Hola!

We have arrived in San Jose! Two flights and lot´s of sleep deprivaton later! Although the flights were long, and very boring...lot´s of rubbish films, trashy tv and horrible food, we did get to see the New York Skyline as we flew into Newark International airport and, as you can imagine it was amazing!

Our flight got into San Jose at 8.30pm, 2.30am GMT time. The heat hit us as soon as we walked through the doors at arrivals! As did the hundreds of people trying to usher us in to one of their taxi´s! Luckily we had arranged to be picked up by the people at the hostel and finally amongst the chaos we found our man! We also met a nice Italian guy called Guiseppie and an American called John, who were also in Costa Rica on Volunteering Projects.

The late night drive through San Jose was somewhat hair raising! We were warned about being ´safe´in San Jose, not to walk around the City at night, to keep your backpacks on the front of your body at all times and when in a car, keep all your belongings hidden, as people have the habbit of smashing your windows when you stop at traffic lights and grabbing anything on show! ...great! We weren´t bricking it at all!

When we arrived at our hostel we were taken to our nice big room, and after a weak attempt to unpack, we instead decided to go straight to sleep!

We woke up this morning with the sun shining in our room, and after finding our bearings we met Guiseppie and John for a Costa Rican breakfast....It was yummy! Until I get bored of fried beans! We then half attempted a walk into the City...which seemed like a good idea until we became so aware of all the stares we were getting and the calls of ´Gringo´that we decided we would explore later and hurried back to the hostel!

We met Guiseppie for lunch, as he was leaving to head up to Nicaragua where he is going to be volunteering at a school in Granada teaching English, Italian and Maths. The remainder of the afternoon we spent attempting to plan the rest of our time here...but failed miserably and instead opted for a Siesta in the Hammocks!

My thoughts on San Jose so far...crazy! San Jose is not the ´prettiest City´ and definetly not the safest, especially for tourists...which has restricted us a little so far! The Costa Ricans we have met have been really friendly, and the pace of life hear definetly suits us! People are very relaxed, and happy and the locals we have met in the hostel, in the shops and even the bank have been very friendly and have gone out of their way to help us. I have even been putting my pathetic Spanish skills to the test! After asking for directions in very very bad Spanish I was actually understood! Maggs you would be proud! ...until she answered my question in the fastest spanish i have ever heard and all I got was three words! Suprisingly we got very lost!

The hostel we are staying at is also very nice, there is a huge tropical garden full of Palms and exotic plants and amongst them...lot´s of colourful hammocks! A large pool, a nice restaurant and a bar. The only thing so far that hasn´t been fun is the Jet lag!

It is now 8pm and it is drinking time!...for me anyway, Josh started at 1pm this afternoon! ...naturally!

Adios for now, and Hasta Luago!