Bumpy Rides

We’ve stowed our lovemobile and thrown ourselves upon the vagaries of public and self-powered transport while in Costa Rica. It has been an interesting change.

Our long distance bus rides from San Jose to Corcovado and back again and down to the Southern Caribbean coast have been painfully slow, but not bland. Indeed, food appears whenever the hunger pangs start to bite: on the bus in the form of oily pieces of dough handed out by migrant vendors or at wayside cafeterias set up for the purpose, serving chicken and rice – none of your Big Macs and Coke. On one trip we were entertained by a band of boy and girl scouts headed to a jamboree, toting flags and singing the Spanish equivalent of ‘Bobbejaan klim die berg, so hastig en so lastig…’

When things get really jungly, roads get really bad. To get into Corcovado National Park we jumped on a 4WD ‘collectivo’ and bounced around like so many sheep on their way to market. The road is 40km long, the trip takes 2 ½ hours.

Here in Manzanillo on the Caribbean coast we have had the pleasure of two-wheeled transport. Although ‘pleasure’ may be overstating it, as deciding whether to try to dodge potholes in the pitch dark or just go hell-for-leather and hope to skim over the top of them can be trying. But making the trip by full moon to eat at a bamboo-roofed Argentinian restaurant with four romantic tables open to the jungle was definitely worth it.

On Saturday we head north up to Volcan Arenal to, hopefully, catch a glimpse of some real, live lava. That's if we don't get carried away by one or other stinging, biting thing before then...

R