Costa Rica Pt. 3 - San Jose

Quick note: After two days of letting my phone dry out, it magically turned back on. Crisis averted.

With new life in my phone, we were all bussed back to San Jose. Again we had a BBQ at the Marin’s rental house, however tonight all the visitors were dead set on going out for a drink. In hindsight, this probably wasn’t the best choice. But hindsight is 20/20.

San Jose is not a very nice city. There’s a ton of crime, nowhere feels safe and every single building is coated in barbed wire. There’s one area of town that is affluent and much nicer than the rest.  But in order for us to get to it, we’d have through the worst neighborhood in town. On the main road, there’s one stoplight as you head through this part of town. At nighttime, you don’t stop. If there’s no cross traffic, you run it. Unfortunately for us, we were forced to stop.

The car in front of us came to a full stop at the light. Seconds later, two men walked out of the shadows to surround their car. Both clearly had guns. One of the men walked around the back and tried to open the rear door. The other walked up to the driver side door. Fortunately for them, the doors were locked and they finally took off. We sped away quickly on their tail. Naturally, all of us in the car were scared. We had been one car away from being in some serious shit. But, we were already past the bad part of town – so we had our drink.

Knowing that we’d have to go back through the same part of town, we were nervous about running into the same problem. As we split back into our cars we all agreed that if we hit the red light again, we would just zoom through.

And right on queue, we hit the same red light. We were forced to come to a stop, because there was some cross traffic. Daniel, driving the car behind us, started honking rapidly. Sensing trouble, we finally saw an opening and zoomed through the light. It wasn’t until we got back to the hotel that we learned some guys had come out of the shadows and approached Daniels car. We were very fortunate to get out when we did.

All the bad stuff aside the next few days were actually quite relaxing. I said a number of goodbyes, which is always sad, but I got to hang with my friends for a few final days before shipping off.

I also learned that whatever the hell Natilla is, I’m addicted. It’s some kind of cream that Costa Rican’s put on everything. But it’s best on Pinto (rice & beans).

After a few days, I was off on my own. Daniel dropped me off at the airport early in the morning and I flew down to Bogota.