Sadly for me, San Jose falls into that category. Having waited at least half an hour in the queue for immigration, I had to wait a further 40 minutes for my bag to arrive on the luggage belt. How does it take a bag an hour and ten minutes to disembark? Did they make it walk by itself? It had time to evolve into a sentient being and tapdance to the conveyor.
My mission was to head to Liberia asap to meet Michelle, who in turn was Tica-bussing her way south from Léon in Nicaragua, something that turned out to be considerably better organised. A taxi ride and a 4.5 hour bus ride took me to a deserted, dusty, dead-end part of Liberia, with no idea which direction to go in, no taxis, and a slightly threatening cast of desperate characters lurking about. I chose the devil I had yet to be introduced to, and ploughed off into Liberia's quiet streets to to try to find my rendez-vous with Michelle at Hotel Liberia.
The lack of taxis was explained by the fact that pretty much all of them were parked around the edge of Liberia's Parque Central, despite the fact that said park and its various bars and restaurants appeared to be almost deserted. At least they were able to help with finesse my sense of direction and find my anonymous looking residence.
Hotel Liberia is an enigma. Well, I say enigma - that makes it all sound a bit too glamorous. Despite looking smart and chic on the outside, possessing an extremely attractive communal area, our experience of the place was a succession of disappointments. The room, well ventilated with ceilings 15 feet high, nonetheless bore a perpetual smell of rotting cabbage - the drains were on the blink. Of course, our ability to contribute to the drains problem was limited by the fact the flush on our toilet didn't work, though this could be ameliorated by using the plastic bathroom bin to pour water down the toilet - always fun. That's assuming that you could fill the bin with water - if too many people were showering, you had to wait a while for running aqua.
To make matters worse, we had been allocated the room next to reception, meaning that the area outside our door became a waiting area of people checking in, checking out and checking something out. All of which could have been drowned out by the whir of the ceiling fan if it had actually whirred rather, than drifted lazily in vague circles, like plastic smoke.
I´d complain more about the Hotel, but when it came to checking out (a process lengthened by them forgetting to book a taxi for us) we did discover that it was also shockingly cheap. Of course, given how badly organised everything else was, they probably forgot to charge us for something, but - for once - I´m not complaining.
Liberia itself is a pleasant non-event; the most exciting thing in town was a motorcyclist being knocked down by a 4WD while we shopped for local SIM cards. Fortunately, despite the fact that his helmet rolled a full 30 metres down the road, we were delighted to see that the 4WD came off considerably worse than the motorcyclist, who was standing up and chatting while waiting for his ambulance. I think he may have been The Terminator.
The city´s Parque Central was pretty and bustling, as all Costa Rica´s Parques Central appear to be. The huge space of the modern Catholic cathedral was a handy refuge from the roasting heat, and a chance to enjoy my first plastic nativity scene of the trip, but there didn´t seem to be much else to do there apart from recover from jetlag. We did manage to manage to enjoy the charms of Pizza Pronto, a restaurant fronted by a huge and hugely enthusiastic manager who insisted on overcoming our indecision by providing pizzas of two different halves (allowing, in effect, four pizzas between the two of us). The gremlins of Googlemaps were also overcome to finally find Palermo, a much recommended bar that was 200 metres away and on a different street to where it should be, though by the time you read this it might have grown legs and moved back where it should be, like an item of luggage at San Jose airport. The chic atmosphere was a little compromised by the the multiple screens showing cowboys trying not to fall off bulls, punctuated by the weird sight of cowgirls performing Latin dancing while ankle deep in bullshit, but hey, we´ve all been there.
We weren´t particularly misty-eyed to wend our way to the bus station the next day, hoping to find a suitable beachy paradise to celebrate New Year, leaving the smell of cabbage far behind us.
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