We left Bahia Drake and took the bus up to San Jose
along the Inter-american highway (which runs from Alaska
to the Darien Gap, Panama).
This gave us another opportunity to
experience the difference in the road system between Panama and Costa Rica –
this is the main artery of the country, and yet it was still partially blocked
in three places by erosion undermining the road, a landslide and a tree-fall
respectively – if there´s one thing Costa Rica could do with investing in, its
slope stabilization around their road network.
After a brief stay in the now familiar San Jose, we got the bus to
Monteverde (after an interesting morning wondering around trying to find the
bus station – only to find out that we´d got the address wrong, by confusing
the numbers of the calle and the avenida – doh!). We had an interesting experience when we got
off halfway for the usual rest stop at a roadside café. We heard the conductor say ´take your stuff off, we´ll be staying for 20 minutes´ - we took this to mean be careful about security. So, we
walked off with our day sacks, got some snacks and Rachel used the loos – ok – except after
10 minutes, I suddenly saw what I thought was our bus pulling out onto the road
and turning back toward San Jose.
In a
fit of mild panic, I managed to stop the bus driver, but with my sketchy
Spanish couldn´t really tell him what was wrong, except to ask him to wait a moment and gesticulate wildly at the toilets (I probably could have done a better job if I wasn´t flustered, but as it was...).
Rachel then rushed out
and found out that this bus was off to San
Jose and the other bus in the car park was going onto
Monteverde. Ok – we dubiously bordered
that bus and found it was actually a different one – aaaargh!
Luckily, Rachel found our original driver, still here, who explained
that our backpacks had been transferred onto the new bus, much to our relief,
and that he had told us to take everything off the bus (we´d missed the bit about why obviously). I´d left my rather soggy walking boots in the
hand-luggage rack of our previous bus, now headed back to San Jose – which then took us three days to
retrieve, after hounding various drivers and bus-office guys to get them brought
back on a returning bus. Luckily no-one had
nicked them. However, maybe this isn´t
so surprising, as they had nice moldy bits on them from being enclosed in a
plastic bag all that time….. So, only a minor cock-up, but it could´ve been pretty major!
There´s a lesson here – listen to everything people are saying, not just
the bits that we know they´re going to say!
