Pura Vida, Costa Rica

Hanging out in the Central Park in Heredia

Getting to Costa Rica was far harder than it needed to be, with a 14-hour layover in Fort Lauderdale. Our arrival was as bad as the flights though, with a sketchy taxi ride and a 5 am check-in at our backpackers. Our first impression of this place was off to a horrible start with the street noise and atmosphere of this developing country rattling us a bit at first.

The streets were narrow and dirty, the roads were buzzing with noisy old cars and even louder motorbikes. There was no real footpath; just a mess of scrap concrete or someone’s driveway and the gutters were cavernous drains filled with trash. Poverty and development seemed to clash here. Sitting on the bus everyone was on their smart phones yet the city looked more like a dirty prison with block walls, steel gates and barbed wire strung across all the properties.

After a few nights in Alejuela, we headed to Heredia where we had planned on teaching English. We arrived without a map or any ideas. We were defiantly at a bit of a loss. We found the language school, Intercultura, where Amy knew some other English teachers and talked to some people there. They affirmed that despite all common reason, they thought this was a cool place to live and study. We thought taking a week of Spanish classes at the school, including a home stay with a local Tica (Costa Rican) lady, would give us some time to work out what we wanted and plan for it. 

Every street in any city in Costa Rica