Hello all. RT here. Aside from Tijuana, most of my early-career mongering trips were all to San Jose, Costa Rica. It was great - the chicas, the food, the closeness to the USA, the laid back attitude of the people, the casinos, the chicas - what's not to love?
Lately, my travels have taken me to other places, and it has been two years since I've done the San Jose shuttle. A friend of mine is a teacher and had the week off, so we decided to head down there. I had to promise that we would spend some of the trip doing tourist stuff, but he's a good guy, and I knew that I would have time to get my mongering in.
Most of what I remember of San Jose is unchanged: it's still close, the people are great, things are still cheap, the food's still great, and the casinos were still there. I certainly interacted with a lot of chicas, too. Sadly, someone's attitude has changed over the last two years - everyone I was with projected a more hardened, businesslike attitude than I remembered. It's probably me - I spend a lot of time in Lima, and have grown to love the attitude I encounter down there. The further I go from the United States, the less jaded and businesslike the women seem to be.
It its defense, the country was running on half power for semana santa (holy week). The entire country was closed on Thursday and Friday, and many places were running slowly, if at all, the entire week.
Anyway, here's the report. I am not going into my usual detail, just hitting the highlights:
APRIL 11, 2006
We land and check into the Royal Dutch Hotel and Casino ($40 per night for a small room). We walk around, have lunch and then check out the chicas at New Fantasy. Neither my friend nor I are impressed. My friend wants to grab some shut-eye, so he leaves and I go to a brothel called Muses.
Muses
On Avenida 7 between Calle 3/5
7,000 colones ($14 US) half hour; 11,000 colones ($22 US) hour
There is a sign on top of the building with both the word 'Muses' and a silhouette of a girl. You'd be hard pressed to miss it.
This brothel occupies the site that formerly housed Jocelyn's.
Where Jocelyn fancied itself as a club (albeit only open in the daytime), with a cover charge, a bar and music playing, in its current incarnation, Muses has done away with the bar, music and cover.
You ring the door bell (the door is on the right of the building; the old entrance was on the left. You enter in to what was the bar area and is now your standard San Jose waiting room. About 10 chicas are sitting in a 3/4 circle, and seemed pleased to see you come in, but not really all that excited. You can sit in the circle and stare, or just pick one and head to the back room. Depending on how good your Spanish is, you can probably interview the girls a little, if you want. The was no English spoken here during my visit.
I picked a girl and we proceeded to the room area. This is unchanged from the old days, and the rooms are designed to look like a row of houses on a residential street. You've got a sidewalk and everything.
When you get to the room, you pay the girl in advance (7,000 half hour/11,000 for the full hour -- $14 or $22). I chose the hour, paid her, and she went and brought the money somewhere. She got back and we had a good, but non-GFE session.
When we were getting dressed, I received absolutely no hustle for an additional propina, got a quick peck on the cheek, and was sent on my merry way. During the hour that I was there, I heard the front doorbell ring four or five times, so they seem to get some traffic.
After dinner, we head to the Hotel Del Rey and the Blue Marlin Bar. Now, even at half power, the first entrance into the Del Rey is an experience not to be missed. There were probably 'only' 60 or 70 girls there, with a higher than normal percentage of non-Ticas (the local girls were with their families for the holiday).
We played cards for a while, interspersed with a couple of runs through the bar and sitting area. There were the usual stunning Colombianas, the regular drunken Dominicans gambling, and your regular Del Rey girls. At about 11:30, I met Marina. She is a Tica, 20 years old (but very young looking. I made her show me her ID), thin, with a happy attitude and a nice smile that shone with a new set of braces. She spoke very good English, so I told her that if she didn't get any work, she should come get me in an hour, and we would go to my hotel.
My buddy left chica-less, and I played cards for a while longer. At 12:25, Marina shows up and tells me that she went to get a bite and was ready whenever I was. I cashed out what was left of my chips and we left.
Before we got started, she let me take some pictures.
Photos: Marina 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
The session was pretty good; we got into it for quite a while. She enjoyed it as much as I did, and left a happy woman, both physically and financially.
Photo: Marina 10
APRIL 12, 2006
We woke early and spent a lot of the day being tourists, and setting up our trip for Thursday and Friday.
By 8 PM, we were at the Del Rey. My friend made friends very quickly with this nice girl who's name escapes me, and we decided to bring her to dinner with us at El Pueblo.
Photo: Amiga 11
We walked the mall after eating, but business was slow, due to the midnight no-alcohol sales rule for the entire country.
My friend and his new amiga took a taxi back the hotel. All of the night clubs were closed, so I went back to the Del Rey, as it was my only choice.
I don't remember how we met, but Daniela pretty much picked me. She had an impressive rack, and I wasn't too picky. Daniela wanted $80, and I agreed, once she said that photos were OK.
Photos: Daniela 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Daniela and I had a nice time, but was indeed, all business, and she left, gave me a peck on the cheek, and told me to have a nice night. Before she left, I burned a CD of her photos. She really liked that, and it helped get her to agree to pose for me.
APRIL 13, 2006
We get up early, have breakfast and are in the private van headed towards Arenal volcano by 10:30 in the morning. We stop a couple of times along the way to act like tourists and buy crap, and about an hour away, we first see the volcano.
Granted, it's the only volcano I've seen, but it's damn impressive.
We get to the hotel. The Hotel Arenal Paraisio is very nice. We get our own cabin with two beds, and air conditioner, a small refrigerator, and a porch with a view of the volcano. The hotel has its own volcano-heated hot springs and spa, so I take advantage of the springs, while my friend gets a massage at the spa.
After doing some research, it turns out that the current lava flow of the volcano is on the OTHER side of the mountain, so we won't get to see the lava from our room. No problema - after dinner, we get a taxi that takes us for a half-hour ride to the other side, and parks in the lot of the Arenal National Park. Us, along with a hundred other people stand there for an hour while we 'ooh' and 'ahh' as red lava flows down the side of the mountain.
My camera really isn't made for these kind of photos, but here's one. I let the Microsoft Office Picture Manager software 'auto correct' the photo. It lightened it up a lot, but the red you see on the right side was indeed lava, and it flowed really fast down the side of the mountain. I'm not really a nature-type guy, but I liked the whole thing.
If you're really interested, a web search on 'Arenal volcano' will turn up some great information and photos.
The round trip taxi fare (including the wait time and the tip) was only $30. It was money well spent. We were back in the hotel and in bed by midnight.
APRIL 14, 2006 - Good Friday
Friday morning rolled around, and we had breakfast, showered and checked out of the hotel. Luckily for us, nature (and tourism) knows no holidays, so we were able to go to the Arenal Hanging Bridges and parade through the rainforest for three hours.
Here's the link for the hanging bridges: http://www.puentescolgantes.com/
We saw lots of nature. Enough to last me for quite a few years, thank you very much.
Our driver picked us up at 1:30 and we headed back to San Jose, stopping a couple of times to eat and to act like tourists.
San Jose looked like an abandoned movie set. EVERYTHING was closed when we got to town at 6:00 pm. There's nothing sadder than a closed casino. We settled in for a while, and then showered and tried to find somewhere for dinner. Virtually everything was closed, so we decided to go to the Radisson Hotel, as a big international chain had to have an open restaurant. They did, but the food was barely passable. We finished, and headed, once again, to the Del Rey (just about the only choice in town).
There was a fair selection of girls at 11:00 pm, but nothing like it should have been on a Friday night. My friend hung with me for a while, then he left to go to sleep. I continued to play cards, and ran into a friend (a resident) who I hadn't seen in years. He joined me, and at 12:01, the alcohol started flowing again, and the place got livelier, and some more girls started to arrive.
I wound up playing cards with my friend until 4 in the morning. We left together - I had lent him some money, and we were going to his house to repay me before I went to sleep. The usual set of transvestites were out on the street (be careful - some of them are really good looking). About a block past them, standing in front of the three policemen on bicycles, was a single, young, thin, kind of regular looking, girl. Or so we thought.
My friend asked, "muchaco o muchacha?" She said that she was a girl, and we asked why she wasn't in the Del Rey. She told us that she wasn't as beautiful as the Del Rey girls, and wouldn't get any business. We asked her how much she wanted, and she told us 10,000 colones ($20). So she joined our caravan.
After I collected my money, we went back to the hotel where I confirmed her female-ness. It was really late, so I let her do all the work and earn her money. She didn't want me to take any pictures, and I have no clue what her name is. She left with $30 of my money (I got the three kids and they need milk story), and I went to sleep for a couple of hours.
Fire away on the 'picking up a street girl in San Jose', guys. I'm pretty sure it wasn't my most brilliant move ever, but at the time, it seemed to make perfect sense. After 4 in the morning, lots of things make perfect sense that wouldn't otherwise.
APRIL 15, 2006
My friend bangs on my hotel room door at 10 am. We go down to breakfast where I tell him of my adventures while he was busy sleeping. He takes it all in and sums it up with, "well, I'm glad you had fun. And I'm glad it was you, not me. Let's go shopping."
We head over to the Mercado Central, where everything is back to full swing. It was amazing how the place could go from looking like a city that was hit with a smart bomb to its normal hustle and bustle in just 12 hours, but there you have it.
We bought some more gifts for the folks back home. Some of my favorite places to hit are the coffee tiendas. I was able to buy beans for my Florida amigos that were still warm, right out of the roaster. Here are the beans, right out of the roaster:
I was dragging after that, so I went back to the hotel to crash for a while, and met back up with my buddy at around 6 pm.
We wound up going out to dinner with a couple of American girls that we met at Arenal. They were on a Costa Rican whirlwind tour, but dinner Saturday was on their own. It was a little strange for me to spend so much time speaking English in San Jose. My Spanish is pretty awful, but I try to practice as much as I can when I'm traveling. Also, I think that the local people appreciate the attempt, no matter how crappy my pronunciation is.
The girls had to be up at 6 in the morning to go climb a mountain or ride a raft somewhere, so we said our goodbyes after dinner and went our separate ways.
First, we tried to go to Club 40. This is a club/brothel on Avenida 7. I have had a good time there in the past, and I don't think that I spent all that much money doing it. Club 40 was closed, but it could have just been due to the holiday week. I hope that they're still open - they had just spent some money refurbishing the place when I was there two years ago, but a lot can happen in two years.
Our next stop was VIPS, another nightclub/brothel. This one's on Avenida 11 and Calle 1, a block away from the Amon Plaza Hotel. I have been to this place a couple of times, usually the only gringo in the house. The music's good, the drinks are cheap (this time, they charged us $6 to get in and that included two drinks), and - if I remember correctly - I paid just about next to nothing for an uninspired half hour in a dingy room with a pretty chica.
Call me nuts, but I just like the place. The hookers are all over the spectrum in terms of size, color, shape, and looks. Strangely, IMO, the prettiest one of the bunch was sitting there alone, or just talking to the other girls.
The place was a little to, er, sketchy, for my friend, so we finished our two drinks and headed - where else? To the Del Rey.
We get there, and my buddy is REAL impressed. "Pretty busy tonight," he says. Well, it was busier that the rest of the week, but for 11:00 on a Saturday night? Nothing. I apologize to him (like it's my fault that it's Easter) and tell him that when we come back, we will make sure it is not a holiday.
We play cards for a while, and he gets bored and leaves. I play for a while more, also bored. After five days of not much sleep and OK sex with a bunch of different girls, it didn't matter much to me one way or the other if I took someone back to the hotel that night. I really didn't want to get into the whole negotiation thing with these girls, so I just went to one of the cheap video poker machines and waited to see who would approach me.
I fended off the advances of a few women that were either a) too old, b) too expensive or c) too not beautiful. It was probably about 2:30 when one girl with a real nice rack came by and watched me parlay two dollars into two and a half dollars in nothing flat. We went through the whole getting to know you routine, and then she told me that she would come home with me, give me a massage, have sex, go to sleep, wake up, have more sex with me and then leave, all for $100. She was nice enough, so I agreed, but first I let my $2.50 whittle away down to nothing.
We got back to the hotel (the Royal Dutch was pretty lax in getting the girls' IDs this trip), and she kept her end of the deal. The sex was nothing spectacular, but she was there and I was willing, so it all worked out, and we fell asleep.
APRIL 16, 2006
Sunlight pours through the forgotten-to-close the drapes windows, and we both wake up, and complete the rest of our agreed-upon business. I'm still laying there, breathing heavily when she jumps in the shower, gets dressed, kisses me good bye, and takes off.
I meet my buddy for breakfast and we get back to the hotel and pack. Checkout is fairly painless, and the cab got us to the airport at 11:45 for our 1:40 flight. Evidently, Easter Sunday is a big travel day out of Costa Rica. The lines were endless. My American Airlines Gold status got us through the check-in easily, but the security check took forever. Not that it mattered, because there were no seats available in the terminal (the earlier flight was late to leave, so it was chaos). Our plane was totally sold out, but everyone got on board, and the flight was uneventful. Immigration wasn't as bad as I feared. We picked up our bags and got waived right through customs, and our trip was over.
Final thoughts:
There was MUCH more English spoken in San Jose this trip than I had ever noticed before. Not just the chicas, but the dealers in the casinos, the clerks in the stores, everywhere. It seems that English is being taught in the regular schools these days. It is just as valuable a work tool as is math or science, and it might very well pay off in the long run.
I spent more time in the Del Rey this trip than I had in my previous four visits. Why? Well, for one, it was the only game in town a couple of nights. Two, it was my friend's first time, and I didn't think he was really ready for places like 747. And three, what the hell - I had to be somewhere.
Overall, I had a good time, but it was more because of the company and the tourism than for the mongering experiences. I don't know if 'spoiled' is the right word, but I am getting used to more than San Jose had to offer me on this trip. As a result of spending a lot of time in the Del Rey, I dealt with women who were giving off a much more mercenary vibe than I prefer. Don't get me wrong - I had a good time and will return again. I just won't go back to hopping over there every time American Airlines puts San Jose on sale from Miami.