As if the fact that the bus journey back to San Jose wasn’t bad enough for departing at 5am, it also took 8 hours.  Luckily we were so exhausted from our all-nighter that we managed to sleep and there were also a good set of photo opportunities along the journey.  In one of the breaks I got chatting with a local who had studied languages in Europe and was very interested in the nature of our trip - he was delighted to hear that Costa Rica was a real up and coming destination for trips from British secondary schools.

We returned to San Jose at about half past 3 and after doing a bit of bus/hostel booking had the rest of the afternoon to do a bit of shopping.  I was looking for some new clothes to replace the battered ones that I had brought with me, but unfortunately didn’t find much in the range of expensive and bland clothing shops.  The one shirt that I did buy turned out to have been made totally asymmetrically and was judged by Ben to make me look like “a Catholic who was about to be confirmed”.  Praise indeed.  One thing that San Jose did turn out to be good for was books and I was able to pick up a cheap copy of Hemmingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.  We made a vague attempt to find a present for Mrs Lee’s birthday but didn’t find anything suitable and decided to put this off until our next destination.  Our choices of destination for dinner were essentially a walk through San Jose in the dark, the suspected brothel next door, or the hostel.  Rob and Hannah nudged us towards the latter option and we obliged, though this meant that we ended up feeling pretty cooped up and spent all night mucking around in the dorm.