Bargain Bonanza

Yikes! Mas barrato.

A Bargain Is a Bargain, and Nothing More...

January 2008

San Jose Costa Rica

Well, you know how it is when you smell a travel bargain. It gets in your blood and unlike most blood toxins, it won't be filtered out by the kidneys. I am an extreme case when I travel. I can't get over the feeling that the journey is that much sweeter when it's cheap. How else to interpret the fact that any idiot can buy a first class ticket and eat well and get on and off the plane first in line. The real trick is to pay steerage and ride first class. The problem is knowing how little you can pay before the journey becomes uncomfortably claustrophobic as you sit in a too small seat with your neighbors chicken looking at you from the rack above.

Perhaps surprisingly, it's the same way with hotels. I've always resented paying a big tab for one night in a rack. It seems such a waste. While in Central America, traveling with John and Rick in Nicaragua, we stayed in some pretty dodgy places, typically recommended by a cab driver who heard from his uncles brother-in-law etc. You know the drill. You're new in town, you can spend big money at the gringo tourist hotels, or you can go for the bargain on the other side of the tracks. The wives not being around, we opted for the bargain, it being late and we had had been on a bus all day. The neighborhood was grim, bars on all the windows and doors, pedestrians giving furtive sidelong glances as they darted this way and that. The proprietor wouldn't even let us in until the cab driver OK'ed us. The room wasn't too bad on the inside though. Hot n cold worked fine and we brought our own soaps and towels. We made it through the night and were gone the next day. The sweetener? Fifty dollars (USD) a night, split three ways.

Later in San Jose Costa Rica after John had split, Rick and I were thinking maybe we were overpaying, so we spent the night in a real dive for about $30 (USD) Narrow, two, too short and somewhat narrow twin beds, minimal lighting, gaps under the door, holes in the wall (admittedly small ones) a little moldy, paint that wasn't, but very quiet when the traffic stopped, and the lobby looked nice... I think we were the only ones there. After paying in advance, you always pay in advance in dive hotels, we dragged our luggage up a couple flights of stairs to our room. Then, uh-oh, the key doesn't work. Back down two flights of stairs to the front desk. 'Senor, llaves no bueno', or 'that key is no damn good' in English. 'Es verdad?' he responded. 'Let me try'. Back up 2 flights of stairs and lo & behold the proprietor jiggled the lock and the door opened. Somewhat humbled and mystified, we thanked him and apologized and settled in to our respective corners of the room, while we discussed dinner plans.

After a brief rest, we grabbed our cash and our appetites and headed out to get a bite. That door key again. It wouldn't lock the door this time. Fiddling with it for some time, I finally gathered that it didn't matter if you had it locked or not, you could open the door by lifting on the latch and giving it a slight push. This presented a problem, as we didn't want to carry our luggage but were afraid to leave it behind. That's when I realized we had, maybe, erred too far on the side of cheap. Putting a bold face on the matter however, we decided to grab a chicken dinner at a corner store (they are everywhere in Costa Rica, we started referring to it as 'all chicken, all the time') and bring it back to the room to eat. The plan worked, as our passports and my laptop were still in place when we returned.

The next morning, we checked out, took a brief walk around and found a far more respectable place a few blocks away for $50. Cheap isn't always better.

tm