Boca- The Journey

The trip from La Selva to Tortugero did require 9hrs, 3 buses & a boat ride, but it still didn’t quite compare to the trip from San Jose to Laguna. In general we did pretty well navigating the bus system, Brenda did an awesome job researching the numerous buses required & we pooled our espanol words whenever we needed to ask for information. The public transportation here rocks, by the way, you can get just about anywhere by bus.

After 2 nights at Tortugero we headed to San Jose bright & early (0600) & made it to San Jose smoothly by ~1130. We stayed 1 night at Hostel Pangaea in San Jose, pretty cool place, mostly full of Europeans, North Americans & some Canadians, nice bar on the roof- a bit noisy but I was too exhausted to care. After hitting a couple of museums & a market Sun pm & Mon am we hit the road again. There may have been a way to get from Tortugero to Boca without hitting San Jose, but it is much easier & sometimes only possible to locate the buses to the big city.

This leg of the journey was to be one of highs & lows/ ups & downs (literally & figuratively). We were off to a pretty good start after getting pointed in the right direction & walking to the bus station from the hostel, we did manage to hit a pretty gritty part of town on our way to the bus stop that serves Cuidad Casada (aka San Carlos) but arrived without incident. This is a pretty town & a pretty bus ride through higher elevations. I made a friend on the bus, with my poor Spanish & his poor English the precise details of the conversation are a little sketchy but I am hoping to practice my Spanish & fill in the details via email. I am fairly certain he was a DJ for a local radio station.

Things started to get a little trickier after this point. This is the stage of the journey in which the buses began to be particularly crowded & we had to stand much of the time, while dealing with our backpacks. There was a little confusion regarding whether or not we were actually on the bus headed to Pital, as a kindly gentlemen was trying to explain to us (in espanol of course) that there was actually a large rock slide running thru the middle of the street & we would have to change buses at this point. The bus just went to the end of the line at the rockslide; we walked across & got on the bus waiting on the other side. Well somewhere in all this madness I managed to part with all of my cash- around 35,000 colones/ $70. I am not sure what happened, but I know that I wasn’t paying attention by then (& had already left the infamous fanny pack open at one point), I am not convinced that I actually lost it, I think it had some help disappearing, but I certainly wasn’t keeping tabs.

So I was pretty pissed off at myself/ my carelessness by this point & the bus station in Pital was an experience. We were faced with a 2hr + wait here, as these buses running to progressively smaller towns don’t run as often. There were a few sketchy characters just hanging out at the bus stop so we eventually decided to just head for a beer. The crowd on our return looked much more legitimate & we garnered the attention of the entire throng with more English/ Spanish attempts to make sure we were getting on the right bus- amarillo grande- aka big yellow school bus. We met several more people that were genuinely concerned that we arrive at the right place, the owners of the great little bar/ restaurant in Pital- where we also had some totally delicious Sopa Marisco- let us use their cell phone to call the lodge to let them know we were headed in on the bus. (We were a little confused when the person on the other end of the line told Brenda that they would be there at between 7 & 8, didn’t realize it would actually take that long to cover the distance).

The jam packed bus headed out we hit the gravel road that we were to travel on for the next almost 3hrs. It started pouring rain as darkness fell & the thunder & lightening hit. Once the bus started to get stuck going up a hill & had to back down & try again- with success! Brenda spent much of the ride with her arm extended upward in order to keep the window up & prevent getting soaked. By this time my sense of humor had returned, mostly thanks to all the kind, helpful & laughing people on the bus- including my awesome traveling companions Shea & Brenda who were both very sympathetic regarding my cash woes. Lesson learned I hope!