GAUDY'S BACKPACKERS

It was concerning to people that we were going to be staying in a hostel until we found an apartment. In their minds, a hostel was the scene of a horror film. I’m sure some hostels are not-so-nice, but Gaudy’s Backpackers was wonderful for us. We stayed at Gaudy’s for a full week and never had a problem. Actually, we met a lot of really awesome, adventurous, and interesting people from all over the world and we became pretty good friends with two of the three people behind the desk - Andrés and Claudia.

We had to ring the bell for someone to let us in. We felt pretty safe there. 

The hostel was really nice! The night we arrived there, we decided to pay an extra $10 to stay in our own room instead of sharing a dorm room where strangers would be sleeping as well. We had all of our things with us, including all of our money, cameras and computers, so we were afraid that someone would snoop through and take them. In the future, however, I think we will probably stay in a dorm room. Not that a hostel is super expensive anyways, but a penny saved is a penny earned!

 

 

Every morning, Andrés prepared breakfast for anyone who was awake between 7:30 and 8:30am. Each morning, we were given two pancakes and two or three different types of fruit, usually watermelon, cantaloupe, and pineapple. If we weren’t down there by 8:25, there was a good chance we weren’t getting breakfast. There were two days when Brett and I barely made it…our punishment was one pancake each. Hahah, Andrés was not about to make more.  He wasn’t mean about it, just strict with his breakfast deadlines.

One pancake. ^

Everyone was responsible for washing their own dishes and we were allowed to use the kitchen and refrigerator to prepare our own meals. Jelly bread and bananas was an okay first meal, but Brett and I wanted to cook something tasty. We figured spaghetti was easy enough so we went to the grocery store on our street and bought four small packs of pasta and a jar of pasta sauce. I love pasta and was feeling especially hungry so I suggested making all four packs and just keeping whatever might be left over in the fridge for lunch the next day. Brett thought I was crazy for wanting to make all four packs and later suggested that maybe we should only make three, but I had already opened all four so that was what we were making.

Four small packs of spaghetti turned into an absurd amount of pasta. Our small jar of sauce was not nearly enough. We ate what we could, offered everyone in the dining room some spaghetti, and then had to figure out what in the world we were going to store this food in. Claudia, the lady who works behind the desk and is originally from Columbia, brought us a plastic shoebox… a storage container. She laughed at us sooo hard! Then, she told me that she has seen a lot of interesting people come and go from the hostel, but she has never seen two people make so much pasta for one meal. After she finished making fun of us, she gave us some of her pasta sauce to use the next day because she didn't want us to waste it. Unfortunately, we really didn’t like the sauce. At all. Brett couldn’t even eat it and I forced it down. We threw the rest out after that and we were ashamed for wasting so much food.  Lesson learned. Never make four packs of spaghetti for two people, even if the packs are small.

The next night, we decided to make a common Costa Rican dish of rice and beans with some onions, red pepper, garlic, tomato sauce, eggs, and tortillas. Neither of us had ever made beans before so we were unaware that they take 420852 hours to cook. Three different groups of people prepared their food, ate their food, and had their dirty dishes washed by the time we were ready to sit down to eat. Claudia laughed at us again.

Betsy showing us how to properly prepare beans.

The next day, we had leftovers of the rice/bean/egg meal. The day after that, we had the leftover rice/bean/egg meal again. It was tasty and we enjoyed the food, but we were ready for something else after that. We’re still working on how to portion food for just the two of us.

People would come and go from the hostel almost daily. We were able to meet a lot of really awesome people. Some were from Sweden, some were from Germany, some were from Columbia, Mexico, and Holland. Some knew two languages, some new five. Some were traveling alone, some were just living life and moving from one place to the next without any specific timeline. Some were on vacation for the week while some were just traveling for the year. Paul, a guy form Holland, was taking his good ‘ole time just traveling wherever he decided to go.  He told us that whenever he runs out of money, he will just get a work visa in whatever country he is in at the time and work for a little bit until he makes enough money to continue on.
  

One night, Brett and myself, Paul, Betsy, a girl from Columbia, a young girl from the states traveling by herself to meet up with her friend, Claudia (from Columbia), and her daughter were all sitting around a table talking about random things; politics, education, places to visit in Costa Rica, missing plane flights, the beauty of Columbia, superstitions, and whatever else filled the two hour conversation. As much as I usually avoid the topic of politics, hearing about the politics of other countries is quite fascinating.

Claudia blended up a fresh cup of maracuya juice for Brett and I after most of the group went to sleep. It was starting to feel like home there at the hostel, but we knew we would (hopefully) be moving soon into our new apartment. At least we knew that we had somewhere safe and comfortable to go if anything were to go wrong, right in downtown San Jose.