Paul Alton MBA

The month starts with us in Nicaragua. From there we travel through Costa Rica to end the month in Panama.

We were up puttering around, packing somewhat early and headed up the road to Comedor Buffet Heymar (the cafetin from the last couple of days) for breakfast. Our timing was off so we returned in about twenty minutes later and they were open. We are headed to Matagalpa today, but are in no particular rush to leave. The trip is not usually more than a couple of hours and we don’t want to arrive at our hotel and have the room dirty and nowhere to put our bags while they clean it. So we set a target to leave our digs at ten o’clock or when we feel we are not going to need a bathroom for quite a while. Whichever comes later.

After daily meds are taken and everything is packed we spend the time visiting with Marta, the maid, and the French guests, checking e-mail and keyboarding a narrative in Word to be added to the web site later. The French guys do not repeat the orange juice and raw egg trick today. Apparently yesterday's eggs bobbed between stomach and throat the rest of the day. 

One last check around and pit stop and off we go almost exactly at ten. We walk to the corner and then up the street a bit. Most of the taxis are full or don’t like the looks of us and won’t stop so we keep walking up to the next corner where a taxi does pick us up. He wanders around looking for some friends. It sounds like he is trying to arrange for somebody else to pick a scheduled pick up of his, but that’s just my guess. Anyway, eventually he started driving slowly to the Cotran Sud bus stations and we got there while there were still seats on the ordinario bus to Matagalpa. That didn’t last long. Everybody and their chicken travels on the weekend in Nicaragua. It was cheek by cheek most of the trip.

Somebody we had seen at the Somoto Canyon showed up at the hostel yesterday. He told us of his trip on a crowded chicken bus the past week where his wallet was stolen from a zippered pocket while he was standing on the bus and being bumped around by other passengers. He didn’t have a lot of money in the wallet and no cards, but it was a nuisance nevertheless. He told us of his new strategy of where he carries things. I changed my strategy a bit as well, keeping enough for the fare in a shirt pocket so nobody sees where the wallet is and, today, letting Juanita sit on the aisle. Also we sat further back in the bus so there was less chance of having to give up a seat for manners. Not to mention I was totally without education (literal translation from Spanish for rude behaviour), put on my sunglasses, put in my ear buds and stared out the window never making eye contact with standing passengers. I am ashamed of this expedient behaviour, but not enough to not do it again. Juanita supports the concept of her sitting on the aisle, but was not too impressed with the young woman who leaned on her for much of the trip. Close to Matagalpa the traffic was stopped in both directions for about fifteen minutes and the young woman got off and never got back on so the rest of the ride was more comfortable for Juanita.

At the Matagalpa station we checked on times for express buses to Masaya (2:00 and 3:30).

We went out to the taxi mess. Eventually we got in a taxi and told him we were going to the Hotel El Castillo. The cab left the station with us and a full complement of others. Other passengers started paying the cabbie and I asked if our fare was twenty Cordobas for the two of us and he said no it was thirty for each since it was so high up. I said we wanted off right there and he stopped the car in the middle of the street and the other passenger in the back seat with us got out to let us out. The taxista grabbed our bags out of the back and dumped them in the street. He also dumped the bag of the front seat passenger in the street. It took a bit of arguing from the back seat passenger and us to convince him it was not our bag but the front seat passenger’s but we succeeded and he put it back under the hatchback and roared off.

We walked to the next corner and flagged down a cab and he charged the twenty for two fare I had suggested to the other cab. He might have been a rip-off artist and was annoyed we won’t cooperate or perhaps he was thinking we wanted to go the El Castillo de Chocolate which is a way out of town and high up. We’ll never know, but he sure dumped us fast when I wouldn’t pay the sixty Cordobas for a twenty Cordoba fare.

The hotel was expecting us and gave me the key. We had requested the same room as last time, but they gave me the key for the next room. It was bigger and had a fan so I went with the flow. Should have traded it in. Our old room was mostly shaded from the afternoon sun and this one isn’t. Can’t imagine it without the fan since the fan doesn’t quite keep up. It was almost two so we headed down the hill to the square and checked out the fritanga grill on the sidewalk across from the park. The enchiladas looked fine but who knew how long they had been stacked in the case at ambient temperature so we couldn’t overcome our suspicion and walked up the street to the guirilla stand and ate there followed by a walk to a bakery for cocoa con leche and a fruit salad in a glass.

After a rest in the room and a bit of surfing it was six and we walked half a block down the hill to El Gran Café for a couple of coffees and a shared Greek salad. Another wild Saturday night in Matagalpa.

We are booked into the hotel again tomorrow night. We will try to get our old room back tomorrow.

During our rest this afternoon we arrived at a tentative plan for the next week. Leave Matagalpa Monday morning, probably to Boaco followed by Juigalpa on Tuesday and El Rama on Wednesday, maybe going down the river on Wednesday or Thursday to Bluefields on The Caribbean coast. We want to be back to Granada by the tenth which will give us time to prepare to cross into Costa Rica on February thirteenth. There don’t seem to be any direct buses to Boaco so the plan may need adaptation depending on what we find from bus depots tomorrow.

• Eat supper at market food stand, beef okay, chicken greasy

• Check out two more hotels, Eskimo and cab back to hotel

• 80 channels, all Spanish, only “Panico” channel with English, watch end of horror film and start of next, read reviews of Corn Island, Bluefields, etc. Discuss going back to Matagalpa, Decide to go to Bluefields and spend a night and come back to Juigalpa and then to Matagalpa by way of Boaco and Muy Muy.

• Go to sleep, walk up at 4:30 a little warm and turn A/C back on and go out to table in hall and write up day’s doings.

Well, there is not a lot to see or do in Boaco, but we found it a pleasant little town. A bit cooler and greener than the lowlands toward Managua and we certainly have enjoyed our time here. With the exception, of course, of the inordinate time intimately spent needing a toilet or the general indifference that is a side effect. Boaco is a great place to be indifferent. It is peaceful and has amenities and you can relax there. As Juanita said’ “It’s like the fifties with wi-fi.” Being kinda grounded we didn’t walk around as much as we might have, but I think we saw the sights. I found a delightfully decaying monument at the end of a street commemorating four locals winning prizes for their poetry. That, the painted stairs and the Cerro Park with its Faro all seem to be from a burst in local pride for some sort of centenary celebration in 1995. We took a few pictures, but here is a link to more.

After a relaxed breakfast on the front veranda, Juanita stayed there to sip her coffee and enjoy the passing people. I moved to a table overlooking the courtyard and utilized the wi-fi to catch up a bit on the blog which had been neglected due to digestive events. A little after ten we wandered back to the room and finished packing and then went and stood on the front steps of the hotel until a cab stopped and took us to the bus terminal for the Managua bound buses. There were a couple of seats left over the rear wheel wells and we took one, stowed our bags in the rack above us and settled in for the trip. Within minutes of the bus leaving the terminal the aisle was full of people, but by about half an hour into the trip the crowd had thinned a bit.

There are no buses from Boaco to Granada. Our options were to take the bus to its terminal in Managua and take a cab to another terminal, or to get off at a crossroads town like San Benito or Tipitapa and get onto a bus to Masaya and get a bus from there to Granada. The second option would be the cheapest and, maybe, the quickest. Maybe not the quickest. I had flashbacks to waiting in the sun for two hours in Tipitapa a couple of years ago for a bus to Masaya. Chances are we would end up standing once we changed buses and although we only carry a couple of duffels, I didn’t want to deal with them in a standing room only bus and neither of us harbor good feelings toward the Masaya terminal. We elected for the long way home and planned to take it sitting down.

On the way to the terminal in Mangua the bus stopped at a local stop where a bunch of taxis hang out. As we pulled away the light came on and I asked Juanita to remind me to transfer there in the future. Instead we stayed on the bus another ten minutes to get to its home that was probably not much closer to UCA. Getting off the bus at the Mayero terminal in Managua we were accosted by a taxista who quoted me twenty dollars for a ride to the UCA microbus terminal. I laughed and when we came out from the banos negotiated a more reasonable price for the pair of us. Then we waited while he found a couple of other passengers to share the cab with us. They each paid $C 80 so I didn’t feel too bad about the $C 150 I paid for both.

At UCA we went through a repeat of the scenario of the guy from the un-air conditioned buses trying to grab our bags. I held on tight and just ripped them out of his hand before he got away with them. The touts for the air conditioned buses laughed and we got on the air conditioned bus in the next stall and waited for the bus seats to fill. On the road to Granada they start taking on standing passengers, many of whom are only going a short way. In Granada we got off as the bus looped around the park and started its journey back to Managuas

Granada seems awfully touristy after being in the north of the country. It took a week to run into an American there. Here we saw dozens just on the walk through town to our hotel. Not sure we like all these tourists! After greeting the staff in our hotel and checking in and dumping our bags we grabbed a cab to the Nica Bus office and sat around waiting our turn to buy a bus ticket from Granada to San Jose, Costa Rico for Friday morning. Then we grabbed another cab to the La Colonia and bought mouth wash, shampoo and snacks. We looked for Febreze, but they only had Febreze brand air freshener, not clothes spray. Pity. It is a little disgusting in concept, but spraying critical areas of your clothing with Febreze extends the practical wear life immensely. We will soldier on without it.

Then a cab back to the square and a couple of chicken chests (literal translation from the Spanish) at the Tip Top Chicken and walk back to our room. Not a super demanding day, but we feel having spent a good chunk of it travelling. 

I’m starting to write this the day before. We never know what tomorrow holds, but our plan is to cross the border to Costa Rica on a Tica Bus tomorrow. The bus is scheduled to leave Granada at 7:30 a.m. We bought tickets for all the way to San Jose, but plan to get off at Liberia where we have a hotel room booked. We have never been to Costa Rica before. That and crossing the border will be a new experience. Here’s is one article on the border crossing.

Now it’s the day after, but I’ll carry on writing in mixed tenses the same way I speak Spanish. We had heard the bus was at 7:00 am, and our tickets said 7:30 am and to be there forty-five minutes early. So I got up at 5:00 and started puttering and showering.

Juanita wasn’t too terribly impressed, but she got with the program a bit skeptically and we were out on the street in time to see a cab go by on the cross street so we walked a block over and caught a cab with two passengers and after the cab dropped them off he dropped us off at the Tica bus office. There were people standing and suitcases all over the sidewalk. Just as we got out of the cab the office doors opened and we walked in through the doors before all the standees adjusted to the new reality and choose two seats in the waiting area. I walked up to the counter and asked the guy just sitting down if we needed to check-in and he said yes so I motioned to Juanita and before you knew it we were back in our seats while the line formed and everyone else got processed. The bus showed up around 7 and everyone checked their luggage and loaded on the bus and the bus left. After checking in I had considered making a coffee run to the Esso a block away, but that would have been a bad idea it turns out.

The bus wound around the road in the valley between the Laguna de Apoyo caldera and the Mombacho volcano. This level bus has a curtained partition in front of the front seats with a curtained door in the aisle. We were right behind the driver so only had side views. Sitting in the aisle seat I could not see down into the oncoming lane but thought I had a pretty good idea of our progress. Wrong. I had not noticed when we joined the Managua – Rivas highway so was a bit surprised to look out the window and recognize the gas station / bus stop at the corner of the road going to San Jorge and the launches to Ometepe Island. Rivas already! Certainly faster than travelling by chicken bus!

On boarding the bus in Granada the driver’s assistant handed out customs forms for leaving Nicaragua and collected the forms and our passports and the exit fees for leaving. After Rivas he handed out forms for entering Costa Rica. They all required the numbers from the passports which he had. Oh well, we’ll do that part later when we are in no-man’s land.

The assistant asked about our airplane tickets out of Costa Rica. We showed him the printout for our flight out of Panama in March. “Not good enough!” He told us that they would only accept a ticket actually out of the country or we would be restricted to a maximum of five days in the country. We have booked ten days of hotels. Of course, we could buy the tickets in no-man’s land. On Tica Bus. I let it ride and looked up the issue in our guide book. Sounds like the letter of the law. While standing around in no-man’s land for an hour while the bus load of passports gets processed off stage somewhere we explore ticket options and end up buying an open ticket from San Jose back to Managua. Wrong cities, wrong direction, but cheapest option. The ticket is non-refundable, but can be changed and added to so in the unlikely event we can use to go into Panama we can spend the additional money each to upgrade. In reality it is most likely just a $US 52 entry tax that the Costa Rican government sees none of. When we are processed by immigration the guy actually checks for an exiting bus ticket before stamping our passports with a ninety day visa. Travelling across the border by bus saves a lot of hassles, but it cuts down on the options of trying to get by with just our printout. If I had argued with the driver’s assistant and the printout had not been enough I have no doubt in my mind that the Tica Bus would have left the border area without us, leaving us to buy a new ticket to Liberia as well as a ticket from San Jose to Panama. Relax and enjoy the experience. Who knows? Perhaps we can use the ticket someday, somewhere.

The country side south of the border down Costa Rica way looks much the same as Nicaragua. Funny thing about artificial lines drawn between countries. Isn't it? The highway is a bit better as are the homes.

Liberia was founded as a destination for freed African-American slaves sometime in the distant past. For all that, the racial mix seems about the same as the Pacific side of Nicaragua. The bus dumps us on the side of the road at a confluence of North American fast food restaurants (McDonald’s, Burger King, Papa John’s and more). The driver actually reads the baggage tickets we give him and compares them to the ones on the bag. A $US 2 taxi takes us to our hotel. Juanita goes looking for towels. They say they will bring them in two minutes. After about half an hour of settling in we run out of displacement activities and leave in search of lunch. You can get wi-fi in our room if you hold your iPod just so. I had checked the location of the restaurants Juanita had found in her research. They were all too far so we started walking west from the park on the main road.

We went into a bakery that had been mentioned in a Lonely Planet guide. It was a little after one and the selection left on the steam table was limited. The only promising selection was breaded, fried fish. Juanita was willing, but it looked a little greasy to me and we crossed the street to a fried chicken place. Probably even greasier, but the place was busy enough and the chicken hot enough it seemed a safer bet. After lunch we walked a bit down the street to a smoothie place and had a couple of fruit smoothies that were delicious and quite refreshing. We will pretend that the no added sugar means something in light of the orange juice they used to sweeten the drinks.

I went into the bathroom at the smoothie place, but was in no mood to squat over a tiny, seatless toilet in a room with no lock on the door. Back to the hotel. Back out we go to buy water and a CR cell phone. Back to hotel to drop off the water. Back out across the square to a bank with a big rotating sign advertising an ATM. We stood in line, but when our turn came up the machine didn’t like either of our cards.

I ask the prettiest woman in line (who else?) where there is another ATM and she tells me that down Santa Rosa Street just past the traffic lights. I take a wild guess that we are on Santa Rosa Street and we start walking. Since we were just going across the square I had not worn a hat and had already changed to flip-flops (when did they stop calling them thongs?) and shorts. To minimize risk of sun exposure I scurried from shady area to shady area while Juanita followed my erratic movements. The named bank machine was actually a credit union. There was just one person ahead of us so Juanita waited by the door I skulked behind a parking lot wall until the guy came out. We didn’t see any likely looking network signs so we kept walking to the bank that Juanita had originally suggested. When am I going to learn to just listen?

There was a line-up of over twenty people under the covered canopy outside the two doors. The back of the line was in direct sunlight. Juanita got into line. I walked to the bank door half a block away and the guard let me in and scanned me for weapons. The inside of the bank was meat locker cold and there were chairs to sit in until it was your turn. I asked him if there was a cajero automatic inside. Nope. Only outside. The line is not long, he says. It won’t take long. There are two machines. I go back out into the furnace. Only one machine is working.I sit on a concrete retaining wall in the shade until Juanita is almost in the shade and then I join her. The second machine has started working. Things go quicker. The line of people getting their weekend money moves faster. Both our cards work. We get about four times as much as we would carry in Nicaragua. Prices are much higher here and this is the first time we have encountered bank machine networks we are not tied into.

On the way back to the hotel we buy a bag of grapes and an avocado from a truck on the side of the street. We sit briefly in the cathedral by the square. It is a modernistic design that could have been designed by Consilium Bulk, the company that designed the chip storage unit at the pulp mill in Meadow Lake. The inside of the cathedral is bright and airy and the pews are modernistic open designs mimicking the shape of the cathedral. They are built with wonderful rich looking hardwood. When we get back to our room I rinse some of the grapes and go sit in the courtyard and check e-mail on my iPod. Juanita opens the room door to the breezes and checks her e-mail with the laptop. I keep nodding off sitting in the rocking chair in the courtyard and eventually rouse myself and go to the room and lie down for 'just a minute'. I wake up about four hours later and we change sides of the bed and we both sleep until the alarm goes off at five. 

A little after six a.m. we walk out of our hotel and onto the street. We spy some cabs sitting on the other side of the square and go to walk over there, but a cab stops on the street we are going to cross to get to the square. We get in, confirm the tariff and he backs up a bit and turns down the street past the Hotel Liberia. There are two bus terminals in Liberia. He drops us across from the one with buses to Canas and points in the general direction. I ask the driver of the bus sitting there if he is going to Canas and he tells me that the bus will be in the next slot over. We sit down to wait. I check with a few people and get some similar times for the Canas bus so we are happily waiting. Somebody approaches me and asks where we are going. I tell him bus to Canas, bus to Tilaran, then bus to La Fortuna. He claims that there is just one bus a day to La Fortuna and it leaves at 10:30 and that there is no way we can get to Tilaran in time and that there are so few people going to La Fortuna. Fortunately he has a way out of our dilemma. For a mere $US 50 he will drive us to Tilaran. I decline and he leaves temporarily. The guy in front of us says that that is a pretty high price.

Our information is that the bus to La Fortuna leaves at 12:30 and that we will have plenty of time. I walk across the street to the cab line-up and get a $US 60 quote to Tilaran. I look at the map. A cab from Canas will be cheap. We’ll take our chances, but there is still a lingering doubt. The bus arrives and we line-up. The guy approaches and makes his last pitch. For only $US 40, best price possible and points to his car across the street. The guy looks nice and is dressed nicely and the car looks clean and not that old, but it is a private, unmarked car. People use the phrase “ugly as sin”, but sin is often pretty attractive or we wouldn’t be seduced into sin. The serpent, after all, was the most attractive creature of the garden or something like that. I don’t think it is a good idea to believe this guy and to get into an unmarked car and ride off into the unknown. We get on the bus, pay the fare to Canas and take our seats.

The highway is pretty good and is in the process of getting a lot better. They are pouring four lanes of a divided highway. A lot of the concrete is already placed and from the looks of the rebar and dowel pins between sections they are doing it right. I hope they finish before the bottom falls out. When I see big projects on the cusp of an economic crash I always am reminded of the paper machine that was started being built in Powell River just before the depression and which sat partway built for over a decade.

The driver skillfully multitasked, stopping to let off passengers or to pick up passengers collect fares and make change, while making lane changes onto and off of the highway being constructed. Close to Canas he emptied, counted and bagged each denomination of change in his cash register and wiped out the compartments all while driving at high speed on a congested highway under construction. 

When we got on the bus I had told the driver that we were going to Tilaran and then to LaFortuna. When we got to Canas he turned off the highway and a block in and then stopped at the corner before turning onto a street parallel to the highway. He pointed at the bus parked at the curb half a block up the street and told us that that was the bus to Tilaran. We got off and walked half a block and got on the bus and it left. Up into the mountains, bit by bit. It stopped at one little town part way to Tilaran. That town was clean and neat and like the rest of CR, so far, more prosperous looking than Nicaragua.

After a pleasant drive through green, up and down scenery we arrived at the terminal in Tilaran. It was about 9:30. I checked with several people around and everybody said that the bus to LaFortuna would leave at 12:30. Three hours to wait. A cab here could have given us an extra half hour or perhaps more to wait. For the bargain price of $US 40. That would be best case. Worst case would be stripped and dead. Medium case would have been stripped, robbed and wandering unprotected in the sub-tropical sun in our scanties. I asked about tickets and learned that we pay on the bus.

After paying an attendant we took turns using the facilities then I left Juanita and the bags and checked around for a place to eat breakfast. I found one across the street which quoted a price about what one would pay in Canada and I said sure and went to get Juanita. I plugged in the laptop and we ate breakfast and I typed for a while with a second cup of coffee at Starbucks prices and then they wanted to charge me 1,000 Colones ($US 2) for being plugged into the wall outlet with the laptop and I declined and we left to find a spot in the shade in the clean, tidy, paved bus terminal and keep keyboarding. The cover over the buses is to North American standards. It looks like it could handle a Canadian snow load. Definitely a different country than Nicaragua.

The bus pulls in at and loads and leaves in the space of a couple of minutes. We roll at 12:30 as advertised. In a few minutes’ drive we are out this tidy town and on the winding, hilly road around Lake Arenal. This road was closed for a few months in rainy season but now is in great shape with smooth if narrow pavement. The only evidence of it having been closed were a temporary bailey-style bridge we crossed and some roadwork where it looks like they are replacing a culvert. If palm trees grew and blossomed bushes bloomed in B.C. you’d think you were on the  Sechelt Peninsula highway before it was upgraded. About 3:30 we rolled into La Fortuna and bought some bottled water and some fruit and eggs and grabbed a $US 5 cab to our digs for the next two nights. Our room at the Hotel Jardines Arenal is bright, spacious and air conditioned.

After minimal unpacking we are out in the common area and learning about tours. Factoring distances and cab fares we decide to book a volcano tour for tomorrow afternoon along with some soaking in a natural hot spring. Who knows? We might even see some colourful frogs. Tonight at sunset we saw and heard a toucan in a tree across the street. We are told that if we get up at five we might see some howler monkeys and more toucans. We don’t make plans for that. We do plan to walk to a nearby eco garden sometime after breakfast.

Up early.

Breakfast. Jam comes in a squeeze bag here.

Reading and writing.

Walk to Ecocenter just after 9

Decide on self-tour rather than guide, didn’t want to wait 45 minutes for tour to start,

Sloth, frogs, plants, birds, caiman, butterfly garden, leaf cutter ants,

Walk to town over back roads over three kms

Smoothies, fish for lunch

Grocery store for water and bananas

Cab back to hotel at 1:30

Change for tour

Tour van shows up at 2

Door is challenged

Back to town, pick up ten other tourists and a guide, Jose. German, French (living in New York), Indian-Americans living in Seattle, Indian – Canadian from Toronto, Germans, Aussies and a woman from Belgium (living in Spain). Every time we stop, the guide gets out and wrestles the door open and then closed. The woman was the first to join us and she rides in back with us until the guide and the driver invite her to sit in front between them. I ask, “why not me?” when they invite her and we both laugh.

We wander up a wrong road to where they think a hotel is and then turn around after some people on horseback redirect them. Then we are just leaving town and the guide mentions to the driver one other couple on the list and the driver turns around back to town muttering about not being told sooner, but it isn’t long before we are headed back up the road we came into town on yesterday. Past the turn off to the La Fortuna waterfall and past the Baldi hot springs resort and past the bridge over the hot river we will return to. In about twenty minutes we are at the Park gate and we turn off the highway onto a gravel road. The entrance to the park is just short of the dam that holds Lake Arenal. The gravel road winds higher toward the volcano. At one point we stop and everybody gets out to see some howler monkeys. A tour van coming down the hill stops and gives our van driver a large bottle of Fresca.

There are different flowers, shrubs and trees than one sees on the B.C. coast, but the density of growth and greenness is a close match. If I took off my glasses to blurrify things I wouldn’t be able to tell you if we were on a B.C. coast logging road or on the road to a National Park in Costa Rica. Near the top of the road we stop at a gate and the guard counts the passengers and the guide pays a fee and the gate opens to the near vertical road to the Arenal Volcano Observatory Lodge. The contents of another van meets us in the parking lot of the Lodge. There is a spectacular viewing deck which offers a view of the volcano and the lake. You can’t get much closer to the volcano due to safety concerns. Letting tourists wander close enough to be killed by rocks that the volcano occasionally spits out is bad for business. No repeat business from dead tourists. Plus, tourists are like the rabbits we used to raise for food. They are all happy to see you when you show up, but they all pile into the far corner of the cage after the first casualty on butchering day. Tourists, not constrained by cages, will just keep running.

After some photo ops on the deck we head off around and down the mountain on a network of trails and suspension bridges. We see birds and flowers, medicinal foliage, mosquito repellent foliage (citronella), and at the low point of the tour climb a path and stairway network to some waterfalls before climbing back to the high point. On the side of the path the guide digs up some volcanic mud and puts in a plastic bag for later.

When we get back to the Lodge we are told to change into what we want to wear at the hot springs. A few instruction challenged people ignore this advice. A number of new people join the tour at this point. More people than seats. The people that are small enough to scrunch over insist on fastening their seat belts in place so they can’t be moved. They only fasten them loosely so as a safety device they are worse than useless. They are potentially harmful by leaving ample room to accelerate before reaching the end of the tether. They do, however, work pretty good as a line in the sand and the guide shuffles cooperative people around in the van and moves one person into the other van and then wedges himself into a crack between the back of the front seat and the back of the back facing second seat. And we’re off, back down the mountain, in the gathering darkness.

At the highway bridge across the hot river our vans join the other parked vehicles and the guide announces that we should remove everything we don’t want to get wet including our shoes and that the driver will stay with the van so everything will be safe. All but the instructionally challenged comply. Since they don’t take the time to remove their shoes or clothing they are pretty much first across the road and down the path with the guide. When they reach the point where the water would swamp their shoes they stop to remove the shoes and necessary clothing for the activities. The rest of us wait for them to finish in the darkness on the path above.

The path, stairs end at a concrete slab which is the bottom of the two square culverts supporting the highway bridge. There is about four to six inches of water sluicing across it to the edge of the slab and a three foot fall into a large pool full of about fifty wet, happy people. Our twenty five or so join them by walking across the stream and down a rock stairway into the pool. There are flashlights in use and a number of tea candles get lit and placed in niches in the rock cliffs. A few people explore upstream to the other side of the highway or climb the cliff on the side of the pool, but most just wallow below the falls from the slab. The guide mixes drinks of Fresca and the local, clear moonshine. We stick to straight Fresca. The guide mixes the mud from the side of the path to the waterfalls and smears it on people’s faces. Not mine. Not Juanita's. We’ve earned our wrinkles. Plus I harbour the suspicion that the whole activity is more to do with the guide’s amusement than anybody’s skin condition. Some story to share with other guides over the remains of the moonshine.("Guess what i got my group to put on their faces!") Our group gets mud the guide has gathered. Another group gets what looks like peanut butter.

Eventually we work our way back up to and across the highway to the van and dress as much as we choose and put on our shoes. The guide announces we will be stopping at a restaurant and then be dropped off at our hotels. One couple wants to get back to book tomorrow’s tour and the enthusiasm re: a restaurant stop was underwhelming from the rest of us. The subject never came up and we were all dropped at our hotels. We got home about 8:30. Bed followed closely after.

Our hotel hosts were a married couple. Like many of us married couples they were not always precisely on the same page. Neither were they on quite the same page as the hotel’s web page. The web page said that they cooked breakfast for the guests but the guests could cook other meals. On our arrival we had asked about meals and times. We asked about cooking other meals. He said well they cooked the breakfast, but the kitchen was theirs for their use to cook their meals. I put the eggs we had bought in the fridge and forgot about them. Am sure they got used. Not on the same page as their web page.

The husband had said that they were up at five a.m. Breakfast could be any time after that. We had shown up for breakfast at seven the day before which seems to be our normal time. That worked.

Today with wanting to be out waiting on the highway shortly after 7:30 we were out in the breakfast area by about quarter after six. The coffee was on and the wife was starting to put out cutlery and runners on the tables. I went over to her and said what we wanted for breakfast. She advised me quite firmly that breakfast was at “siete” (seven). Okay. Not on same page. I decided we could live with that and just have all our packing done before seven. We were about to go back to the room and work on that, when we started talking with another guest. I guess we talked long enough because by a little after six thirty the wife showed up with our breakfast and put it on the table. I thanked her even if Juanita didn’t get what I had ordered for her. After breakfast we went and finished packing and turned in the keys and walked across the highway where were told the bus to Quesada would pick us up at “seven-thirty, but closer to seven-forty-five”. We were standing there and the owner of the hotel came out of the driveway and lowered the window and wished us happy travels and told us not to wait there, but further around the corner. Okay. We moved from the shade and around the corner into the sun where we would not see the bus coming.

After quite a while waiting a man showed up across the highway and asked if we were waiting for the bus and he directed us to stand further along the road. We moved. He was standing where he could see further up the highway toward town. When he saw the bus coming he crossed to our side. Wrong bus. At about eight fifteen the right bus came. It stopped a bit further down the highway and I walked down and made sure it was going to Quesada.

There are two buses a day from La Fortuna to San Jose: at 12:45 and 2:45. However there are buses every hour or so to Quesada and buses from there every hour or so to San Jose. After a couple of hours of mostly agricultural countryside we arrived at San Carlos and the driver kicked everybody off. I was somewhat concerned about it not being Quesada but a couple of passengers reassured us and a young mother with her toddler walked us around the corner of the building and pointed to the ticket office and the waiting San Jose bus. Later we checked the map and it showed both names for the town with one in brackets. I bought tickets and waited with the suitcases while Juanita headed into the ladies room. When she came out it was my turn for the men’s.  When I came out she was gone. Along with the luggage. I looked around and saw her standing in line for the bus and joined her.

The road to San Jose was more mountainous and winding than the road we had just been over. It was not particularly wide, but had pavement in good shape. A couple of hours of this and we arrived at San Jose. Getting off the bus we were swarmed by taxi drivers and we kind of committed to one, and he was still there when we had made our bathroom breaks and picked up a cheese tortilla at one food place and a couple of smoothies at another.

Our digs for the night was a hostel that bills itself as a bed and breakfast. Juanita had booked it last August on line. When we arrived they said they had no record of a reservation and would we mind staying in a dorm? We fussed a bit and showed the clerk our copy of the confirmation e-mail filed on our laptop. After he came back from talking to the owner he showed us a room and we started the paperwork. The e-mail had said that they took credit cards. The clerk said that cash would be a lot better. Cash it was. Then he challenged the rate. Out with the e-mail to prove the quoted rate. All is good again. We store our stuff and put our laptop in the backpack and head out to the Gold and Currency museum. The guide book says it is closed Mondays, but we take a chance and it is open and quite interesting with displays of pre-Columbian gold and set-ups of how the pre-Columbian locals made cast and hammered gold artifacts. The money was mildly interesting for a non Costa Rican.

Then we walked to the tourist office and got a map and walked a few blocks to a park and a building across from it that had been prefabricated in Belgium and assembled in San Jose. Then back to the central avenue for some American style fast food at Taco Bell. Not quite the same flavor or texture as the States or Canada. Then we walked back home to our comfortable little room in a rickety old wooden building and watched some TV in the common room until we were having trouble staying awake and we walked down the hall to the bathroom and back to our room and crashed.

Breakfast was billed as being at seven. Along about 5:30 there were the plate noises coming from the dining area. I took it to be people cooking their own breakfasts. Nope. They set the food out for the continental breakfast and people serve themselves pineapple slices, toast and jam, juice, or sugar frosted flakes. This is still going on at seven when we show up and eat and visit with fellow travellers.

Our plan for the day is to walk up through the Spanish Park, visit the Jade Museum and walk back through the National Park to the National Museum. The Jade Museum is closed and will reopen soon when the move is complete. We stop in the National Park and do verb drills for a while before going to the National Museum. It is an old army fort that was handed over to the museum when the army was abolished in 1948 after the civil war. Some interesting displays of pre-Columbian culture and artifacts, a butterfly garden and many historical displays from colonial through modern times.

Cutting across the plaza from the National Museum we saw a sign for Wong’s Restaurant and dim sum. It was a nice change from gallo pinto. Then we walked back up the Central Avenue to the Opera House and did a tour of that followed by coffee and feeding pigeons in the park before doing some more wandering and park sitting.

Then we decided to go to Walmart and walked around until we found a bus that said it was going there. It dropped us off on the side of the freeway and we climbed the bank and walked across the overpass and there we were. We came back through a bit more conventional bus stop.

Home again after a hamburger at McDonald’s. It tasted like North America.

Nothing worth watching on TV. Early to bed.

Early to rise. Visit over breakfast with fellow retired Canadian. He is staying in a dorm room. A mixed dorm room. I’m glad we didn’t accept the bait and switch at check-in. I don’t think our normal sleepwear is fit for mixed company other than our own.

Walk out of hotel. There are lots of cabs going by but all have a passenger. Metered cabs don’t seem to pick up and drop off passengers. An empty cab goes by but the cabbie doesn’t notice us.  I shout and he stops and pulls over and we get in and ask to go to the bus terminal for buses to San Isidro. He seems a bit confused, but I had the cross streets and he headed there and dropped us off behind it. We walked around the corner and found the ticket windows. There were two line-ups with no recognizable city names shown on either. Juanita got in one line and I got in the other. I got to my wicket first and bought two tickets to San Isidro de General. Seems we want the bus to Perez Zeledon which we later learn is the Canto of which San Isidro on the General River is the capital.

Juanita had seen our hotel in San Isidro just off the main road before we pulled into the bus terminal so we fought off the taxi drivers and we walked around the corner and checked into the Thunderbird Resort and Casino. The room is mid-price for Costa Rico, but a bargain by Canadian standards. Also a pretty nice room by either standard. We got settled in, washed some shirts and hung them to dry and left for a walk around town. We found a spot for lunch and walked several blocks past several alternate bus terminals until we found the one for the bus to Uvita. We bought tickets for the nine o’clock bus for the day after tomorrow and walked home.

The room was hot and muggy despite the air conditioner. It was hot outside, but cooler than the room. The receptionist brought up another controller and it didn’t help. Eventually they offered us a different room. We ended up in a Jacuzzi suite that is bigger than our house near Meadow Lake. Yes. This will do.

Breakfast is North American, brunch style, serve yourself.

All the guests seem to be Americans and Canadians.

All the attractions in town are miles away so we settled in for a relaxing day of reading, writing and surfing. We ventured out for lunch and for smoothies at dinner time. I also contributed 4,000 Colones ($8) to a slot machine in the casino, drank my “free” Coke and came back to the room.

A quiet day. Finished reading a novel I started over a week ago and handled a few e-mails. Juanita had the first bath for two months. All the places we have been staying have had showers not bath tubs.

We take our time getting mobile in the morning and wait for the kitchen rush to die down before Juanita makes our breakfast. Then we walk to the beach. Just outside the park entrance we rent a mask and snorkel.

Walk to the whale’s tale which is about a forty five minute walk from the park entrance. The whale’s tale is a stretch of exposed bedrock that cuts across the end of the sand spit, forming two crescent bay’s on the lee side. On a map it looks just like a whale’s tale. At low tide the surf breaks on the flukes and the area sheltered by them is said to be good for snorkeling.

Wade in.  Water pretty cloudy. See three bright yellow, black-striped fish who seem to enjoy swimming in my shade so once they have found me stay with me for quite a while. Then we walk on the rocks of the whale’s tale and check out tidal pools before a brief, second round of snorkeling before walking back, river wading, returning the rental gear, stopping for a smoothie each and walking back to the hotel. We paused occasionally to admire the flowering shrubs and trees. On a couple of trees with orange coloured blossoms we see iguanas walking the branches munching on blossoms.

Around one Juanita cooked lunch. Then we walked up to a nearby food store and bought more eggs and bananas and some coffee filters which we failed to find yesterday and walked back and had coffee and a nap. From then on we relaxed and read and e-mailed when the hotel Wi-Fi worked. The owner showed up and I mentioned the Wi-Fi but he looked confused and nothing changed. The network shows up and even almost connects but not quite.

After supper we watched TV and kept checking the Wi-Fi. Nope. Then there was a brief power failure and that reset the Wi-Fi. There was e-mail confirmation of tomorrow’s lodgings. We were still in their system. We are getting nervous, I guess.

Then it was bedtime.

We are awake around 6:30 and Juanita cooks breakfast before the breakfast rush. I shower while she is cooking, then we work together to make coffee. Our coffee filter plus recycled Cup of Soup cup with a hole in the bottom coffee maker works okay with a bit of tendency for the filter to sag over. While cleaning up I notice a homemade coffee filter made from panty hose and a piece of wire. That would probably have worked better, but it is still nice to have coffee with breakfast. We take our breakfast into our air conditioned room. It is already pretty warm and quite humid even under cover.

After mostly packing I check with the guy in the office. He says he will remind the owner that we need a ride to the bus station. I finish packing and finish some blog postings for the last two days and cut and paste them into the web site and publish it. I am just finishing pasting the first one and the guy says the boss is back from picking up tour guests and wants to go now. I tell him five or ten minutes and the site finished publishing while we finish packing and do a walk around. Then the laptop is packed up and we leave.

At the terminal we grab a table outside and I go through the cafeteria line and buy two coffees to keep us while we wait the hour or less until the bus arrives. I write the blog this far and then go on to other writings. There is a new Buddy Tale called Oh Gee!

A couple of buses stop and people get off and use the bathrooms and buffet line and the buses leave. A little after ten our bus arrives and everybody gets off. I give our tickets to the driver and we discuss putting our bags under the bus in the cargo space or up in the passenger area (arriba). Arriba is his decision and he locks the bus and goes on break. When he comes back we and everybody else get on. Our tickets are for seats eleven and twelve. I think they charge for the whole route of the bus so your seat is available when it gets to your stop. There might be a roadside pick-up sitting there, but they have to move when you show up. We are on the bus early and I expect maybe somebody will fuss and keep our tickets handy, but nobody shows up.

The bus leaves. It stops a lot but still the trip is quick, taking about two hours to Golfito. We don’t see our hotel on the beach as we head into town. Even if we had we had decided to ride to the end of the line and buy a tickets for the border tomorrow. Should have asked during the trip. When we got to the end the bus driver says there are no tickets. You just pay the driver. If I had asked that and asked to be dropped off at Hotel Mar y Luna (The Sea and Moon Hotel) we would have saved four dollars in cab fare, but woudn’t have seen the rest of the town. Cheap tour.

The hotel room is not ready. The last people were messy, I guess. So we have lunch on the restaurant deck overlooking the bay. Fish tacos for me and seafood rice for Juanita. We are both stuffed. There is a 23% tax on restaurant meals. With that and a tip, two meals would cost more than a room for the night. But it was wonderful and not staying in Uvita in a concrete bungalow tonight ($20/night more) subsidizes the meal.

After an hour and a half long lunch we took our stuff to our room, got the air conditioner going and washed some things and hung them to dry and read for a while to cool off. At four we emerged and a cloud cover had built up cooling things a bit. Somebody found me a life jacket and carried a kayak down to the beach and I paddled away for an hour, visiting some French Canadian guys on a charter boat and chatting with a local fisherman and his son. There were a couple of buzzards sitting on a sandbar in a river mouth, but I guess they weren’t waiting for me since they left when I showed up.

When I got back and beached the kayak and turned in the life vest we went back to the room and I rinsed the sea water out of my shirt, shoes and swim trunks and hung them to dry before showering and changing and going back to the restaurant deck to web surf, read, write and enjoy smoothies for supper.

After breakfast tomorrow we plan to step out the hotel gate and wait on the side of the road for the bus to the border with Panama. I guess we pay an exit fee from Costa Rica, an entrance fee to Panama and have to prove to Panama that we are going to leave and that we have enough money for before that.

February 28 – Friday – Las Lajas & Playa Las Lajas

Once it was dark and we shut the lights out when we went to bed we raised the blind on the screened window. The fan sucked in some cooler air during the night and we both slept well. As the dawn occurred we dropped the blind until after we were dressed. Stepping out of the cabin into the cooler morning was delightful. A little before seven I padded past the pineapple plants on the edge of the gravel patch and went over to the porch on the main house and sat at the table. After a while the owner came out and we chatted about the hat and the unusual humidity and about the cabin structure. I contend that if they were to repeat the building they should add a second screened window for cross ventilation or add a screen to the sliding glass door. She said that the palapa high pitched roof is supposed to cool the cabin, but that they had had problems with finding somebody that could do a quality job and so there was plastic under it that restricted air flow and that they had had to add the ceiling fabric to catch bits falling off the roof. Apparently these roofs are not supposed to moult if they are built right. They have problems with the roof on the main house and needed to replace it but have missed the window of this winter’s dry season. Dry season starts in December and you need to be ready to act then. Their plan is to replace the main house roof at the end of this year. I shared pictures before and after of the palapa roofs in Aldama that burnt this winter in a matter of minutes with the fire being spread from building to building by the wind.

I asked about when breakfast was and she said “now, if you want it” and I went and got Juanita. Breakfast was toast and a choice of jams. We sampled juice from the cashew fruit and decided on a blended banana drink instead. Definitely an acquired taste. I can understand why you don’t see cashew juice in the supermarket. The jam made from cashew fruit was better although liked it more than Juanita did. Coffee and sliced fruit rounded out the meal. Today was bananas and pineapple with promises of papaya tomorrow.

We asked about the discount at the Las Lajas Resort and she phoned them and arranged for us to show up. I stayed on the porch and keyboarded for a while, but the sun was on my legs and the screen was hard to see so I retired to the cabin and set up a table and c hair in front of the fan and keyboarded until it was time to pack our bag and get ready for the eleven o’clock cab. The Wi-Fi connection in the cabin comes and goes so about ten thirty I went back to the porch and cut and pasted some of the keyboarded into our blog and picked up e-mail messages. We have a confirmed extension of our stay in Santa Fe so there are no more gaps in our booked accommodations during Carnival.

Just before eleven we went out front and stood in the shade and watched traffic. We turned down one cab, and continued to wait for our eleven o’clock cab to show up. At five past we started looking for other options. A San Felix bus/van came by and we flagged it down and got in. It was pretty empty but soon filled with school kids. We rode it into town, got out and paid our buck sixty and stood in the shade until we flagged down a cab with two women passengers in it. The cabbie quoted us five bucks to the beach so we got in and rode around town until the two women got off at their destinations and I got in the front for more leg room and off we went to Las Lajas Beach Resort. The office was locked so we went down to the bar where the staff was eating lunch and then walked back to the office with the receptionist to pay our fifteen bucks for two day passes (normally ten each without discount) which come with towels, Wi-Fi, use of the pool and the right to order and pay for a nine dollar hamburger or some of the less budget items on their lunch menu. Nice facility. I think we will enjoy our afternoon on the beach and beside the pool. Probably will stick to eating the snacks we brought with us and will dine at one or several of the booths we saw being set up for Carnival along the main drag back in town.

We sat at a table in the restaurant area, ate a can of peanuts and read and keyboarded for quite a while. We then left our towels and the bag with the laptop in a secure office and went for a walk on the beach. The guide book says it is ten miles long. I’ll take its word for it. It seemed to stretch forever in both directions. The guide book also said there was cheap restaurant with fish mains for around $4 at the end of the road. I took that to mean the end of the gravel road running parallel to the beach and we turned right and walked for about ten minutes with two people way in the distance and no sign of anything but palm trees and vegetation on the landside of the beach. Juanita said that maybe the guide book meant the end of the paved road. I pulled out my iPod and reread the guide. We turned around and walked back past the resort and found the named restaurant with its empty ranks of palapas and faded peeling paint. From the beach side it looked abandoned but as we approached we realized that there was some sign of life, but not much.

Standing at the order counter looking in there was no sign of food. The drinks cooler was empty. The guy behind the counter said that they were open. The menu was on the wall. It mentioned fish ($8), chicken with fries and a daily special ($4). The chicken was crossed out. They had no daily special. We opted out and walked back up the beach accompanied by the restaurant dog who got bored with us checking out the crab burrows and sat down a little out of the surf. On the way back we discussed that it was two o’clock and that we weren’t that hungry so maybe we would share a hamburger, but decided to order a couple of iced coffees and were happy with that choice. Our original table was in a prime spot and had been grabbed when we left for the beach so we sat in a new spot that was actually better with the sun having moved. It has a good a view, but more shade and a better breeze.

Eventually we moved closer to the pool and I changed and took a dip and then sat and read unto almost dry and changed back. Along about then we realized we were being eaten by the ants whose path we seemed to be on. I walked to the office and ordered a cab and we sat back at our original table while we waited the expected forty minutes. When the cab showed up on schedule at five thirty we removed our wrist bands, dropped the towels off at the office and got in.

On our way to the resort as the highway ended we looked for a sign for tomorrow night’s hotel. We saw the general area and a cluster of buildings but nothing definitive. On the way back we asked the cabbie and he pointed out the “white building”. As we entered Las Lajas the driver tried to drop us off at the first booth that had food but it was across the street from a tent with a stereo with organ damaging levels of what passes for music. We had him drop us at the far end of the booths. Many of the booths were obviously wrapping it us for the day and we walked back and checked out the others. The food was in cases illuminated by curly bulbs which would do nothing to keep temperatures above bacteria promoting levels so we had a couple of smoothies which we finished on our walk back to the grocery store. After buying stuff to eat tonight and tomorrow we walked across the street and waited for a taxi to flag done as it was getting dark. There were no cabs for a while but they two tried to stop for us at the same time.

It had rained in town and at the bed and breakfast and it was cooler than the night before. We still slept with the fan on us, starting out on top of the sheet. Slept when we could, that is, over the noise of the barking dogs, the fireworks which lasted until around 1 a.m. and the party a few properties down. Tomorrow is a new month. We plan to move to a hotel a block off yesterday’s beach. Checkout time is noon. On the way back from the beach we arranged for a cab at noon. We’ll see. It’s 0 for 2 so far for prescheduled cabs showing up when promised.