Travelling home

Our journey home started as we left Tulum yesterday to drive to Cancun for our flight back to San Jose. Cancun airport was very efficient, checked in, through security and spending our last pesos in the Cuervo Tequileria within 30 mins of arriving. Uneventful flight - except for the landing through some low level turbulence - and an equally efficient trip through immigration and customs. It was great to be back in CR where the people are much more friendly and welcoming than in Mexico - from the immigration and customs officers to the taxi drivers and hotel staff. We had meals in Mexico with waiters who managed to get through the whole meal without uttering a word; our waiter last night stopped for a chat and gave me a blow by blow account of the Arsenal/Barca game which he had watched in the kitchen - don't hold out much hope for the Gunners on the return leg, but at least the conversation helped improve my Spanish.

Surprisingly for a Tico waiter in a Chinese restaurant, he expressed some disparaging views of the Chinese customers who were just arriving for a wedding dinner. Maybe he is influenced by the 5000 chinese workers imported by the Chinese Govt to build the new CR National Stadium which is a gift from China. Apparently there are no Tican's on the site and all of the supplies and most of the materials have been imported directly from China.

Luckily we had done our research and picked up our beer and wine supplies before the three day nationwide embargo on alcohol sales kicked in. Lots of people caught out today when they went to buy some beer for the weekend. No drink for sale anywhere in the country until Easter - can't imagine that working in the UK or Ireland!

Our research on other things wasn't so good - didn't realise that almost every business in the country would be closed for the Easter Holiday - and very few buses running. Organised a day trip to Poas to see the volcano again - and allow Linda to finish her shopping - and drummed up 10 others from the hostel to join us and share the costs. Turned into quite a sociable event with the people who are about to start their 10 weeks at the GVI project that we left 2 months ago.

Plenty of time tomorrow morning to pack before heading to the airport after lunch and our flight to London via Madrid. Back in London for Saturday afternoon hoping that the sun may be shining and the weather warmer there than it is today!