31 de Enero 2011

Mari and I are now in Costa Rica, entering a few days back throught the border town Peña Blancas. It wasn an interesting border crossing, as it was the first one where we had any kind of wait involved. This was our 8th border crossing in 3 months, and before this one, I dont think it ever took longer than 15 minutes and there was never more than 5 or 6 people ahead of us. When we hit the border this time, from Nicaragua to Costa Rica, there was a long line that ran out the front door and around the side of the building well into the back. My guess is there were over 100 people waiting for entry. Mari and I waited in line for over an hour, practicing our lies on how we were going to convince the agent that we had no intention of staying in Costa Rica. Which isnt much of a lie, but we heard rumors about the entry that indicated that we would need proof illustrating that we would be leaving within our 30 day visa period - meaning that typically people show their exiting bus or airline tickets when entering the country. As we had no exit plan, we were practicing our lies. But as it turns out, the agent couldnt have cared less - stamping our passports and moving us along without a word.

From the border we took a bus to Liberia, where we ate lunch, grabbed some cash from the cash machine, and caught another bus out to Playa Tamarindo (playa = beach) - one of the top ten must see locations within Costa Rica according to some website Mari found before we left. As it turned out, Tamarindo is the smaller scale equivalent of Cancun on the Costa Rican coast. This means high prices (possibly the highest in Costa Rica - which is already a shock to our central american price scale) and lots of foreigners. We left the very next day, headed to Playa Brasilito, which we heard was nice and beautiful and much more adequately priced for travelers like ourselves. Brasilito was beautiful, with a nearby strip of shacks serving up cheap casadas (chicken, rice, beans, fried plantain plate) right off the main muddy sand beach. This beach was like the beach at San Juan del Sur, where the sand is more of a fine muddy clay mixture, that fills each crashing wave with a muddy brown look. The water feels warm and great, but when you leave the water you are covered in a fine silt. Having heard of another nearby beach, we walked down the main beach and crossed over a tree covered bluff and descended down into another little beach where the sand was composed of millions and trillions of shell pieces, some large, some small, and some rubbed down over centuries into a fine sand. It was absolutely spectacular to imagine the timeline of that beach and how it was created. How many years upon years does it take a beach to accumulate hundreds of square feet of deep crushed shell sand? I dont know, I can barely wrap my head around that thought. But I love thinking about it.

Anyways, after busing around all day yesterday trying to reach our third and final Pacific Coast beach called Montezuma, we found it nearly impossible to get there. Even though on the map it looks like there are roads that go everywhere we want to go, the bus routes simply do not go there. We would have had to take a bus around the peninsula, take two ferries, and another bus just to reach this beach that looks like it should be within reach of a 3hour bus trip. Anyway, we changed our plans yesterday returning north to Liberia (where we had just been 2 days before) in order to continue our path in a new brighter direction. I will pause here for a few thoughts on Costa Rica.

• In Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, there was always an autobus, minivan, collectivo, truck, or chicken bus to anywhere we wanted to go. Even down the worst, broken, pot holed streets heading somewhere, or no where. Yet, somehow here in Costa Rica, even though the quality of buses and seats has improved a bit, the actual bus service is appauling. As we are finding out, we really need to plan a bit better to work around limited bus schedules and services like never before. Through all of central america we never had to wait long for a bus, there were always so many going in all directions, and there was always someone there pestering you as to where you were headed and ushering you quickly in the right direction. Here, its completely different. We are waiting all the time for buses, as they run on schedules. Plus, there is no one ushering us to the bus we need, so we are left asking other passangers and vendors bus times and schedules. Its got us a bit confused. It seems the more modern the country, the more backwards the bus system. Its totally confusing. We want our hectic functioning crappy bus system back. We laughed at it, hated it at times, but it was cheap and functioned perfectly. Oh, I forgot to mention the bus is expensive here. Its helping to destroy our once, pre-established budget.
  

Okay, well Mari and I are headed to a town called La Fortuna near Volcan Arenal. We would have left today and been there already except we didnt know then the intricacies of the bus system as well as we do now. Thus we will head out tomorrow morning. Liberia to Cañas, Cañas to Tilaran, Tilaran to La Fortuna. All this effort to be near Volcan Arenal, a true firebreathing dragon of a volcano. After seeing two volcanos that function like a glorified chimney, Mari and I decided it was time to see a volcano with attitude that let off its steam with true passion - spewing lava and fire. We hope it still has a bit of an internal struggle to show us when we arrive.

Today we ran into a couple we hadnt seen since we were back in Valladolid, Mexico - before christmas. Its funny to think that all this time, moving from country to country, we have been traveling on somewhat similar paths, but never ran into one anther until today. Unfortunately, they fly back to South Africa in a week or so, so we wont be seeing much of them in our future travels. Thats one of the interesting things about traveling for so long and along such a narrow swath of land such as central america - we run into the same people every so often along the way.

Later, I believe we are headed out to see a movie. Its a toss up between the new Tron, and another which I have forgotten the name - red something. I love hitting the cities with cinemas now, it offers me a little taste of home. Even though I didnt hit the cinema much at home, I just love watching movies.

Wishing everyone the best - Travis (and Mari)