Upon landing in Costa Rica there is a forty-five minute ride to get to the capital of San Jose from Alajuela, the country's second largest city. The whirring highway is packed full of compact cars from the '80s and '90s and it's easy to tell where the deadly highway got its deadly reputation from. During that ride, you forget about the beaches and canopies you see in the ecotourism advertisements and are instantly reminded that you are at the seat of a developing nation. The seemingly half-constructed homes stick out at you against the towering mountainous backdrop yet the whole scene blends together so well. Face glued to the window, I couldn't stop thinking about how I would be spending the next six months there. Even over a year since returning, I still struggle to find the words to do justice to that feeling of seeing something so different than what I had ever seen before.
As you near the city center, the air thickens and the potholes get bigger and bigger. The construction of the buildings doesn't change dramatically but the density of them does. They seemed to be stacked on one another but there isn't really a skyscraper in sight. Inside the city the population is buzzing and there are people everywhere. The heat is intense. As soon as you step foot into downtown, people are trying to sell you anything from bootleg DVDs to bizarre fruit I had never seen before. It's impossible to walk downtown without being harassed by the "illegal" street vendors—they get more aggressive the closer you get to the mercado central. Everything was so dizzying and exciting at the same time; all I could do was wander my first day soaking up as much of it as possible.
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