5:30 A.M.: Wake-up time to catch our taxi to the Oaxaca Aeropuerto for our 8:30 A.M. flight to Houston. After a 7 hour lay-over in the Texas airport and a 4 hour flight, we arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica around 9:30 P.M. Another hour later, we made it through customs and immigration only to be greated by a horde of taxi drivers vying for our money. Having waded through the intial crowd, we stopped temporarily to gather our wits and figure out our next action: how to catch a taxi. At that moment, a taxi driver came over to us...and wouldn't let us be. We asked him a price to our hotel and he quoted us $30 to get there in 30 minutes. We knew this was too high so we said no. He seemed like a very dishonest person, trying to tell us that the price with other taxis may be a little higher or a little lower depending on if the taxi used the meter. I (Karen) had had enough of this trickster, walking on to find someone new. A new, orange taxi pulled up and waved to me. I was a little wary at first, but the taxi driver hopped out and came to talk to me. He said he could take us there for $20 in only 15 minutes. I asked him if he would use his meter and he assured me, "Yes, most definitely."
We couldn't have gotten a better taxi driver. On the drive to the hotel, he told us he is a university student in San Jose studying Chemical Engineering and works as a taxi driver at night to pay for his school. He told us of Guanacaste, his home province in northwestern Costa Rica on the coast that we might have to go see in a couple months. The trip to the hotel cost 10,500 colones (about $21). I had a 10,000 colone bill I had just gotten from an ATM at the airport. And then I remembered I also had a 500 colone bill that Chet's dad gave us before we left. I handed it over, proud that I remembered I had it. The taxi driver looked at the 500 colone bill and laughed, asking, "Where did you get this?" I replied, "Well his [Chet's] dad gave it to us...Is it still okay?" He laughed again, saying yes it would work, but they don't really use those bills anymore.
We stayed in San Jose just the one night and met up with Wyatt's grandma the next morning. She and her friend had just been on a nine day tour of Costa Rica and were flying home that day. It was great to see her, leaving us all missing home and our grandmas.
After a little trouble of where to find the bus, we caught a bus into downtown San Jose (we had stayed in an outskirts town). Looking at our guide book, we found which bus terminal we thought we needed to go to to catch a bus to the carribean coast (San Jose has many different bus terminals). To our dismay, it wasn't the correct terminal. Through many communications and much pointing at our map (Wyatt's grandma gave us a map of San Jose that was extermely extremely helpful!), we were told that the buses here went to Puerto Viejo de Santquiri not just the plain Puerto Viejo we wanted to go to. We were finally pointed to another terminal about 3/4 of a mile away to which we promptly began our trek to. We arrived there 10 minutes before the next bus was to leave so we bought our tickets and got on the bus. We journeyed on the bus through lots of sopping wet Costa Rican jungle and 5 hours later we arrived in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica (thank you HSU Women's Crew for teaching me patience with very long bus rides!).
We arrived in Puerto Viejo in the middle of a squal and without a place to stay. The first hostel we tried was full, but the one right next door wasn't and was very glad to have us despite our wretched, soaking-wet state. They said we could pay in colones or in US dollars. We had the right amount in $ with the last dollar consisting of change Wyatt had gotten from the Houston Airport. When Wyatt handed the hostel keeper the money, the man looked at the change, asking, "What is this?" Wyatt replied that it was a quarter and some other change. The man looked at us, scoffing, "We don't use that here." But he let us keep the change and let us off the hook for the last dollar.
That night Wyatt and I (Chet) volunteered to cook dinner. We decided to make burritos, quick and easy. I dumped the beans in a pot and turned on the electric stove. The beans started bubbling and I went to stir them. As I was stirring I noticed that my arm was going numb. "How strange," I thought and massaged it a bit. I went back to stirring and my arm began to go numb again. This time I realized what was happening. The stove was electric and was wired in an extremely questionable manner. I was being shocked whenever I stirred the beans: the spoon connecting me to the metal pot and consequently the sketch electric stove. My immediate reaction to this was to let go the spoon and turn to Wyatt, "Dude you wanna give the beans a stir?" After just a few more uncomfortable shocks dinner was ready.
The next day was spent taking a shuttle from Puerto Viejo to the Costa Rica/Panama border. We traveled in a jam-packed full bus along miles and miles of banana plantations. At the border we were herded along to various stations to pay exit/entrance fees and get our passports stamped. At the Panama border Karen and I were turned back because we didn't have sufficient proof that we would leave (we had a copy of our flight info back to the states but it didn't have our names on it). We ran to a little cafe and had to pay $3 to use a computer to print out the required information (a common occurrence). We returned and were ushered to the other window this time (there were two windows). The man didn't even glance at our ticket and stamped our passports. I guess it was just bad luck that we got the stickler of the two. One other guy in our group from "Philly" had the same problem. His solution though was faketickets.com.
From the border we hopped into crammed full ("yeah we can fit one more in...") minibus and were shuttled to Almirante where we were to catch a water taxi to Isla Colon. Everyone rushed off the bus quickly filling the two boats that were waiting. Wyatt said, "We can wait, these things leave every 20 minutes or so." Two hours later we finally hopped on a boat and headed out towards the island.
The boat ride headed straight into a squal. We arrived on the island in pouring rain. We stocked up on food for the next week and finally caught a 10 minute water taxi to our destination of Isla Bastimentos. We arrived sopping wet with a few cracked eggs as the only causalties of our boat ride. Needless to say, it has been a tiring last few days of travel.
Love,
Karen and Chet
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| View from where we're staying on Isla Bastimentos in Bocas Del Toro, Panama. |
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