Day 16: Playa del Carmen – San Jose (Costa Rica)

Saturday, April 13th, 2019

Day 15 and final day of Mayan Discovery by G-adventures tour

Todays G-adventures itinerary: Depart at any time.

Lola organizes a transfer out to Cancun Airport for 800 MEX.

We get up early and go to the closest breakfast bar. Coffee is Nespresso (?!) but breakfast is super. We spend the last 700 MEX.

We go home, pack everything, say goodbye to the others as agreed on 09:25 am, we donot say good bye to Lola as she will do a tour in Costa Rica and we’ll meet her. Our driver is already waiting with his Volkswagen bus. We leave with our shuttle to Cancun Airport Terminal 2.

There we pay the driver, check in (somehow luggage in Latinamerica is always heavier than home, my 22 kgs mutated to 24.8 kgs). The clerk doesnot say a think, takes the exit cards and prints our pre-checked-in tickets. I got emergency exit seats for free.

We get a magnet, write block, and leave too late. The connection flight in San Salvador is shifted half an hour forward, but the crew tell us they are the crew of the connecting flight, too, so no worries …

FLIGHT 4: Avianca AV639 Cancun, MEX (CUN) 12:50 – San Salvador, El Salvador (SAL) 13:25; 1h19; Airbus A320, 15D, 15K emergency exit, good seats, 809 star alliance bonus miles

FLIGHT 5: Avianca AV621 San Salvador, El Salvador (SAL) 14:45– San Jose, Costa Rica (SJO) 16:05; 1h15; Airbus A320, full booked plane, star alliance bonus miles

Food didnot improve an avianca in the last year.

They even smallisized coke to 237 ml?!

Time to unpack food reserve

Start and Day 1 of Full Costa Rica adventure by Bamba Experience

Todays itinerary:
“Pick up at Juan Santamaria International Airport, San Jose, transfer to DoubleTree by Hilton Cariari, San Jose by Interbus”

We arrive in time. San Jose airport is well organized. Immigration lasts 5 minutes, a lot of counters occupied.

First we go to kolbi and get a local SIM for 10 USD (2 GB for 30 days), registration with passport, super easy, SIM change, SMS to 8888 with text “ETM” and activate a 2gb for 4000 crc (Cista Rica Colon, 68.100 ~ 1 EUR) package, go.

Unfortunately their IT had a breakdown today and is superslow, every sim needs 15 minutes to be unlocked, i wait 30 minutes.

Then I stress the scotiabank ATM, 300.000 CRC (~ 400 eur to high, I try, 200k seem the max), get money, look for the interbus counter – not there anymore – we go outside – call with our new sim interbus and the driver arrives.

Inbetween 3 taxi driver tried to convice me to take, for an unbeatable rate of 15 bucks, a taxi instead of interbus, because they tend to never appear. Thank you.

Then Interbus driver brings us in 15 minutes to doubletree hilton, san jose. We ask for storing heavy hiking gear until we return – 5 USD per day, resulting in 70 USD total. Thats a room for a full day.

I get free upgrade to a huge room, ice cold, window to the inside only, very US.The hotel has a casino, average guests make me feel like in southern US.