The start of our Central America tour started with an 1am arrival at San Jose airport. It felt like we had walked into a nightmare because we had to wait for our bags for ages as the baggage carousel had broken down. We were getting increasingly frustrated as other flights arrived after us and were leaving before us.

Once we got our bags we caught a taxi to our hostel. (Obviously, after checking our bags to ensure that they hadn't been tampered with! Wouldn't want to travel around Central America unknown to us that an airport worker had stashed some grade A drugs in our bags - paranoid much?)

First impressions definitely count as when we arrived at our hostel, it looked like a warehouse...the kind where you have to do a secret knock to get in. They had received our booking, but they had over allocated the private rooms so we ended up with an 8 bed dorm all to ourselves.

Central America also marked the return back to grungy backpacking and both of us not coping! After the comforts of Florence and the home comforts of friends and families in a western world where accommodation standards are high! It won't be long before we're back in our own beds :)

In the one day we had in San Jose we went for a walk around the city taking in its various parks and markets. San Jose, in our opinion is a necessary evil as its our gateway to Central America. In hindsight we should have just stayed one night.