After San Jose we went to Dominical, where we were hoping to catch up with a couple we met on a beach earlier. The Chance would have it otherwise though, and instead of meeting our friends, we met Noel, who stopped for us just outside of San Jose, his friend Bernadette, who invited us to have some pina coladas and a dinner with a whole bunch of friendly Quebecois from Sept-Iles. After diner we went swimming in a salt-water swimming pool under a heavy tropical rain. It was the first time in our trip that we were getting wet on purpose!
After such a party, a few days of rest were in order, so we camped on a few beaches in the area, entertaining ourselves by splitting found coconuts and chewing the contents for a long while, taking in the sunsets, swimming...
It sounds very romantic and relaxing, but believe us, it was SO hot that the sweat was pouring down our faces even we calmly sat in the shade of the palm trees. It got worse during the night, when the feeble breeze seized completely, and it started raining hard, so there was NO air in our little tent. Anastasia had three sweaty nightmares in a row that night.Two days of doing nothing was enough for us, so we went back to the main road. We wanted to climb the highest peak of Costa Rica, but a $50 entrance fee to the park was way too steep. So instead we headed for Panama.
It was a sublime hitching day for us because we traveled some 300 kms without even raising a thumb! Both rides saw us walking and stopped of their own accord! The second ride, a police officer off-duty, dropped us off near a big river. He kept saying that there is lots of "cocos" in this river at night. We thought that he was talking about cocaine trafficking, but later we figured out that he was saying "crocos", short for crocodiles. He told us to camp further up stream from the bridge, because crocos there were smaller than downstream from the bridge. With such reassuring advice we found a campsite right near the water, upstream, and had a rather sleepless night, listening to the sounds of rustling leaves, which seemed like crocodiles moving around, scheming to devour us together with the tent. Our fears were fueled enormously by the huge crocodiles we saw two days earlier, about 400 kms north from where we were.
Nothing happened, of course, and we did not even see any, but we hiked out of there pretty quick in the morning.The last day of hitch-hiking in Costa Rica we spent 5 hours waiting in San Vito and got into Ciudad Neily after dark. Looking for a camping spot at night is always an adventure in itself, too. We did well though, encamping under a bridge, near a river (too shallow for the crocodiles, we made sure).
All in all, we liked Costa Rica, the cleanest country of Latin America we saw so far. It is expensive, though, and swarms with tourists, which never makes hitching easy. Moving on to Panama, where the Pan-American highway ceases to exist, and we will have to come up with a way to get across the fabled Darien Gap.
