Costa Rica

Golfito

Originally, the plan was to spend some time in Corcovado, a large park on the Peninsula de Osa. As it turned out, this being the rainy season, that would have meant spending some time waste deep in mud, being eaten by mosquitos. We were also planning to go down to scenic Playa Zancudo, with its dark sand beaches and phosphorescent sea life. It turns out zancudo means "big mean mosquito." So we decided to skip it.
So all that was left for us in the south after San Vito was Golfito, on the Golfo Dulce. Formerly a booming banana port, this town has fallen on hard times. That is to say, it's already dead, but its limbs are still twitching a bit.
That said, we did have one of our nicest hotel rooms to date. Hot water, AC and real cheap. The town is stretched out along the coast, so we spent some time wandering, trying to find a place to eat that had some other people in it. This became enought of a problem that we ended up eating in the same Chinese restaurant two days in a row because it seemed to be the only place that had any people. We wanted to go to this huge place called "Bienvenidos a Pollo" (Welcome to Chicken) but there was never anyone there.
For our first and only full day in Golfito we decided to take a short boatride to Playa Cacao to check out the beach. When we got there, there was no beach, and we ended up having to walk basically through peoples yards to get to a low wall to sit on. We decided to walk on the dirt road away from the "beach" for a while, and upon our return, the tide, which must have been at its highest when we showed up, had receded a bit, showing us a thin strip of rocky beach. By then there was only an hour before the boat was going to pick us up, so we sat at the one niceish restaurant sipping fanta until it came. An adventure, but not really the fun kind.
We got our tickets to go back to San Jose for five in the morning the next day. I had this conversation with the woman at the ticket counter.
"Do you want the 5am or the 8am?"
"The 5am"
"The 5am or the 8am?"
"The 5"
"You're sure?"
Repeat about three times. We're pretty morning shifted these days.

One night in lovely San Jose, and we're at the Montaña Linda hostel and language school. We'll be here for the better part of a week, and the off north.