple who’d lost their stuff when the roof blew off their house in New Orleans. They had fixed the house, tossed the wrecked contents, and rented the place out while they live by the beach for a year. A friend of a friend from Spain who’s working at a development NGO because his girlfriend’s job moved them there. Lots of Spaniards and an Irish woman living in San Jose.

Will you keep in touch with people you met there?

I hope a few. Especially Kevin and Kurt, and the exchange student Lindsay I met on the plane on the way back. I can’t find the paper with the email addresses of the girls from California I spent a long day with, hoping it turns up. Also Jo, who lives in NY.

How was the food? Did you get sick?

The food was mostly salty and simple, but good. I wonder how long it would take to get bored, but for one week I liked the predictability of rice plus beans plus something else – scrambled eggs at breakfast; chicken, beef or fish later. I poured Lizano salsa on everything, and asked for it if it wasn’t on the table – it was always within the waiter’s reach, in small bottles or poured from a white five-gallon jug into pretty dispensers. Long slices of fried plantains were and wedges of avocado were nice on the side, and the mangos and pineapple were delicious. I see why my roommate says she doesn’t even bother eating mangos outside of Costa Rica – they were as sweet and tender as canned peaches, like a different fruit from the hard cut pieces you get here sometimes. I didn’t crave or miss other sweets at all, though I suddenly wanted one of everything when I wandered into an Au Bon Pain back in New York.

No digestive distress whatsoever, since you asked.

How did you get around?

By tourist shuttle. Interbus has a very easy system. For somewhere around thirty bucks, minibuses with TURISMO stickers on the back would pick you up at any hotel in just about any town that had one, and take you directly to any other. It seemed like the ride between any two points was about four hours. On one bus, there was just one other couple on my route, and once I was the only person. Both times I sat in the front seat and chatted with the driver about the country in general and what we were passing. (One, who had a seven ball keychain, explained a pool game to me that I’d never heard of called fifteens.)

I did the last leg back by small plane, I think it was about fifty dollars and 25 minutes to get back to the capital from Quepos, my last destination.

If you had a lot more time and patience than money, public buses go everywhere for almost no money – fares from a quarter to six dollars, though you don’t get the door to door service, and lots of stops make the trips take much longer.

And if your feet never touch the ground, you could charter a private driver or even flight to go almost anywhere, at your convenience.

How about the packing. Did you bring too much, too little?

Just about right. I brought one Gravis backpack with lots of pockets, which I bought the day before I left when I tore up the apartment and realized that mine is MIA.

Did you bring stuff you didn’t need?

I never unfolded the longsleeve button down, only used my fancy new raincoat once, and wore only one of the three pairs of socks, on the airplane.

What were you glad you had, that you weren’t sure you’d need?

Mosquito bite itch stick, ginger candies, travel alarm clock (though I woke up at six almost every day without it), a few plastic bags to wrap around my camera and cell phone, face wipes, sarong.

What should you have brought, but didn’t?

I could have used one more t-shirt. I ended up wearing one a time or two past its freshness date. I forgot a hair rubber band, and really should have brought a nail file. I bought bug spray at the grocery store there, as planned.

Back it up – you got up at six every day?

Yep. The time difference, two hours back, was on my side, but it also got dark by six every night, and light by five am. I was pretty active every day between doing stuff and walking up and down steep hills, and mostly fell asleep by eleven, with almost no drinking. I woke up ready to get up every day, and hope that carries through into post-vacation life. Though the time difference and 31 years of bad sleep habits, are stacked against me.

Did your camera hold up ok?

Yes, but I think it’s on its way out. It got very hot with the display window on, and wouldn’t delete. The battery light seemed to start flashing earlier each day, but I did manage to remember to take the charger along each time I moved hotels, to charge the battery each night, and then to put the battery in the camera, etc. The memory card, 1 Gig, held up. I didn’t drop it into any rivers or swimming pools, as two friends there did. There’s a lot that can go wrong, but none of it did.

Are you happy with the pictures?

I was shy about taking them at first, so there are things I would have liked to include, like the sheets of rain we kicked up on the highway from the airport, and the driver with his nickname – Marito - spelled out in letter beads hanging from his rear view mirror, and the people I met the first night in San Jose. And the wide stone gutters running thick with fallen mangos along the side of the road near Manuel Antonio. I also wish the metering was better. The pictures only seemed to come out good in bright, even daylight.

What was that one song that you heard over and over? Every vacation seems to have one.

None, actually. Daddy Yankee, who had just played in Costa Rica, was on the radio when we first got in the pickup truck from the airport. I heard Sean Paul, Temperature, once or twice. Lots of forgotten American soft rock hits of the eighties. There was a lot of reggaeton, which has been popular there for years, but no one song stood out. After hearing it ten million times at home, I kept waiting to hear Shakira’s song. But not once.

On the way to the last little airplane to San Jose, I heard a Spanish version of How Deep is Your Love? Which I found kind of funny and sweet.

What did you enjoy most?

In no order: The volcano, sea kayaking, Baldi hotsprings, the drives. Climbing the waterfall. The dog who befriended me at the hotel in Santa Elena.

Least?

Horseback riding, hands down. Ouch.

What would you have done differently?

That’s a tough one. Because who knows what else would have gone differently if something were changed? It would have saved a little worry to know where I was staying each night, but it also would have cut out the flexibility I was glad to have. It’s so hard to pick something just out of a book, and even with the website. And if I’d done that, maybe I wouldn't have met Kevin and Kurt and gone sea kayaking, etc.

I could have gotten a later flight to San Jose and had one more morning on the beach instead of an afternoon in the airport. But the little planes get canceled a lot, and I didn’t want to risk missing my flight back home.

What didn’t you get to do that you wanted to?

White water rafting was the only big thing. I tried to join an afternoon outing, but they said they needed a minimum of two. I asked around on the beach to see if anyone wanted to go – people were really friendly about it and said they’d be into it the next day, but no one was ready to head out then.

I also never did a night hike, which is supposed to be neat. My feet and I were usually pretty tired by evening, though.

How was the nightlife?

Couldn’t say. The only nights I went out were to a party at someone’s home in San Jose, and to gay night with Frank and Michael at a restaurant that pulls down its shutters and pumps up the Madonna and Erasure for a local crowd of pretty young boy-things. The other tourists I met all said they were crashing out really early, too.

What animals did you see?

A bat buzzing the hotsprings. A giant fat frog in a swimming pool. Three kinds of monkeys, all over the place. Horses, donkeys, an aguti, toucans, vultures, orioles, parrots, centipedes, beetles, big iguanas, chirping geckos, tiny frogs, mosquitoes – normal, and giant, wasps, red crabs, tropical fish, restaurant cats, hotel dogs, butterflies, crocodiles, and streams of cutter ants carrying leaves.

What did you do that was dumb?

At La Guardia on the way out, I left my tabbed and marked-up Lonely Planet at the airport check in counter. Found it a few minutes later, but it seemed like an inauspicious start.

I hiked alone up and down a steep muddy jungle trail in pretty flip flops, because I’d been assured they were fine shoes for the national park. Later, it turned out they were talking about a short, easy path.

Ditto a steep, isolated, rocky road down to the beach.

I checked into a hotel I didn’t really like, because I felt some pressure to decide quickly, which was really self-imposed. (I checked out the next day, and found a place I loved.)

I stepped on a slimy looking embankment, which was every bit as slick as it looked, and slid right down, scraping my arm and banging my hip. I thought my ‘water shoes’ would grip, somehow.

I misremembered pick-up times twice. Once I sat around for a wasted half hour, and once I had to scramble to pack in a hurry.

I ordered a large plastic bottle of water in a restaurant to take with me for the afternoon, then forgot it there after a sip.

I lost my sunglasses – some time between landing at LaGuardia and my apartment.

Did you miss having a phone?

Not at all. I did think I heard it vibrating for the first few days, though – and a lot of others said they kept thinking they heard their own rings.

It felt funny making plans by agreeing on a time and a place, and a backup time and place in case it was raining. There was a lot more anticipation waiting for people to show up, knowing that if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be an immediate way to find out where they were or how long they’d be. So, it felt like almost an accomplishment in and of itself when everyone made it to a meeting point.

To confirm a breakfast we’d sort of planned for my last day, I sent a note with Michael one evening to take to Kevin and Kurt, since I knew they’d all be out together. I reminded him what happened in Romeo and Juliet when someone didn’t deliver a letter the way he was supposed to. (Everybody died, of course.) I was delighted to find that they’d had the same idea and slipped an almost identical note onto my balcony while I was out. (I ended up borrowing the restaurant phone the next morning and calling their house when they didn’t show up, victims of a Guaro hangover. Michael had delivered my note, but then proceeded to get them incapacitated on the local sugarcane hooch.)

How about TV and the internet? Did you see much news?

I made a semi-deliberate attempt to avoid the news. There were tape-bound photocopies of a few US newspapers available at news stands. I glanced at the headlines to make sure Brooklyn was still there and all, but didn’t go beyond that. And I had a TV in my room in a few places but never turned it on. I checked email a few times, and looked at Yahoo news just long enough to see that someone had been stabbed in my daily subway station. Oh, right – that’s why I wasn’t reading it! Away from the concrete jungle, and back to the actual one, where there are more bugs, but fewer stabbings. It was… what’s that saying? Bliss.

How did you do with the language?

As in most places where tourism is a huge part of the economy, people spoke English widely. I felt like I was starting to pick up a little Spanish, and it really made me want to learn to speak it – I think it’s weird that I don’t, like there’s almost no excuse not to. An immersion program there seemed like a fantastic idea.

How did the money work out?

The money was interesting – they really accept dollars almost everywhere. And like a bilingual family that slips back and forth between languages mid-sentence, they’d give and accept combinations of dollars and Colones coins and bills. I’ve never been to a place like that.

Quite a few places took Visa, but not MasterCard, which is how I realized that my bankcard is a MasterCard (never even thought about it) and my backup platinum Visa had in fact expired 10 days before I left. After the day of horseback riding joy, the guide had to drive me to an ATM, because I’d planned to pay with my MasterCard. (At some point while the rain was running down the smelly, heavy rubber poncho draped over me and every step was torquing my knee, abrading my thighs, and bruising my ass, I realized that I was paying for this delight – and then even that turned out to be a hassle.)

Overall, the money held up ok, though there was a point where I had to scrimp a little til the next town because the lone ATM wouldn't take my card and I was very low on cash – after dinner, while the other girls were stocking up on road trip snacks, I had just enough left for a bottle of water. Which was about all I needed.

A driver taught me slang for the money – thousands were counted as “rojas” he said, since the bills were red. Hundred colone coins were counted in “tejas,” though he couldn't really explain why. Something to do with a dome. Hm.

Sounds friendly. How were other Ticos?

Mostly friendly, though of course most of the people I met were in the tourism industry. A few were more frostily polite than friendly, like the girl at a grocery store and one surly waitress. Overall, people just seemed really laid back, low drama. One woman, the hostess at Barba Roja restaurant, stood out to me as much more dramatic than everyone else with blonde hair, arched eyebrows, and a low-cut shirt. Michal and Frank referred to her as “him,” and said Felicia used to be a he.

Okay, okay. Cut to the chase. Did you meet anyone? Hot latin lover? Built surfer? Dreamy traveler?

No and no. Sigh. No romance at all.

Really? Don’t you think that’s weird? Were you avoiding guys?
Not at all. One guy seemed cool and decent looking, a surfing tourist, but he got bent out of shape when someone said “Si, Claro” to him and he didn’t understand. The third time the person said it, I said, “it means ‘of course.’” That’s one of the three Spanish phrases I know – it was the title of the text book in our eighth grade exploratory Spanish text book, and I said so. But he wouldn't let it drop. The rest of the night, out with a bunch of people, he kept saying, “well, YOU’re the one who knows Spanish.” I couldn't deal with that for even one night.

There was a tall, dark Swiss guy in a wife beater who I thought would fit the bill, but he left me alone to die in the jungle, so that was a no.

Everyone else was gay or a decade younger.

Wow. Do you think that maybe if you can’t find a fling in a week alone in a Latin country that maybe there really is no hope for you?
Um, shut up?

Ok, sorry. So. Do you feel silly now that you were so nervous before you left?

Nah. I think that’s part of it all. It was a relief that it was all as easy as it was. I’d definitely go again. I wish I’d had more time, like weeks more, and learned a little Spanish before I went.