This weekend I went to San Jose with some people from Bagaces. Originally we were planning to go to el Classico, which is a soccer game between the two main teams, Saprissa and La Liga. However, even though it was only a regular season game it was sold out, and the scalper prices were really high. So instead we watched the game at a bar nearby. Saprissa won 3-0 and after the game San Jose was full of people celebrating and honking horns and a few sad looking people in La Liga uniforms. And all this just for a regular season game that didn't really matter!

We also explored San Jose and went to some of the museums. There was a Gold museum that had many different gold relics and other historical artifacts from Costa Rica and explained the Pre-Colombian history of Costa Rica. There was also a art exhibit and a Costa Rican money museum that were quite interesting.

This weekend I went to Nicaragua with a large group of people from Bagaces. The group that follows the monkeys around had a short vacation and some of them needed to go to Nicaragua as well as some other foreigners in Bagaces. In all there were 10 of us that went.

We caught the bus at Bagaces that went straight to the border, but because it was full we were forced to stand the whole 2 hours to the border. Then the border took a long time because we always had to wait for the slowest person in the slowest line. But eventually we got on a bus on the Nicaraguan side where we headed to the beach at San Juan del Sur. The bus dropped us off at the end of a 20 km road to the beach where we had to wait for another bus but we managed to get a ride. All 10 of us, plus 2 more people at the bus stop, piled into a small pickup truck which already had a driver and a passenger. So there were 14 of us crammed into this truck for the fairly bumpy road to the beach but luckily no one fell out.

We got a cheap dorm hostel and our group had almost the whole room to ourselves. It's the middle of the dry season now, so everything was brown and different from the last time I came but there was plenty of sun and no danger of rain. We spent most of the time on the beach and enjoying the many good restaurants in San Juan Del Sur. The town is very popular with tourists and there were many there enjoying the dry season.

The trip back was also eventful. Three of the monkey following people stayed in town but the rest of us left on Sunday. We managed to get a ride in an SUV which, with 9 people, became very hot and uncomfortable but it beat waiting for a bus in the sun.

Despite a lack of sleep and too much sun it was a fun weekend.