So...where's your car?
Trip Start
Jan 09, 2007
1
6
11
Trip End
Jan 17, 2007
Playa Grande,
Costa Rica
Saturday, January 13, 2007
WORSE than the previous never-ending thumping and banging, and got
a little scared. I ran through what to do if it was a robber of
some sort in the office underneath us, or if it was a mob with torches,
you know, the usual, before realizing it was pretty regular and thus
probably not human at all. The alarms went off at 5,
anyway, so we would have time to get ready for the 6 a.m. bus and
I was soon able to tell that the new noise had been caused by the wind
blowing a section of the metal roof off of the building, then causing
it to thrash around against the adjacent attached pieces of metal
roof. I highly do not recommend staying in that canyon, despite
the delightful proximity to the World of Insects.
After making it into town by 5:30, in plenty of time to catch the bus
AND get some cafe negro (no cafe con leche for me in Costa Rica - way
too much milk) from the stand next door, we found our seats on the bus
and settled in for the ride up to, as far as we could tell, "The
Road." The location I had actually purchased the tickets for,
Lagarto, wasn't even on the map (it was definitely different than the
Lagarto across the Nicoya Peninsula), so our plan was to hop out as
close to the Pan-American Highway as possible to catch a bus going
north on said highway (as I assumed it would at least be paved, unlike
the roads on the mountain). Surprisingly, for such an seemingly
ill-considered plan, it worked perfectly. After the ride down the
side of the mountain, we arrived at a tiny bus stop by the side of the
Pan American, where we alighted with a half-dozen other passengers and
had time to rest a minute, get rid of the layers of clothes, and
rearrange our bags before a bus to Liberia came along, about ten
minutes later.
Liberia turned out to be a good deal smaller than I was expecting,
considering I think it's the second largest city in Costa Rica, and has
the other international airport. The population is between
35,000-40,000 people, and, other than a few main streets covered in
American fast food restaurants, banks, and a bus station, does not
really seem to contain anything else of interest. The
proliferation of banks did allow me to remedy the problem I'd been
having with the ATMs in the mountains - Banco Nacional will not accept
Visa debit cards from Wells Fargo. I've never had a problem with
this card anywhere else, in at least five other countries, but that one
specific chain of banks does not take the card. Well, it takes
it, but it refuses to give any money in exchange, which is kind of the
point. Banco Popular, Banco Cuzcatlan (sp?), and the Banco de
Costa Rica all worked fine, though, to my relief.
Just for kicks, we tried some of the American fast food for lunch, to
see if there were any interesting alterations, like the curry sauce for
the chicken nuggets I got in Italy. There were a few additions to
the menu, such as a Tico Burger at Burger King, but nothing interesting
was done to the food we actually got; Burger King and Church's
Chicken. With a complete lack of anything else to do in Liberia,
we walked back to the bus station, where I got a bubble gum ice cream
cone and a girl asked me very slowly and carefully in English to watch
her bags for her, complete with hand gestures. Not only was I
amused by someone thinking it was okay to leave her bags with a total
stranger, I was tickled by the fact she didn't think I spoke
English. So I nodded and "si"d in agreement and continued my
mission to keep the ice cream from totally disintegrating in the
heat. Bubble gum ice cream in Costa Rica, by the way, is bright
purple, without the chunks of actual gum common in the States. In
fact, I didn't even realize what I was ordering, since I didn't
recognize the word for bubblegum in Spanish (chicle de globo).
After several other trips around, leaving her bags with me every time,
the girl finally left to catch a taxi to Nicaragua, and Sarah and I got
on a bus to Tamarindo. (I was able to keep up the
Spanish-speaking charade almost to the end, too, but didn't quite make
it until she left.) The bus to Tamarindo turned out to be one of
the very-economy buses common on the Nicoya peninsula, with very small,
plastic seats and people constantly standing in the aisles and using
anything they could grab onto for support (more than once, my
skull). After more side trips through tiny villages than I could
keep track of on the map, we finally arrived in Tamarindo, a bustling
little town that reminded me of Playa del Carmen in Mexico. It's
not quite that touristy yet, but it's trying. I also saw my one
and only glimpse of a pig in Costa Rica, being walked in one of the
villages. Considering all the pork-centric dishes, we were
starting to wonder if their definition of "pig" was quite the same as
ours.
We were able to find the water-taxi across the estuary at the north end
of town fairly easily, and we were dropped off at the beach on the
other side with the instructions to go "That way. 30, 40
minutes." before the kid motored off again. We stared in dismay
at the completely deserted beach in front of us, and, since we really
didn't see another option, started walking. And walking.
And walking. Walking in sand carrying packs is not easy at the
best of times, and even more so when you've been traveling for ten
hours already. After about ten minutes, we decided to cut through
the jungle at the first available spot, to see if there was a road on
the other side, as we'd been seeing glimpses of houses through the
trees. The first available spot turned out to be through
someone's yard, where some construction workers were working (until
they spotted us traipsing through), but we didn't let that bother
us. After we hit the dirt road, we continued walking. And
walking. About an hour later, we past a tiny super, where we
stopped to ask directions, where we got directed back down the road for
another three kilometers.
About a kilometer later, we ran into a couple of tourists who spoke
English, who assured us we were almost there and to just remember to
take the turn left when the road stopped. We thanked them, and
continued walking. And walking. Eventually, we realized
we'd just made a huge circle, as we were now back on a section of road
we'd crossed back before the mini-super. Retracing our steps to
the only thing that could possibly have been considered a fork, we
found a place where the road stopped, and trickled off into two tiny
dirt trails. We took the left one, as instructed, which let us
out on a beach, with absolutely no buildings in sight. Sighing,
we turned back into the jungle to try the other trail. It was the
only option left we could see at this point, as we'd walked down
literally every other road we could find back in the
jungle. Some of them twice.
After about ten minutes on it, though, I started getting kind of
worried, as this trail was getting smaller and smaller through the
jungle and it was getting dark. The first weak spot in the trees
we saw, we cut back to the beach, even though this involved hopping
over some barbed wire and breaking several branches to clear a path we
could squeeze through. Here, we ran into the same pair of
tourists, who had evidently gotten lost themselves on the way to the
beach. I can't imagine how, with their stellar sense of
direction. But, they assured us, if we would note the markers
along the beach, the Hotel Las Tortugas was between markers 7 and 8 and
we were at marker 16, so we were very close.
And, what do you know, they were right. We were even able to
watch the sunset from the beach, before we stumbled up the drive to the
hotel, two and a half hours after being dropped off on the beach.
Where the first question we were asked was "Where's your car?"
Then, after we had gotten room keys, the girl assigned to take us to
the apartment we were staying in up the road from the actual hotel,
Brittany, asked "Did you bring a car?" Brittany said that the
hotel provided a taxi pickup service from
the boat drop off, and we were too tired to protest the lack of that
information earlier. After taking us up to the apartments and
pointing out the baby monkey in the tree next door, she tactfully noted
that after a shower, we might like to come back to the hotel for
supper. Nodding weakly, we flopped back on the beds.
In my case, I immediately sat up again, as my bed turned out to be a
board with an inch and a half of foam on top. (Since they'd also
supplied an enormous body pillow, this actually turned out alright, as
I was able to balance myself on the pillow to sleep.)
We got ready, went outside to go to supper, realized it was pitch black
outside, and went back inside to retrieve the two flashlights I'd
brought. I don't know why I felt the need to pack two, but it
worked out. While I was getting ready, Sarah ran into some
tourists staying in one of the apartments who could not conceive of us
managing to get there without a car, either. There is a reason
this is Not Done. She was also told we were going to miss the big
rodeo the next night if we saw the turtles instead, and she refrained
from laughing. Growing up in a cowboy town, we have about as
little interest in the rodeo as possible.
Fourteen hours after we'd set out that morning, we arrived at the hotel
restaurant, where we went on one of our ordering sprees. And
finished almost everything. Sarah tried a salad with palm hearts
(interesting) and grilled mahi-mahi with garlic. I had the
mahi-mahi with a tropical fruit sauce (the garlic was better), a
milkshake, and we split some shrimp and french fries (it came that way)
as an appetizer. Then we stumbled back up the hill to the
apartments, marveling at the stars, before setting our alarms for 6
a.m. the next morning to get reservations to see the turtles nesting.
If you're not driving, by all means, make SURE the hotel knows to come
pick you up from the beach. Walking five or six miles down a
convoluted dirt trail (or, conversely, the beach itself) with all of
your luggage, no matter how compact, is NOT FUN. And that's just if you
don't get lost.
