Backpackers Guide to San Jose, Costa Rica, San Jose, Costa Rica

We ended up having 3 separate stays in San José, at the beginning, in the middle during Santa Semana, and at the end just before going to the airport for our next destination. It seems only right therefore that we include San Jose in our blog posts. On our gap year travels this turned out to be the first country we had visited that was part of our original plans. We arrived with high hopes of seeing things we had never seen before. In that time we saw much of the capital, which included both highlights and low-lifes.

Initially we arrived in the capital, San Jose, on a flight from Antigua that went via Miami. We had considered stopping off in Miami for a few days and maybe see if we can go find an alligator or two. We needed negative PCR tests to be able to enter the USA, which we managed to do OK in Antigua, albeit for a small fortune, but further research on Miami, known to be a Trump state, showed that their COVID figures were appalling. This was somewhere we wanted to get in to, and out of asap.

Nigel had wanted to visit Costa Rica since his friend and colleague Carolyn visited here a couple of years ago. She really enthused about it and when she showed me a few of her holiday photos, he was hooked. Costa Rica has 5% of the world’s biodiversity, which means a great deal of flora and fauna can be found here. We were both very excited to about visiting. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).