Travel Missteps: The Best Bar That I Never Went To

After my strange “tour” of the Santa Clara ruins, I met a member of my G Adventures group, Tony. I relayed to him what had happened, and he offered to come with me as we went to find something to do that night. I really wanted to check out a bar that someone had recommended called Café No Sé. It is supposed to be a great ex-pat bar where all the travelers go. It was described as a bit bohemian with live music, and so sounded like a lot of fun.

So we set off. I pride myself on my meticulous planning and thought I knew where it was. But I didn’t see it where I expected to see it, and so we continued down the street. We walked and walked before I realized I was a bit lost. I stopped at a “fast food” store and asked “Donde Estas Café No Sé?” I was met with confused looks. “Qué?” Was their response. Another person came up, I asked again “Donde Estas Café No Sé?” I wondered if my Spanish was bad. I had only taken a year of it back in middle school, and quite frankly I only remembered how to say “Where is…”, order something hot, how are you / I’m good, and a handful of numbers. Another worker pointed down in a different direction from where we came, said a few numbers which I assumed was how many blocks. We thanked him and took off in the direction he said.

We walked past school children playing, we walked past neighborhoods and out of the way places. I started to think maybe we had been given bad directions. So we stopped and asked a passerby. “Donde Estas Café No Sé?” Again, we were met with blank looks. They asked me in broken English, “What Cafe?” And I replied “No Sé”. He looked at me like I was crazy, and thinking about this later, I think he pointed in a random direction just to be rid of us.

We were now so far from where our hotel was, and at this point I decided to backtrack to where we had come before. I was sure I would have been right in my directions, maybe we had just missed the sign? As we walked we asked a third time, “Donde Estas Café No Sé?” and the person just shrugged. Apparently this bar wasn’t popular with the locals, or as I feared, maybe it had closed?

Now we were nearing where we had been before. I remember passing a bookstore on the way up, and thought it would be a great place to ask for directions since they likely spoke English. As we were walking back, the man was closing up shop. I ran up to him but he stopped me, saying he was sorry but they were closed for the day. I then asked him “Do you know a bar named Café No Sé? We are lost and trying to find it.” He chuckled a bit, and pointed to a closed door right next to his shop. “It won’t open for another 2 hours.”

I felt defeated. I had remember seeing the bookstore, but had just missed the hand-painted sign on the door, as I had expected the bar to be something easy to notice, not a closed door. We could have saved ourselves an hour of walking. Not wanting to wait, we ended up at a restaurant next door called Angie Angie Cafe Arte and had a great meal with live music next to a bon fire.

Sadly, the next night on my way with my group back to Café No Sé, disaster struck and I injured myself. I really wanted to go to the bar, but I realized I needed to take care of myself if I was going to make it through the rest of the trip. So alas I never got to go to that fabled bar.

But I did learn two things that were funny in hindsight:

That bookstore, called Dyslexia Libros, is actually in the same building as Café No Sé! You could walk right into the bar from the shop! If only we had stopped their sooner!
No Sé means “I don’t know”. It must be a cruel joke on lost tourists who are trying to find the bar, as everywhere they go they ask “Where is the Cafe I don’t Know?” And when people asked “Which cafe?” I would respond “I don’t know.” Haha…very funny.