Healing in San Jose Costa Rica

I spent a couple of months living in San Jose Costa Rica while I healed up from my surgeries. It was a relaxing enjoyable experience. I frequently went down to the Hotel Presidente to talk to the guys there and all their experiences with the girls of Costa Rica. The Del Ray and Marlin Bar are just around the corner from the hotel and lots of the men stay at the Presidente while they play with the hookers. They sit around in the mornings and compare their notes and to rate the various girls. I cracked up listening to some of their stories about the hunt for girls. It isn't much of a challenge in Costa Rica. Prostitution is legal and regulated. The Del Ray Hotel is one of the most popular places to pick up the girls. The bar there has anywhere from fifty to hundreds of girls at any one time to choose from. Myself I never indulged but some of these guys were hooked on the game like it was a drug. Lots of them told their wives that they were going to go fishing in Costa Rica but it wasn't red snapper they meant, it was pink snapper.

I also played the horses over at the casino. Sometimes I bet on the sports book too if I felt the odds were right. I only play numbers not favorites when I gamble. I do it for enjoyment and I keep the amounts low so that it is just for fun. Some of the high rollers would watch me making my small bets and going up to cash my tickets way more often then they did and they would tell me I should make bigger bets and I could make a good living playing the horses. For almost four years I played the horses in Berkeley California and I kept books of all my time and money in and out. I did make money but when it was divided by all the time it took to make it the hourly rate was terrible. Maybe bigger bet amounts would have made it worthwhile for me but that is not how I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

I met a lot of girls both local ones and tourists while hanging out in San Jose. I preferred them to the hookers. Don't ask me why I just do. My living situation did not allow me to bring anyone home for dates so I had to get hotel rooms or go to their places. It was fun and I only did it when I was in the mood which was too often I guess.

I had a lot of friends in San Jose by now. Some of them were fishermen I had met and others I just met when I was in San Jose or Manuel Antonio. We hung out and played cards or went to the bars and clubs together. I played pool at a bar near where I lived. I met quite a few girls there that were in Costa Rica for school, mostly language classes. They tended to be way younger than I was but we had fun together. They were from all over the world but mostly Americans, Canadians and Europeans. I think the average age of my partners was around 23 years old. I had a hard time with the age difference at first but I quickly got over it and just had fun no matter what age I ended up hanging out with.

When the rains started coming all day every day and the temperature got cold, then I had to get out of San Jose. I booked a flight to Quepos. The flight to Quepos is in a small 11 passenger plane and the flight is often times very frightening. On this flight it was clear when we left San Jose but in Quepos it was raining. From the plane we could see all the flooding below us. It had been raining very hard in the Quepos area and lots of houses were under water. Huge areas looked like lakes with houses in them. Our pilot had to make 9 aborted attempts to find the runway in Quepos. It was not fun. We would circle around line up for the runway and then go in and he would miss the approach and then gun the motor and roar back up and around again for another attempt. On one failed approach we went through tree branches as we climbed up. He obviously was not a first rate pilot. On the tenth round he finally put us down and we all were thankful to be alive. That was a scary ride for all of us. Even the pilot looked scared when we landed. I called a friend to come and pick me up and I went and checked into a hotel until I could find a house to live in.