I sit anxiously in Miami International, the drum-drums of the rain upon the sloping windows doing nothing to ease my anxiety as I stare at the clock tick inexorably on past my departure time. American Airlines, I sigh with more than a hint of annoyance. My plane is delayed three times and I wonder each time what was going to happen if it were to be cancelled and if I were to have to miss my domestic connection. Ironically, from the very beginning of my vacation trip, my mind is in Type-A overtime.
My landing in Costa Rica is welcomed on the bridge by a blast of humid air that puts that of Miami's to shame. I am finally here. I meet with Steven, pack half of all the tourist brochures I find in the airport into my bag and we're off into the great unknown. We step out of tiny Juan Santamaria Airport to find the bus station we had read about on the internet, but..there is no bus station! We barely have enough time to decide there's nothing to panic about when we are approached by the first of millions of cab riders that week that would see us as walking USD. Following his advice (in retrospect, we were better to have stayed in Alajuela), we decide to go to a hostel in San Jose for it's "closer" (by a few minutes) to the domestic airport we need to get to early the next morning. He drops us off at a dirty looking hostel and while we check-in, he enjoys a smoke with the youngsters who run the hostel. Apparently they enjoy a good business attracting tourists to each other. Oops.
--
Saturday, June 5
Saturday morning! Finally now the real vacation can begin! Well, almost, first we must get from San Jose to our destination on the north Pacific coast - Playas del Coco. We had, in the States, decided against taking the 4.5 hour bus-ride from the notoriously shady Coca-Cola bus station in San Jose, so we had splurged on domestic tickets to the nearest airport - Liberia. Naive, and still thinking Costa Rica would be fairly cheap, I flex my rusty Spanish muscles to ask the hostel to call us up a cab to the airport. It is a slight relief that the cab driver is not the same over-eager man from the night before.
Once at the airport, our trip becomes largely uneventful. We board a craft that seats 7 people including the captain and take off into the Costa Rican air cutting through thick layers of rainclouds and soaring over miles of GREEN. And really, Costa Rica is GREEN. Sadly, if much of the Africa foreigners like me imagine is brown, then what color would I say the US is? I guess I'd say America is grey. You can only conceive of how electrifying it is then, to come upon a country that seems alive and connected with the earth sporting magnificent cholorophyllic greens as far as the eye can see (or as far as the conspicuous mountains in the horizon would allow).
We land in Liberia's Tobias Bolano airport expecting it to be a fairly vibrant terminal with bus stations and restaurants a la 서울역 or Union Station. Instead, 25 strides take us through the entire airport from the tarmac to the exit and there is nothing in site. I look at Steven and our expressions belie the same realization - So, this is what "the middle of nothing" really means. Uh-oh.
Eventually, we find our bus into the heart of Liberia and arrive at the bus terminal. (I really really wish I had taken a picture of this bus terminal for it's pretty memorable but I suppose I was too drained each time I arrived there) We wander around the bus terminal in fairly significant confusion as to which bus was ours fully conscious of the hundreds of eyes upon us, visually marking us as foreigners and thus to many, as obvious targets for exploitation. Cab drivers jingle their keys in front of us rattling off a stream of fast Spanish to which we shake our heads no and move on. We are the sick calves of a herd being picked out by lions and it is only a matter of time before...before..but then! A man approaches us saying in broken English, I work here, where do you need to go? Salvation. Destination - Playas del Coco.
0 comments:
Post a Comment