Travelling for 24h has made us cranky. Our 10h flight from Amsterdam to Panama City was enjoyable, but the 5h wait for our connection has taken its toll on us. Panama City airport must be one of the noisiest airports we have ever been to. When we finally land in San José we only want one thing: sleep in a bed. As we exit the airport, our hopeful eyes look for a sign with Julia’s name on it, the driver the hotel was supposed to send. We are disappointed. We call the hotel and it turns out that not only did they not send a driver but also that our reservation did not exist. They do have a room left so we decide to take it rather than starting a new search. The official, orange taxis are organised incredibly well and within less than five minutes we are on our way to the city centre. When we arrive at the hotel, we are welcomed by a friendly receptionist, apologising for the inconvenience. The pungent smell of marijuana fits with his looks (messy hair, slightly confused) and instead of complaining about the mix up, we just try not to laugh. All we manage to do is shower and brush our teeth, before we finally pass out on the very comfy bed.
Thanks to the jet lag, we are wide awake even before the alarm rings and are pleasantly surprised by the breakfast – a true Costa Rican welcome with gallo pinto (rice and beans), eggs, plantains, fresh fruit and delicious coffee. We inquire about the nearest atms and SIM card providers and venture out to get set up with Costa Rican money (colones) and SIM cards, before meeting our rental car agent back at the hotel.
A side note about Costa Rican SIM cards
We bought a SIM card each for $2 with Kölbi, the biggest provider besides Movistar and with the best coverage, according to our guidebook. We each bought about $10 of credit which gave us a $2 bonus and at some point even a $30 bonus (kinda weird). We used our data without thinking about it very much for about 10 days, until the day where several texts told us that the $30 bonus would expire. According to our balance, we still had our $10 credit but within a few hours, it magically disappeared for the both of us. All in all, it is still not quite clear to us how it works, but oh well. We bought a bit more credit (it comes in scratch cards of $2 or some places can directly load it on your phone) and kept our data turned off unless we needed it. It’s useful to have the SIM card for google maps/waze in particular and when the hotel WiFi lets you down while you’re looking for information but do turn it off when not using; we ended up spending about $15 each for two weeks, which could maybe have been a little lower.
If San José has any charm, we didn’t find it. The famous Teatro Nacional is indeed very beautiful, but the rest of the city – at least from what we saw – seems to mostly consist of fast food chains, banks, and mini markets. To be fair, we did only spend about an hour walking around, so this is a very superficial judgement. Hubert (seriously) from Europcar drops off our 4×4 around lunchtime and we are on our way to the area of the Arenal volcano, north of the capital. Once we leave the busy city traffic behind us, we find ourselves in a lush, green forest – and the holiday really begins.
Accommodation tip : Hotel Colonial was perfectly located and the breakfast was really tasty. The room and the bathroom were clean. We recommend it for a couple of nights in San José (but as written, be sure to double-check your booking).
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