Do you Know the Way to San Jose...

...or even Alajuela?

My coffee ice-cream tastes good and settles my nerves as I contemplate just how I managed to get so lost. It should all have been so easy. I was aiming for the town of Alajuela several miles to the north-west of San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital city – just a straight-forward, five-hour drive down the Interamericana and turn left, they said. Instead, I’m stuck on the far side of San Jose after seven hours of sitting in my Suzuki Jimny (the "Jimmy"), none-the-wiser on how to reach my final destination.

It all started so well. Having said goodbye to the coconut palms, the spectacular sunsets and the grey-black sand, I left my beach front hotel at Playa Hermosa on the north-west coast the Nicoya Peninsula where I was holed up for a couple of days trying to nurse my poorly back back to its normal chronic status.

Playa Hermosa sunset

The drive to Liberia and then down the Interamericana was fine – at least for the first four hours. Stubborn clouds concealed the volcanic back-drop to the journey as I drove through the lower relief of the agricultural land – cattle and horse pastures (Santa Rosa National Park must once have looked similar), paddy fields, sugar cane and small, un-named road-side villages. It’s a largely single carriageway road and the traffic is generally light, except when a slow, whale-like lorry passes trailing a school of minnow cars in its wake. There aren’t many places to overtake – so best sit back and enjoy the ride, accompanied by a combination of Spanish local radio and, when my brain starts hurting, some ipod-rockular music. 

The Jimmy having a well-earned break

With only an hour to go, an official diversion took me off the south carriageway towards Punta Arenas on the west coast. Fine, I thought, I’ll rejoin the Interamericana later on. There was no later on. The diversion lasted over two hours with no indication of anywhere to rejoin. Worse still, I was on a new toll motorway – so I actually had to pay for the privilege of getting lost. The road's geography was quite spectacular as it wound its way through steep-sided, forest-clad mountains. It also had occasional dual carriageway sections as a bonus. However, my rubbish road map indicated I was heading for the underbelly of San Jose – the wrong side of town. I turned off before I got to the town centre and stopped in the first car-park I could find – it was an office department store, like Staples. I inflicted my Spanish on the car-park attendant who direct me somewhere. I followed his hand gestures and set-off again. It was then that I noticed the ice cream parlour in a new shopping precinct. So I pulled in and here I am.

Somewhat calmer, I set off along the direction indicated by the car-park attendant. It is a grand tour of all the bits of San Jose that visitors don’t go to San Jose for: rich, gated communities in the hills, shacks, schools, roadworks… It is when I end up in a concrete mixing site that I know I’ve taken a wrong turning. Again, I ask a couple more people over the next half an hour. Slowly, I appear to be heading in the right direction. Then the fuel warning light illuminates to offer me more panic. As the needle flickers on empty, I spot a petrol station, so I fill up and the attendant, finally, gives me the right directions to the Interamericana.

On the Interamericana and heading back to where I should have come in, I am lulled into a false sense of security as I see the exit sign for Alajuela. I take it and feel I’m almost at my destination. I just need to find the new Banco Popular orange bank building and take the turn opposite. I drive right through the rush hour town centre, managing not to maim anyone in the process, and out the other side. Up the hill a couple of miles and there is the bank in another new shopping centre. Rather than pull into the street to my hotel, I decide to go and reward myself with some groceries, a coffee and some back pain tablets (I buy these from a pharmacist – she only gives me two and they don’t have any effect!). Now I’m calm, I hop across the road in the Jimmy and ask the security guard at the gated entrance to let me in. He say, “No!” Wrong place, wrong bank!

Somewhere in Alajuela

It’s getting dark now, so the virtually non-existent road-signs will be even harder to see. The guard draws me a scrawling but effective map, which I can just discern in the dwindling light. I follow his route religiously and, save for a couple of poorly directed road-signs, arrive dishevelled and distressed at my small but beautifully-formed bed and breakfast accommodation. The journey has taken around eight hours. I can’t be bothered to go out and eat, so I order a takeaway from around the corner, which is delivered in a polystyrene tray. I open it. It contains one of the weirdest meals I’ve ever had: steak covered in melted cheese, accompanied by quarter of a baked potato in tin foil, some rice and some horrible-looking ground black beans, all topped off with a fried banana. I eat it anyway, regardless of the consequences.