1. Costa Rica: transiting through USA to Coco Beach

At the end of a week touring the southern half of the country for work and a conference in Birmingham, school Easter holidays were on the horizon so I departed the UK! This time my adventures have brought me to Costa Rica, which since it’s another long haul destination, required a stopover somewhere and despite my reservations, I had to transit through Houston, Texas in the USA.

The Americans don’t let you even transit through their country without purchasing a visa and also insisting that checked luggage is collected in America then checked back in for the next flight. You have to legally enter the country, passing through their security and immigration and pay for the luxury through the purchase of an entry visa. All terribly convenient and endlessly sensible, of course. Fortunately, thanks to my strict avoidance of stopovers of less than 3 hours, I had a 12 hour overnight in Texas. Just as well since my plane ended up 2 hours delayed out of Heathrow and when the mad and panicked dash commenced on landing, for those who had a very tight connection to make, I feared for the extreme unlikelihood that their bags would make their connection they were running for! Instead, I navigated ‘George Bush International Airport’, with my bag that I’d picked up and used the little inter-terminal tram. Less of a train and more reminiscent of one of those small carriage, slow fairground rides from the 90s. Like the ghost train perhaps.

Although the pleasure of a huge and comfy bed was almost worth the astonishingly expensive prices the Americans think is acceptable, I had to leave my airport pretty early as I was concerned about the passport queue for my next flight. The American government is in a partial shutdown currently (at time of writing although I believe they may have reached an agreement now!), as it has been for the past 6 weeks or so. The budgets have to be agreed annually and currently there is a massive stalemate with the Department for Homeland Security budget - it’s the one that covers passports and immigration at airports but also the ICE agents who are currently masked and running amok in some states, indiscriminately shooting people. Perhaps understandably, the democrats are refusing to approve a budget that doesn’t include considerable reform of ICE while predictably, Trumps crew, who aren’t busily involved in starting ill advised wars and killing innocents abroad, are insisting ICE must be funded. As a result, DHS hasn’t received any funding for a weeks - which means the TSA (the people who work at passport control) have not been paid for 6 weeks. They’ve been informed that they’re necessary workers and so must continue going to work, unpaid. It’s resulted in the highest amount of TSA people not going to work ever, which in turn has meant passport control in some places has almost ground to a halt. In Houston airport, it means that of the 4 operational terminals, only 2 have working TSA staff. Initially, I was advised that I had to go to terminal C to drop my bag then get the ghost train tram to another terminal to go through immigration (with queues of up to 4 hours!) then come back on the monorail back to hopefully be in time for my flight! Extremely luckily, one TSA person had arrived and was busily shunting all the terminal C people like me straight through and into departures so I avoided that nightmare.

This meant I ended up with quite a while to wait for my plane. However, I was ok because the airport staff delivery cart loads of camp beds overnight so when the duty free and shops close, everyone grabs a camp bed and sleeps on it. Then, when it’s time for shops to open, little men in high vis come and wake everyone up and pack the beds away. I needn’t have paid for a hotel at all!

Aside from being horribly small and uncomfortable seats, my flights were both ok. They were an American airline so obviously served tea in the most atrocious fashion. When I asked for one, I was handed a tea bag and then given a cup of lukewarm warm water which had already had some milk poured into it!

My first stop in Costa Rica is in a place called Coco Beach - it’s a little town with a main street of restaurants and plentiful souvenir shops and, as its name suggests, a large beach. The beach is darker coloured sand which I presume is the result of volcanic activity originally forming the land here. I went for a walk around on my first day. Disappointingly, I didn’t see any sloths. Accordingly to the marketing for Costa Rica, they are everywhere. I was hoping they’d be as abundant as the seagulls in Portsmouth, or rats at Andrews HQ when the garden infestation as at its worse. I did, however, see some some excellent birds in the trees, including some green parrots that soursned exactly time the Tenerfian ones, a flock of huge pelicans patrolling the shore and diving for fish and a massive iguana in a tree that a lovely man pointed out to me! He was a friendly local. He had very few teeth but the ones did have were gold. The man that is, not the iguana.

On my first full day here, I awoke early to prepare for my day. By this, I mean, of course, that I had my morning cup of tea. Costa Rica is a destination frequented by a lot of Americans it seems - so it’s relatively expensive to eat or do anything designed for tourists. There are super luxury range hotels (I imagine - I didn’t look much at those options!) and even lower budget hotels are fairly expensive but also, still fairly budget. My room is compact but has the treat of a balcony. It has nothing aside from a small double bed, one side of which is pushed against the wall, an open unit with a bar and some clothes hangers on and then a little fridge. It does not boast any kind of tea or coffee facilities though. Fortunately,I anticipated the American influence of inadequate drink facilities so I packed not only my own cup but also my own kettle!

Anyway, once suitably hydrated, I headed off on my diving. Although baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary and dead Jesus are all at the church next door, I gave them a miss despite it being a Sunday. I also decided not to partake in the game of Sunday football that the locals indulge in, at the height of the day in full sun and 34° heat in the shade!

Fabulously, the diving is catered for in a more Asian style, which is to say that my dive gear, that I’d dropped in the day before, had been transported over to the boat and set up. So all we had to do was saunter down to the beach where a little wooden motor boat collected us directly from the shore and took us over to the dive boat moored in the bay. On day one it was myself and a French couple diving with a dive master and another girl who was training to be a DM. I’d been told that water temps could be changeable when there were currents and some thermoclines so I was incased in my rash guard layer, 3mm vest and 5mm wetsuit… I wasn’t fully prepared for the low visibility that we met though!

Our first dive in particular was not dissimilar to diving in pea soup but with the added feature of a massive smack of little jellyfish that we descended into. Fortunately not stingers as they were around for the entirety of the dive where they’d been caught in the current. There was, I would have said, a little bit of current that we mostly could float along with but wasn’t difficult to swim against at times to manoeuvre round rocks or hold a position and watch the fishes play. You could tell every time a jellyfish had collided with you as it was quite a hard gelatinous ball that boinked into and off you. They weren’t wrong about changeable sea temperature either - at the surface, the water is around 28°C (warm enough for just diving in rash guard only), deeper than about 5m, it drops to 26° and then when currents and thermoclines flow through, it dropped down to as low as 20°C at times. Although that doesn’t sound like much difference, it’s quite extreme changes which were entirely unpredictable so it was like being plunged between an ice bath and being cooked on a par-boil. The jellies and the low visibility meant you couldn’t see much unless you were close to it so there weren’t loads of photos but I did see so many beautiful porcupine puffers, which are one of my most favourite fish in the sea!

After the dive, the dive master - and the French - talked about how tough the conditions were, in terms of the hard current. The master seemed genuine and kept describing it as a ‘tough dive’. I would have preferred it to be less green but hadn’t thought the current was bad at all and certainly not challenging. I can’t decide if that means I’m just quite a lot better and more able to cope than I use to be or whether I just got lucky. Perhaps some of the ripping currents I’ve been in have prepared me for what I’d now considered a very gentle current. I also couldn’t decide if the DM, who is perhaps 25 and seems in good health and fitness, was just being kind to the French or if he really thought it was tough. If I see him any time without the French in ear shot, I shall question that!

Our second dive seemed a little dull initially as it was really very shallow, much ‘easier’ (by design) so just floating along at a max of 8m. It was really more of an extended snorkel. The visibility was better and although the most interesting thing I saw in the first 10 minutes were what seemed like a huge number of dead little crabs, we did then find some super cool harlequin shrimps out in the open and also 3 octopus!

Day 2 of diving was another day locally, we saw some more rays and a big turtle but the visibility remained stubbornly poor so there are not photos! However, there were ever more lovely porcupine puffers and a fab octopus who came out of his hole and spent a bit of time with me, which an absolute joy!