I'll translate for all you Gringos reading the blog. Pura Vida is not only a greeting or saying here in Costa Rica, but also a way of life. The people here take their time and make sure they do the things that make them happy, not the things that make them wealthy. Living here has certainly been an experience, and while I'm ready to come home, I'm going to miss the "pure life" I've been living here. Being able to travel here for forty dollars for an entire weekend has certainly been living the pure life.
And that's exactly what we did two weekends ago. I've never encountered a better representation of "pure life dude" than I did in Puerto Viejo, Limon, Costa Rica. {Google it for now, I'll put up a map and photos when I get home and have a real computer to use again. And I'll edit for spelling too.}
We'd been to volcanos, waterfalls, mountains, the Pacific, and the jungle, it was time to hit up the Carribean side of life. A few friends had gone to Puerto Viejo a d recommended it, so we decided to check out that side of the country for ourselves. My host family had told me it was almost a completely different culture, but I wasn't really expecting what I did find once we got there.
Once we got there.
There is a common theme on this trip- it is damn near impossible to figure out how to get anywhere without asking. We checked site after site after site for bus times and the terminal. They all said Terminal Gran Caribeño. I had the phone number of the bus company. I knew exactly where we were going once we got off the bus. And it was wrong.
4:45 am in Costa Rica is much the same as 4:45 in Ohio or South Carolina, a little chilly, dark, and too freaking early to be standing outside the school, but that's where I was. We'd decided to take the 6 am bus to Puerto Viejo in order to have all day to play on the beach. So we get on our first bus to San José after asking around to find that stop, then we get off as soon as we hit San José and see a cab. They take us to the terminal... Get to the ticket window anddddd no dice. We were at the wrong terminal. Apparently we need to go to another one {whose name is escaping me at the moment.} So instead of being the smart people we are {it was still like 5:30 am, no one is smart that early} we decided to wander around San José looking for a place to check the Internet and figure out where this terminal is. Finally a friend calls the bus company for us and tells us that yes it is the other terminal and we should hurry up and try to get the 7 am bus. It's 6:45 by this point and do you think in a city where everyone screams taxi it's easy to find a cab? This time no. What time do we finally make it to the terminal? 7:03. The bus was gone.
We sat around the terminal for three hours waiting for the 10 am bus. We hadn't taken into account how much the bus tickets were going to cost, so during our wait we budgeted for the weekend. The bus ticket was almost 6.000 colones ($12) {still really not a bad price to drive across the country, but a lot more than the $1 were used to paying to go anywhere}. I'd already spent that so I laid aside another 6.000 for the return ride home. Then we were staying at our hostel which was $8 a night. There was $16 more dollars aside. That left me roughly 1.000 colones for the rest of the weekend, that's about $2. And I'd forgotten the pin to my card. No one accepts cards.
Well we figured we'd be fine because everyone was bringing food so we wouldn't have to eat all the time and my card would work in the grocery store. We starved. But more on that later.
After a 45 hour bus ride we'd finally made it. We scrambled off the bus into the sweltering humidity and started off for our hostel. Now the walk in reality was not that bad, but after a bus ride and a breakfast consisting of an oatmeal cookie and a tortilla dipped in peanut butter, we were hungry, grouchy and just plain gross. We smelled awful. And then we arrived at our hostel. The so called Eden that was our home in Puerto Viejo. We entered through those gates and my oh my did we encounter a different world. It was far different than anything I'd thought it would be. Amd that's where I leave this post because it's going to be insanely long otherwise and no one wants to spend ten minutes reading this. Let's be real here. So keep an eye out for part two.
No comments:
Post a Comment