Sorry for the posting delay; we´ve been out of Internet range. Anyhow, back to the action.
Joyce and I have had our first experience with being conned, and let me tell you, it sucked, A LOT. But first, let me tell you about what can only be described as the most revolting hotel in Costa Rica, where we had the pleasure of staying for one interminably long, sweaty, poison Ivy (I didn´t mention that I got that zip-lining, did I…), unsafe, and generally displeasurable night. There were ants on one wall, and a lizard on the other; Joyce didn´t know which side of the bed was worse. There was one fan, and it sucked, and not in the way that a fan should. The shower “supposedly” had hot water, but none was to be found, there was no sink, and the shelves could hold about, oh, two pounds of weight. We learned our lesson about seeing the room before you agree to take it.
After leaving scenic Manzanillo, we spent a day in not-so-scenic Puerto Viejo. It can only be described as a high surfer´s paradise, as all that we found were drug dealers, booze and beaches. Need I say more?
After taking the four hour bus rid to San Jose, we knew that we needed to rush to the next bus station, to catch our next bus. My investigation the previous night had revealed that that bus station was just a few blocks away, and a short ride from the bus station that we´d be getting into (there are quite a few bus stations in San Jose.). When we arrived at station number one, a man asks where we were going, and I told him the name of the station. He said, ¨You´re going to La Fortuna?¨ Which we were, so I said ¨Yes.¨ He then proceeded to tell us (or, more specifically, me, as this all happened in Spanish, and Joyce doesn´t speak any.) that we couldn´t go to La Fortuna from San Jose, and had to go to the next city over, Alajuela. Now, I found this very suspicious, having just looked the info up the night before, but at the same time, being the naturally trusting person that I am, I figured that he was just trying to help us. So, we agreed to go with him. BIG MISTAKE!!!
As soon as we were in the cab, we both started feeling uncomfortable, and unsure. And, once we got to the bus station in Alajuela, all of our fears were confirmed. It was, you see, not a bus station, but a bus stop! And, then he proceeded to ask for an obscenely large amount (actually, we only found out about the obscenity of it later.), and left us there. Then, when the bus came, it was a local bus, not express, so it stopped at every little town on the way! Oh, and someone told us that the bus we were on LEFT FROM SAN JOSE!!!
So, to recap, the lying asshole driver: 1) Took us to the wrong place 2) Overcharged us 3) Put us on a local bus 4) Was smelly 5) Really sucked a lot.
Okay, so the upside to this day was that once in La Fortuna, we found a cheap place to stay that had AIR CONDITIONING (the angelic choir sings.)! It´s hard to explain quite how exciting this was for us, but let me just say that we didn´t leave the room the next day for several hours, and just watched the cable TV (woo hoo!) and enjoyed our climate controlled environment.
But, lest you think that our sucky rip-off experiences ended there, let me nip that in the bud. We went that evening to a coin laundromat (let me emphasize that, ¨COIN¨) where, upon arrival, a woman asked if we´d like her to do our laundry. We asked how much that would be, and she said 6,000 Colones (that´s $12.). We politely declined and said we´d do it ourselves. She said she had to go and ask the boss if that was okay. Now, before I go on, let me just make this more clear to you; we were at a ¨coin¨ laundromat where you had to ask special permission to do your own laundry. No, it didn´t make any sense to us either. So when the woman came back, she informed us that it would be 5,000 Colones to do it ourselves (that´s $10.). The catch here is that the ¨coins¨ were not actual money, but play money, only used to start the machines, making this only ¨coin¨ laundry in the loosest sense. But, desperate for non-smelly clothing, we acquiesced, and did our laundry (well, Joyce did our laundry.).
That was our last rip-off experience in Costa Rica, except for the fact that they charge you $25 per person for the privilege of leaving their country (Ecuador charges $40, the bastards!). We just hung out in La Fortuna, looked at the volcano, which, when it wasn´t cloudy (which was rare) was pretty neat, and watched cable. Oh, and, I´ll just throw in that the hotel in San Jose for the night before we flew out was $144, which is virtually more than we spent on rooms everywhere else in the whole country!
Joyce doesn´t want to go back to Costa Rica.
