Day 39: San Jose, Costa Rica

Today was an utterly glorious day. Knowing that we were going to get our Brazilian visas this afternoon put a skip (or two) into our step. We wandered around the city some more this morning and enjoyed a lovely (huge!) lunch served on a fancy cut piece of wood and banana leaves. Between the two platters (let´s be real here–“plate“ just isn´t a sufficient description), we could´ve fed 2-3 other people. Once we were stuffed to and beyond the gills, we waddled a couple miles back across the city to the embassy and danced a little jig all the way up to the 6th floor and into the office as we picked up our much-sought after, overly complicated visas. Then, after triple checking that they were indeed real (and switching to check each other´s), we danced another jig while we waited for the elevator. But the doors opened to reveal another, rather serious looking passenger so we had to forgo the descending jig and just quietly giggled at each other for the joy of finally having those stupid visas.

As quickly as we humanly could, we raced back to the hostel and grabbed up our backpacks before hoofing it half-way back across the city to the bus station so we could get the hell out of San Jose. We had just barely missed the last bus to Uvita so we settled on taking a bus to Quepos, about half-way to Uvita, to stay the night and hop another bus in the morning. The ride was uneventful, only lasting 3-4 hours. When we arrived in Quepos, we walked around a bit before we found a suitable (that is, cheap enough) hotel since there are no hostels in the tiny town. We paid $9/person for a private room ensuite and set out to find some much-needed dinner. As it was so late, the only thing left open was a bakery. So we dined on unnamed pastries and chocolate milk before retiring to the room to rest before tomorrow´s bus to Uvita, looking once more at our visas to make sure our eyes hadn´t tricked us earlier.