Costa Rica Days 8 and 9: Travel Back to Sans Jose and Return to the USA
1-29-10: Today we traveled back to San Jose in preparation for our departure home. We woke up early (5:30) to catch the Direct Bus back to San Jose. This was much less expensive than the van service we took on the way in. The bus ride from Montezuma to San Jose only cost about $12.
The first bus picked us up around 6:30 at the bus stop in the village, then took us to the ferry terminal near Paquera. This trip took well over an hour because the bus made several stops along the way to pick up additional passengers. The roads, as mentioned before, were also not very good. At the ferry terminal, the bus dropped us off and we all walked on the ferry to Puntarenas. This ferry was smaller than the one we had taken in, but the ride took about the same amount of time (one hour). After departing the ferry on the Puntarenas side, we boarded a larger, nicer bus. It had air conditioning, but no bathroom (I did not drink any water during the bus trip). The final leg of the bus ride back to San Jose took about 2 and a half hours, and we arrived at the Coca Cola bus station in down-town San Jose around 1:30.
The Coca Cola bus station is a very busy place, and in a bad part of town. However, if you’re aware of what’s going on around you and keep an eye on your things, you shouldn’t have any problems. We walked about 8 blocks back to the Best Western (a cab would have been too complicated with 7 people). The rest of the afternoon we relaxed at the hotel drinking water and beer, and eating food (we didn’t eat anything but a few snacks the entire day.) Everyone went to bed pretty early because we all had early flight in the morning, and needed extra time to get through security.
1-30-10: This was officially the last day in Costa Rica. It was a very early day; we got up at 4:30 to get the 5:00 shuttle to the airport. After arriving at the airport we paid or $26 exit fee and made our way through security; this took about an hour and a half. Then we boarded the plan, and made our way to Miami. We had a 4 hour layover in Miami, but about half of that time was spent getting in through customs, then back in through security. We met a really nice and interesting guy at the Sam Adams pub near our departing terminal; he bough us a beer and told us some interesting stories about his travels around the world doing development work.
The flight to Logan was uneventful, but we arrived early. This allowed us to catch an earlier bus back to Portland; instead of getting home at 1:30 am, we would get back 2 hours earlier. This was a nice set of events. Our bus driver back to Portland was very funny. There was no snow when we arrived back in Portland, due to all the rain that had been received the previous Monday. This was good, because we didn’t have to dig Beth’s car out of the snow. Arrived back in Hallowell around 11:30, and went to bed almost immediately, tired after a long day of travel.
