Bananas, Frijoles, & Monkeys Part 5

Yay, this post will be my last post about our trip! It's the finale. I only have day 9 and day 10 left to talk about. On day 9, we said farewell to the beautiful JW. Our first happy stop was at a stand that sold handmade pottery. The pottery was made from the volcanic clay and shaped by indigenous people. There was even an adorable woman doing a demonstration. Our next stop was at Sarchi. It's home to the world's largest painted ox cart and to many of the artisans skilled in painting ox carts. We finally had some time to do some souvenir shopping.

Then, we were back on the road again heading towards San Jose. After we settled into our room, we decided to venture downtown. It seemed convenient enough. The main pedestrian street area was only 3 blocks away. It ended up being the most overwhelming part of our trip. Our first mistake was that we went out at 5 o'clock. Our next mistake had been completely unaware of how hectic a city like San Jose can be. We had spent most of our trip out in the country. Then, we had our farewell dinner. It was a bit harder than I thought it would be to say bye to everyone. Being the babies on the trip, it definitely felt like a bunch of people tried their best to look out for us.

Day 10 is a bit of jip. It's your departure date. No activities are planned except shuttling you off to the airport. Because we try to fly as cheaply as possible, we always seem to manage to have flights at odd hours. Our flight left at 3:30 and we were leaving the hotel at 11:30. We had woken up at 8:00, so we had to figure out something to do. We looked out our window and noticed that the streets were much calmer than the previous day. It definitely looked like a better time to be adventurous. Off we went. We walked several blocks in multiple directions, tried to figure out how to spend our last colones, and managed not to trip over the huge curbs. After I spent 800 colones on a candy bar, we stumbled across pizza stands selling huge pizza slices for only 900 colones. Shucks!

My hubster felt bad for me because I really wanted to try some local food. We had seen pizza places in every town we had went to. As we walked down a new street, he saw a bakery that had little pizza-like bread in the display case. He tried asking how much it was. The nice baker thought we were asking what was on it. She kept replying queso. My hubster tried asking how many colones. We were finally able to communicate and I got my mini pizza for 500 colones (less than a dollar). She heated it in a microwave, which made us a bit nervous. We were pleasantly surprised. It was fluffy delicious bready goodness with the toppings of a Hawaiian pizza. We wandered back to the hotel and hopped onto the shuttle to the airport. Many hours later we arrived at LAX.

Costa Rica is a beautiful country. I'm happy my hubster was able to convince me to go. Thanks to my parents for another awesome graduation present. I highly recommend going to Costa Rica. If you're into having someone else do all the planning, Caravan is the way to go. Don't forget to request Jesus Toledo.