A far from manic Monday.

How was your Monday?

I had a super-busy morning! I spoke to Ma Fitzgerald through the wonder that is Viber, and I washed the clothes that I'd worn on a the journey over, because they smelled pretty bad. But I didn't have a tumble dryer. But my room has a random open air bit through some sliding doors, that measures about three metres by three metres and I MacGyvered a washing line. Good innit?

When I'm looking for work after expedition and they're looking for somebody who can do "creative problem solving", I'm just going to show them this picture.

I met up with Sarah and we set off to find somewhere to get breakfast. This is the view from the street outside the hostel.

We found ourselves in the centre of San José, where we learned that when they say there's ham in an omelette, they really do not skimp on the ham. We also learned that the Costa Rican coffee is as good as people say.

Other lessons included:

In San José, if you have a shop that sells surfing gear, a picture of a wave is sometimes not good enough, and sometimes you just need to make a wave out of concrete sticking out of your shop.

There are cute puppies in Costa Rica too.

A beer by the pool with the sun shining really is lovely.

Also, Costa Rican women are mostly hot. No pictures for that lesson. Let's not be creepy here.

We set off for food later that evening and ended up at a place with karaoke, which I'm not a fan of, but they had pizza and a pitcher of beer for 8500CRN (about 10.38GBP), so I let them off.

I had sourced an Irish bar before I arrived, and the main one is only about five minutes walk from the hostel. It was my duty as an Irishman to visit the establishment in question, and undertake a QAT (quality assurance test) on its Guinness.

I know. It looks like a badly poured bottle of Guinness. That's because it is. Even though it's been through one of those vibrator things that's supposed to make it right. It has achieved a D grade in its QAT. The only reason it didn't fail is because people who don't know anything about Guinness will still appreciate it, but in terms of pour, texture, flavour and general character, it was poor.

And now it's time to sleep.