Oakie Doke Posted March 12, 2009 Author Share Posted March 12, 2009 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oakie Doke Posted March 12, 2009 Author Share Posted March 12, 2009 Back where I started, with another Christmas tree, I realised I could just walk to the Opera House from here. So I did that. On the Opera House steps I finally broke down and started taking pictures of myself, in possibly the one most conspicuous place in Sydney. From there I walked to the Botanic Gardens and amused myself with taking more pictures of myself with the statues there. By then it was starting to get a bit late so I blindly walked back into the city, miraculously managing to end up back at the station I came from. I had dinner there, then went back to the hostel. There were people in my room, and as socialising with strangers and me don't match, I left to find an internet cafe in Kings Cross. Costa Rica tomorrow! Yay! I think I might walk up the hill to the train station instead of risking that psychotic shuttle bus again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oakie Doke Posted March 12, 2009 Author Share Posted March 12, 2009 (You can click on the pictures to go to the travbuddy photo gallery to see them bigger and with captions) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oakie Doke Posted March 12, 2009 Author Share Posted March 12, 2009 (edited) December 4th - The Longest Day Ever 41 hours long, by my calculations (which I wouldn't trust, I haven't slept in 41 hours). I got up at around 8.30ish and went down to take advantage of the hostel's free breakfast. I tripped over the kitchen step on the way into the kitchen to get it, I tripped on it on the way out with my cereal, I tripped over it again on the way in to do my dishes, and again on the way back to my room, and once more when I went to donate Dani's lollies, which I'd calculated to be 250g too heavy to bring to Costa Rica. I walked to the train station (deemed the safer option), took the train to Central Station and then to the airport, and joined the end of a very long and slow check in line. Behind someone who turned out to not only to be going to Costa Rica, with ISV, but to be in my project group, and before a creepy Italian guy from Canberra who wouldn't stop talking to me. I wanted to initiate conversation with the girl in front of me because it was pretty obvious she was with ISV, but her family were getting all teary, and I am a wuss, and that creepy Italian guy wouldn't shut up. Creepy Italian Guy managed to continue following me beyond the check in line, security, customs, everything, and even be moved to my same flight to LA. As we walked onto the tube-thingy-that-connects-the-plane-to-the-airport he asked what seat I was in, and I had to show him my ticket (with all my appendages crossed that it was no where near his). Luckily it really wasn't, but he started talking about how you can get free alcohol at the back of the plane or some **** and if I wanted to join him later or something, and I told him "Yeah, maybe..." (...not). On the plane I was next to a guy who was also going to Costa Rica, to see his girlfriend, or something. He said something ridiculous like he had accidentally booked a connecting flight to San Francisco instead of San Jose, so was catching a train from San Fran to San Jose. Idiot. In 15 hours I slept roughly 0 minutes and watched roughly 8 movies, but did manage to successfully feign sleep every time Creepy Italian Guy walked down the aisle. Thank god for being seated in the middle of a row. We arrived at LAX early, or something, and they weren't ready for us, and also renovating the airport, so it was rather chaotic and took us literally hours to get through security. When I tried to bring my baggage through I was told that my fingerprinting-guy must have forgotten to stamp my passport, so I had to go all the way back to find him again. Idiot. I talked to a crazy lady who was going to Dallas, while spying on a group of slowly growing backpacked-people that looked suspiciously like they might be ISVers. Eventually I tagged awkwardly onto their group until they asked me if I was stalking them/was with ISV. Together we proceeded to look for the "guy with a sign" that was supposed to be greeting us. He was spotted by his ISV Staff shirt, with no sign, but not before Aaron was conned out of $10 (US!) by a strange leg-complementing woman. Our sleep deprived group slowly grew as people arriving from different cities joined us. We passed the time by playing various card games, highlighted by girl-who's-name-I-can't-remember saying "5!" during an intense (okay, so we were all barely awake) game of Bull****, when the last card was an 8 and her card was a 2. Eventually joined by the Kiwis, our group (which had now grown to 16) boarded the plane to Mexico (now adorned with name labels) for a pretty uneventful flight, interspersed with some very short spouts of sleep. In Mexico, after a maze-like return from immigration, where we left one of our number (an illegal immigrant. no, she just wasn't allowed to walk around the airport with her Malaysian passport), we met Lauren. She was from the ISV group before our's (and she spotted us so easily, are we that obvious? Yes, obviously). She had just finished her two weeks of project and was about to go on to her adventure tour, but had to come to Mexico City to visit the embassy because she'd had her passport stolen in the market in Heredia on her first day. She also got stung by a scorpion at her project. She didn't get us all that excited about what lay ahead for us, to be entirely honest. We were glad to have her though, because none of us spoke any Spanish, and our boarding gate was changed at the very last minute ... and this minor change was only announced in Spanish over the speaker system. We arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica around 12-ish, and left the airport at around 2am, because Candice's luggage didn't arrive with us, or at all. Dani wasn't at Hotel America to greet us, like I'd thought she would be, but a man with a large gun was (well, he was standing outside the casino next door, same thing really). No one got to sleep until around 4am, but not before me and my roommate, Geri, managed to flood not only our room, but the lobby and entire first floor. Edited March 12, 2009 by Oakie Doke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happikali Posted March 12, 2009 Share Posted March 12, 2009 Cool pics & stories Bianca ! From the way you described arriving & all the foreign languages I REALLY thought you were landed somewhere else !! Haha ! Then you mentioned Kings Cross & I realised ... I've only read the first 2 pages so far ... *goes back to it* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oakie Doke Posted March 12, 2009 Author Share Posted March 12, 2009 December 5th - Heredia! Knowing that we had an orientation meeting at 12.30, we (by we I mean; me and Geri, and the two guys who's dorm we’d invaded because "ours was too wet") set an alarm for 10.30 because we wanted to try to do some of our required shopping with Lauren's assistance before the meeting. But we awoke to Geri exclaiming that it was ten past twelve. So we quickly got up and rushed to the lobby to find Lauren milling around and about to go for breakfast at the hotel's restaurant. Slightly confused, we joined her. Looking at the menu we wondered aloud if they would still be serving breakfast, at which point Lauren pointed out that it was only 10 o'clock. Oops. Stupid time zones. So we ordered, and after only six or so incorrect meals, I received my toast with tomato and cheese (no idea what it was called), and papaya juice. Of course, we hadn't been to the bank yet, so we all had to borrow money from Lauren to pay. We didn't even know breakfast wasn't included. So first things first, Lauren took us to get Costa Rican money from the Scotiabank. After thirty attempts of taking 50 colones out of the ATM, she helped me to get the 50,000 colones I wanted. We paid her back, and she took us to buy gumboots from the plastico store (insert humorous recount of shop assistants making fun of Aaron's large feet, and his foot getting stuck in a too-small boot), and mosquito nets from the market. Upon our return to Hotel America we were greeted by Dani and the others from the group that had been in Costa Rica 5 days earlier for the Spanish Lessons. Together we went up to the orientation meeting, where we learnt about the Costa Rican toilet custom of throwing your toilet paper in the basket beside the toilet because the sewage system can't handle it. Oops. And we also learnt of the single best invention ever. One simply made for me - the Costa Rican way of life, or rather, the Costa Rican concept of time, which is to always be 15-20 minutes late for everything. 'Tico Time'. Yes, if I will take anything from this trip, it will be a full embrace of Tico Time in my everyday life (Shhh, whether or not I was late to everything before coming here is completely irrelevant). After orientation I took Dani and her friend from Spanish lessons, Jay, to buy boots and mosquito nets, and they took me to get lunch. After getting only slightly lost we made it to a lovely little cafe/restaurant, where Dani and Jay managed to use their genius Spanish skills to order us fantastic sandwiches and guava juice. The sandwiches were salad with some kind of brilliant bean paste (sounds weird, I know, but trust me, extremely delicious), and were randomly followed by a plate of steamed vegetables. After a short trip to the baño (the toilet, you know *insert knowing look*), we headed off to see some more of Heredia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oakie Doke Posted March 12, 2009 Author Share Posted March 12, 2009 I followed Dani and Jay around Central Park and its random cow statues and creepy squirrels to the post office, where I watched a woman wrap 300 metres of tape around her package while Dani sent off a letter to her dad. We met Arlie and Jackson, who had been at the Spanish lessons and would be in our project group, outside the post office, and they were eating ice creams, so Jay lead the way to the ice cream store, because I "had" to try a Pops ice cream. And I have to say, it was nice. I got an actual banana ice cream. None of this banana-flavouring crap, it had actual real banana bits in it. Mmmm. At 4 we had our project meeting back at the hotel, where we basically just learnt what time to be ready tomorrow morning. After a short search for Jay, a short attempted journey (what were we thinking, Dani has no directional ability), a return to the hotel and another short search for Jay, we eventually found Jay, and she led the way to her and Dani's host family's house. On the way we were hit by the random "afternoon rain" they had explained at orientation, and saw a crazily large house, a creepy black church and hundreds of people lining up for buses. Really, they were everywhere. Their host family are ridiculously rich and their house has like three separate security fences. After Dani packed her stuff into her comically large bag we sat around conversing with her host brother, who was the only one who spoke English, but their mother was lovely all the same. While we were talking there was suddenly extremely loud trumpets and drums coming from the street, which apparently meant the neighbours were having a party. I guess renting live bands with the occasional accompanying karaoke in your front yard is perfectly normal custom. And there is no such thing as noise limits, because gosh, it was loud. After finishing off the night with ruining any reputation Dani had managed to build up over the last 5 days by showing her family and friend the video on her host brother's computer, her host mum drove us back to the hotel via the ridiculous and terrifying Costa Rican roads. Dani still wanted dinner, so we set out with Jo (another friend from Spanish lessons, who would also be in our project group) and Jay to find the place everyone else seemed to have gotten nachos from. We didn't find it, but we dropped Jo and Jay off at the Chinese restaurant, and went on around the corner to a dodgier area of Heredia. Dani bought bread, which weirdly turned out to have caramel in it, and I took a small chips from the fast food place ("Pollo Campero"). The till person thought I was crazy for wanting "no mas" than that (the second bit of Spanish I have learnt now). It came with ketchup and some mysterious pink substance, which I think might have been some kind of mayonnaise-bean paste mix, but who knows really? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oakie Doke Posted March 12, 2009 Author Share Posted March 12, 2009 (I have typed up more now, but I can't post it until I get my laptop back with my photos) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oakie Doke Posted March 12, 2009 Author Share Posted March 12, 2009 Cool pics & stories Bianca ! From the way you described arriving & all the foreign languages I REALLY thought you were landed somewhere else !! Haha ! Then you mentioned Kings Cross & I realised ... I've only read the first 2 pages so far ... *goes back to it* As did I, as did I Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soangel Posted March 12, 2009 Share Posted March 12, 2009 I read it on the site you linked, but was too slack to sign up to comment and was waiting for more links for more from you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelzy Posted March 12, 2009 Share Posted March 12, 2009 I did the same thing as Bec. Looking forward to more! Hurryup Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oakie Doke Posted March 12, 2009 Author Share Posted March 12, 2009 Yeah yeah yeah yeah, I can pick my laptop up at 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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