A Costa Rican adventure of a journey!
What a journey to Costa Rica! We were heading to Monteverde and we knew we needed to catch maybe 4 buses to get there and that it would take about six hours. We caught chicken buses to the border, so far, so good. But when we got to the Costa Rican side of the border we saw a long queue of people snaking out from the border control office, into the sweltering sunshine. We only had an hour to wait, but it's definitely the longest any of us have spent at a border and the lack of shade made it just horrible! The border control itself was a relatively quick process, they just wanted to see proof of our onward travel. They also made us put our bags through x-ray scanners, although there was no one actually watching the screen to see what was going through!
After a 2 hour break we got on a bus that would take us four hours before we needed to get off and take a connection to Sant Elena for the Monteverde national park. But when we were dropped at the turn off, the guys in the petrol station told Javi that the last bus to Monteverde had already left. We were 40kms away at this point and were starting to get that sinking feeling of 'this is about to get awkward'.
Luckily, Javi struck up a conversation with a bus driver who had officially clocked off for the day but who was driving his minibus back to San Luis, which is 5km down the road from Monteverde/Sant Elena. He agreed to take us to San Luis for whatever we wanted to pay him. Yes!! We figured we would either try and take a taxi or hitchhike from San Luis to Sant Elena, or worst case scenario, walk the 5km.
Worse case scenario became quite real after an hour and 20 minutes driving up the worst road ever. I should have known after all the journeys we've done here, but for some reason in my head that 35kms was only going to take about 45 minutes, so we would get to San Luis before the sun went down. Wrong. It got darker and darker as we crawled up into the mountains, and we'd been going for so long that we thought that the driver had taken pity on us and was taking us all the way there, but wrong again and he dropped us in the dark at the turn off for Sant Elena, telling us it was another 4 or 5km down the road. Or rather, up the road, as it continued to climb into the mountains.
We tried sticking our thumbs out to hitch a ride and either the cars going past couldn't see us in the darkness or didn't want to. Faced with the 5km climb I called out one last time to a man driving a big truck 'por favor!'. He stopped and Javi explained where we were going to and SO luckily, the man was going to Sant Elena and said he would give us a lift. Girls up in the front and boys in the back with thunder and lightning clapping overhead, it quickly became clear how lucky we had been, as the road climbed up and up, higher and higher and it was at least 6km to Sant Elena, not 4 or 5! We felt so lucky and so grateful to the man, as it would have taken us hours to make that walk with our rucksacks. He dropped us right at the door of the hostel and wouldn't even take any money from us! What a legend! I tried to tell him he was a 'salva vida' i.e. lifesaver, but I don't think he really got me given that salva vida is the translation for 'life ring'/buoyancy aid!!
When we got to the hostel the guy at reception heard of our adventure and seeing our weariness and relief, decided to upgrade us four to a private room with a mezzanine - it was getting even better!
So that's how potentially the worst journey of our trip turned into the luckiest!
Today we spent the afternoon zip lining, one of the main activities there is in the Monteverde national park. Go Ape will never be the same again! These zip lines were high up in the cloud forest and the longest one was 1.59km long, superman style! That's right, no hands! It really felt like flying! Being the wuss I am, I skipped the 30m Tarzan swing!
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| Superman!/woman! |
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| Tarzan Swing - Not my cup of char |
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