Surf city

With a few days to go before our flight out of Costa Rica we reasoned that due to known factors (high prices, development, westernisation, profusion of American holidaymakers) Costa Rica would not be for us. So we took the chance to visit the Nicaraguan surf town of San Juan del Sur. We pitched up on the chicken bus and had trouble finding a room, eventually landing in the local surf-bum-shack. Definately the shakiest room we have had (would have blown away on Little Corn) there was definately a laid back vibe with the lads playing computer games, wet suits everywhere and the pets patrolling the ground floor. I found one of the tiny tortoises staring down both the dog and the cat at the same time. We ate enormous pizza, swam on San Juan´s great beach, didnt have time to explore the surrounds, but understood how it would be easy to lose weeks there.

We took a pricey cross border bus direct to San Jose in Costa Rica but still had to spend a couple of hours at the border and we went straight to the Pangea hostel, a backpacker dream according to the bible, and also a Miles Davis album, and pre-historic continent to boot. Nightmare morelike. Not bad in a persoal security or dirty way. But my god. It looked a prison. The rooms were tiny, pokey and dark, like prison. There was a fast food restaurant with (albeit free) stand up Internet terminals. You had to wear club style entry wrist bands and endure avergely unpumping averagely uninspiring music. And pay extortionate amounts for extras. It was a traveller distopia. It was positively Orwellian. In Oz people get shuttled from hostel to hostel only to exit the hostel for the obligatory bar hopping tour (unless there is an in-hostel bar like this place had). This was a nightmare for us, only made worse by the sound of shrieking American youth at all hours. Trying ont to generalise we have noted regularly how our North American cousins will enter a room or quiet area and begin to whisper. But then once a certain threshold has been reached they will ramp it and scream the same old dull small talk as if that has been the atmosphere of the room/terrace/bar/restaurant/recital/mosque all along. Guys - give it a rest. Put a sock in it - as the old man would have suggested.

Oh but we are weak. Because of the westernisation of Costa Rica it was very easy for us to spend money on shopping for bikinis, books and other travelling essentials. Just lik every time we end up spending in a non-native owned hotel or restaurant, we felt dirty.

The real reason I don´t like Costa Rica is because the snakes took my two spare sets of guitar strings off me at security check. The seventh flight and now they take my strings - arseholes!

La chica enjoys senset at San Juan before massive pizza
Backgammon on the InterAmerican highway waiting for the bus out of Nicaragua