Our New Arrival….

We had the nicest day today. Charlie had the day off, so we decided to be brave and take the bus to the next town, Puerto Viejo. Another fun adventure.

The roads here are a hoot. One of them is paved, but we never seem to stay on it for long. Once we turned off the paved road, well, it was like nothing I’ve ever seen. The first thing that happened was the driver put a towel on his head. This amused me until I looked out the front window and saw something that looked like a thick, thick wall of fog. I couldn’t figure out what it could be because the weather was wrong for fog, and looking at the driver I was suddenly wishing for a towel too because he clearly knew something that I didn’t.

We drove into a cloud of dust the likes I have never seen. Higher, wider, and thicker than anything you could imagine. Visibility zero! Now one would think that towel head driver guy would slow down once he could no longer see anything, but no. I think he was flying by his instruments. He was just zipping along, passing big trucks, zooming across one lane bridges. The dust became so thick that it was becoming hard not to panic. People, including me, had their hands in front of their noses trying to get a breath. It was a bit scary, but soon we bounced into Puerto Viejo and all was well.

This place is a beach town like Cahuita, but larger and much more touristy. There were lots of booths set up along the beach and lots of people selling things. We had lunch at a neat place that served Caribbean food and had great pitchers of sangria overlooking the ocean. This is the town where surfer dudes go to play, but the sea was calm today and they weren’t out. We wandered around a bit more after lunch, bought some souvenirs and fresh fruit and headed back to the bus stop. Within about 15 minutes a bus arrived driven by another guy with a towel. (I can see the interview now…. Can you drive a bus? Yes! Do you own a towel? Yes! Congratulations! You’re our guy!) The whole bus ride, there and back, cost us four dollars in total, for both of us. Pretty cool. We were even going to get back in time for a lovely swim at the Playa Negra. Best day ever!

The bus let us off at the White Sands strip mall, right next to the store that sells blenders. They make a wonderful drink here. They fill a blender with ice, water and fresh fruit, and man is it good. I have been eyeing blenders ever since I had my first one. Well today as I had my hopeful nose pressed against the front window of the appliance store, my darlin’ Charlie went in and bought me a present. The Crush Master 2000! Now seriously, how could we not buy something called “The Crush Master 2000”!

We went home and after our swim we walked back into town and bought even more fruit. We came home and here we sit, in the dark, staring longingly at our Crush Master 2000. There’s no power!!!!! Sigh, again I say, sigh…..






Fun facts our friends tell us the better they get to know us…..

Everyone in Cahuita speaks English, (some only a little) but they like to pretend that they don’t cause it’s fun to watch the tourists struggle. Then they go into the back room and share what silly things the touristas said. Hahaha


Charlie’s View

Next week is Easter week here, which is a major holiday time in Costa Rica. It’s the one time of the year when it is almost impossible to get a hotel room. Many businesses shut down for the whole week. The official holidays are Thursday and Friday, but everybody extends it a little at least. The computer center will be closed Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, which gives us 5 days to do something interesting. Pretty much anything we want to do involves a bus trip. Further, the Monday after Easter week, I need to get on the first bus of the day to Limon to meet some folks, to go to a school up in the mountains. Since Ernesto lives in Limon, I’ll be making this part of the trip on my own. Clearly, it’s time to figure out how to use the bus system. Weekends are our time to explore a little, so a short bus trip seemed the best way to combine learning the busses with seeing something new and interesting. A day trip to the next little town, about 20 Km away seemed the perfect approach, and leaving early in the morning would give us plenty of time to recover from a screw-up, like say getting on the bus going the wrong direction or something. Living in the country, it’s been many years since we have used public transit, and this is not a place where you just pick up a bus schedule “Sorry, mon – dare ain’t no such an-ee-mal”. We proceeded to the bus stop, where we have seen people boarding busses every day since we arrived. Complication number one – the ticket window was closed. There was a hand made sign, in Spanish, taped to the steel shutter over the window. It seemed to say something like, “if the office is closed, go to White Sands”. That’s cool, if I only knew what “White Sands” was. Dianne, of course, has explored most of the town, and being an observant girl, explained that it is the name of the strip mall where the ATM is that she visits regularly. The driver of a truck also told us something in Spanish and pointed in that direction when he saw us puzzling over the sign. We thanked him and wandered off to the strip mall. Lo and behold, while we slept, an entire new section has been added to the mall, including a somewhat shiny new bus terminal, with an open ticket window. We, of course had just missed the bus going in our direction, but they seem to run every hour, so we simply had to wait a little. According to the folks I’ve talked to, busses in Costa Rica are varied in nature – everything from something like our Grey Hound machines, complete with air conditioning and rest rooms, to retired school busses, still mostly yellow, complete with missing windows and occasionally sharing a seat with livestock, depending on the route you choose. Our bus was similar to a city bus, and reasonably comfortable if you ignored the permanently open doors that let clouds of dust roll through on the gravel roads. Outside of town, every kilometer or so, there is a 4 x 8 sheet of corrugated tin roofing suspended on 4 posts. This is the official bus stop. Don’t bother looking for a sign – there isn’t one, and besides, I observed several people on the side of the road nowhere near a bus stop, that waved from a distance and were picked up by the bus. The ticketing rules are a little strange too. Returning from Puerto Viejo, I could not see a place to buy tickets. However, we picked up several folks on the way there, so I figured I’d simply pay the bus driver like they did. The bus driver was having none of it, however and explained to me in Spanish that I had to go buy a ticket over there somewhere. He told Dianne to stay sitting, so clearly he was going to wait for me if I was quick about it. I went into a corner store close to where he pointed and “Autobus?”. The girl pointed around the corner, and I scooted that direction to find a mostly hidden bus ticket window. I bought our tickets and made it back to the bus. Most seats were gone, but I made somebody move his pack and sat in it’s seat. Whew – I made it! The bus moved forward about 100 meters and stopped. A girl got on, and paid the driver. You’ve got to love rules.


The birds and the bees

The girl with the swollen touch everything finger spotted a giant mound of fire ants. “I need a picture” says she. “Sure Honey, I’ll be over here”. Then she spots a nest of killer bees, easily a meter in diameter. “Wow!”, says she, “I need to shoot that too!”. “No problem”, says I. “While you do that, I’ll see if the sangria place is open yet”. Sometimes it’s better to go with the flow – or just go…

This is the entrance to an ant hill . The hill is a couple feet high, and several feet in diameter.

Yes - These are bees, and the tree limb is about 8 inches in diameter.