October 15th: Puerto Jimenez to San Jose

We woke up at 6am and hurried to the airport, where the same guy from yesterday told us the plane that was suppose to land hadn't even left San Jose yet. We had to wait several house before the plane even left the city. During our wait an older, very smelly dog with flies surrounding him came into the airport and kept creeping closer to us. I felt horrible, but he smelled terrible. It was so bad that I actually had to shoo him away, something I never thought I would have to do to a dog. The plane arrived and we had a mostly smooth flight back to San Jose. In the middle of the flight there was some turbulence as we went over some mountains, but otherwise it was fine. Midair, they told us that the small Pavas airport was closed, so we flew into the international airport. From there a shuttle picked us up and dropped everyone off en route to the Pavas airport. then, the driver was kind enough to drive us straight to Gaudy's, for a tip. At Gaudy's we got a different room than the last one. It was a little bigger, and it slept three people. But, the queen bed was horrible. We found out later that the mattress felt like sleeping in a lawn chair. It was not worth it. Plus, the toilet in our bathroom kept making a horrible groaning sound no matter what we did.

We left all out stuff in the room, then wandered to downtown to find the Coca Cola bus station, and to get work boots and Harry Potter in Spanish. There are many indoor open markets downtown, like Bazaars. They sell pretty much everything there: clothes, food, soccer equipment, spices, meat/fish, and there are some pretty sad looking pet stores. The animals themselves didn't look terrible, but they were stacked in small cages. It was pretty awful. I found work boots pretty quickly, but Grant only found some that were slightly too small. He bought them, then regreted it later that night. Turns out, American Shampoo/Conditioner is very expensive. I should have brought that stuff from the States. The sidewalks outside the bazaars are very narrow and full of people competing for space with street vendors selling everything from produce, sweet breads, socks, underwear, remote controlls, and DVDs. We walked a long ways before we could find a book store. For the most part, any stores apart from the bazaar seemed to sell only clothing. On our way back to the central bus station, we had a sandwich at Quiznos. it was basically the same as what we were used to, but it was very expensive and the method for retrieving you sandwich is different. We waited a long time for our number to be called before we realized that the line we were watching was actually where you're suppose to go after you order and pay. Before we left the central bus station we tried to find our exact terminal. People kept pointing us in the right direction, but theneighborhood got sketchier and sketchier so we gave up and left. We found it online later. We bought juice at the supermarket, and we talked to my sister on Skype! Busy day.