Flying Solo

So Here I go~ For the first time in my life I am free. Free from the world as I know it, and everything. If feels amazing. Only a handful of people even know i’m gone. I planned this last minute trip to Costa Rica about 3 weeks ago, very last minute. However, I’ve been wanting to adventure alone since I graduated college ( about a year ago). It only took a year, a lot of problems, and things going bad, but after enduring all that emotional rut, I’m finally off & gone. This is the perfect time to go also, nothing & no one holding me back….

It had not phased me at all that I was going abroad alone. I mean I’ve traveled many places and it just got to feel normal, maybe taking a road trip or something. When we finally landed in Costa Rica I still was not phased. I stood in the customs line, got my Costa Rica stamp, and carried onto my luggage. It was not until I walked outside the airport where I thought “holy  crap what now.” I looked around and wish I had taken a photo of the madness. You walk out the sliding doors and literally there is a giant window where people all cloud around with signs and banging on the window, searching for their arrivals. Taxi drivers, families, strangers, who knows. I stood there and just watched, and men tried to  hustle me to get me into a cab, I finally found my ride to the hostel and jumped into a silver van and was taken away to the Costa Rica Backpackers Hostel.

The hostel was interesting…different than expected (I found it online) & completed different than any other hostel I’ve ever stayed at in- Peru, Australia, New Zealand. To begin, it had a gate and a guard and was in the middle of a non-lit street that looks deserted. I carried on. I walked into the cheapest room they had, a “dorm” for 4 people, and surprisingly found only one other person curled up in a blanket. As quietly as i could find my toothbrush & night necessities, she suddenly awoke & we began chatting. Turns out I was rooming with a young, 19 year old, German girl who was in the hostel a few nights before she embarked on some program & volunteer mission. I was very impressed a 19 year old had the guts to travel alone to a completely different country. She just finished high school and wanted some time to figure out what she really wanted to do & what to study in college. Brilliant. She has jet lagged and exhausted, and to my surprise she really wanted to hangout with me in the morning as I dared to wander the city of San Jose in the morning before catching my next ride. Shocked she instantly befriended me, we shut off the light & attempted to get some sleep. I forgot how much effort goes into staying in a hostel. You need a towel, shower shoes, all your stuff organized, your sharing a bathroom, need to put away valuables/ money, and you’re forced to sleep on old beds & reuse sheets and linens that have been used my who knows what kind of people. Gross. I was very happy to be staying there only one night.

I awoke at about 645am to a cheery German girl with dark hair. She literally looked like Suzie, same body structure, face features, nice white smile, & the way she talked and her mannerisms even were similar. I tried to explain to her what a sorority was but she didnt get it. Haha. I told her my friend reminded me of her. We walked all over the city, but stayed local to our hostel. We went down the main streets, went into El Mercado Central, which ended up being a food/meat/fish market & attempted to go into some museums. To our worst luck though, the Gold museum looked close, the Jade museum was $8 (rip off), and the national museum looked dull. Oh well, we had fun & I got to see what San Jose is like. Surprisingly, it kind of reminded me of Panama. I mean, the people look the same, dress in bright colors a lot, & many are over weight. We also saw some bums. It was a bout a 2.5 city tour and then we returned to the hostel where I packed up my stuff & went back to the airport to where my next destination, Pura Vida Resort, would pick me up.