Leaving Bocas Del Toro, and Panama, meant grabbing a 45 minute speed boat to the mainland, where we could catch a bus to San Jose. The boat ride was unexpectedly beautiful. We passed through what seemed to be untouched jungle, only occasionally spotting a house or a person peaking out at us from the bushes. At one point, the boat seemed to be speeding ashore, only to turn into a hidden cove at the last minute that turned into a river.

We had originally planned to hit the beaches on the Carribean side of Costa Rica, but Lauren and Kassie had met a Swiss guy who told them that the beaches were so so and the towns sketchy. So we decided to change our plans and head to the West Coast instead. We found out about a bus to San Jose, a good halfway point to rest for the evening.

Catching the bus to San Jose was fairly easy, and within half an hour of leaving, we were at the border. On the Panamanian side, it was a quick stop at a shack for our exit stamp. Then the bus driver told us to walk to the Costa Rican side — across a very rickety bridge over a river.

Kassie, Lauren and I made our way across the bridge carefully, being sure not to fall between the slats of wood that did not appear to be nailed down. I thought we had to walk across the bridge because the bus couldn’t make it, but 10 minutes later I was horrified to see the bus slowly making its way across to meet us.

At the Costa Rican side, immigration was a pain. The immigration official asked me for a ticket to prove I was leaving the country. Lauren explained that we hadn’t bought it yet — that we couldn’t buy it until we got to San Jose. The man didn’t care. I thought that the book said you could just show sufficient funds instead, like credit cards, but that didn’t work either.

But weren’t turned away. Instead, the immigration official told us to go to a pharmacy down the road and buy and exit ticket. When we went, we were told that they only sold one ticket — a ticket from a nearby town that we were going to pass through back to the city we had came from in Panama. But the time of the ticket was even better: the bus left in less than an hour — we wouldn’t even be able to get to the town in time to catch the bus that we were supposedly “leaving” on. This was clearly a ticket we weren’t going to use. But we shelled out the $6 each and took it back to the immigration official, who readily accepted it. We spent the next hour speculating on what kind of kickbacks they immigration official was getting from the pharmacy and why Costa Rica wouldn’t just have a visa fee instead.

We made it to San Jose in the afternoon. Kassie had survived her first sweaty, bumpy bus ride with us. We grabbed a cab to a hostel we had seen online and checked in.

When we got in, we were starving since we hadn’t eaten all day. The receptionist told us about nearby restaurants and one named popped out to me and Lauren — Pizza Hut. So we forced Kassie to indulge our newly-developed Pizza Hut obsession, where we ordered a huge Pan Pizza and a pitcher of beer. We taught Kassie the rules of backgammon and watched one young 6 year old girl nearly crawl out of her skin with embarassment when the entire waitstaff came over a sing Happy Birthday. (Lauren, ever the unempathetic big sister, took a picture of her in her embarassed stage just to make it worse…)

Back at the hostel, we discovered five young kittens — four grey and one orange one. Lauren and I have been missing our cats a great deal and so we had a lot of fun playing with the super-friendly kitties.

We played pool and darts and watched part of the movie Blow on TV before heading out for our one night on the town.

We had planned to go to a touristy area listed in the Lonely Planet, but the taxi driver quoted us $10 for the fare there — there was no telling how much we’d get charged on the way back. But one of the men working at the hotel told us that there were a couple of nice bars nearby that we could walk to. One, he said, a girl from New York had gone to last week and she had really liked it.

We decided to check it out and started heading in the direction he pointed us. We weren’t exactly sure where it was, but when we got near to the intersection he had described, we heard jazzy lounge music playing — taking us all straight back to the Lower East side.

We spotted that bar almost immediately. Well-dressed people were relaxing with cocktails and the staff was setting up three beds (yes, beds, but the matresses were covered in more sofa-like material) for people to relax on.

We were immediatetly sold and grabbed one of the beds. The four of us ordered the oddly reasonably priced cocktails (I ordered a martini, which was yet another disappointing experience and yet again swore off drinking martinis outside of NYC) and lounged about.

Kassie got a new, fancy schmany camera for the trip (a Cannon Rebel) and Lauren and I were still playing with our new digital camera, so we all laid about, taking photos of ourselves in diffent poses with different settings, probably making quite a scene since we were right in the center of the patio.

The bar started getting really crowded around midnight and we decided to turn in early since we wanted to catch an early bus in the morning. Kassie got the munchies on the way home, but since this wasn’t NYC, we couldn’t find any open restaurants.

The next morning, we left early to get a bus to Jaco. We had been considering two other beaches on the Pacific side, but Jaco was close by… and Lauren had been telling us stories of her last fascinating trip to Jaco. So we decided that we should go there and visit all of her old “haunts.” Literally.