The Adventures in Panama

9/27/13

From the Tracopa Bus Station in San Jose:

The day started off foreshadowing the journey ahead.  I took a collectivo home from work because I still hadn’t packed and I had an hour and a half until my bus left.  The collectivo I got in kept breaking down and rolling backwards down the hills.  I kept almost getting out but the driver would reassure me that we would make it.  Luckily, we were almost to the downhill part and we rolled the rest of the way home.  I wished him luck with his car and rushed home.  When I got home, I realized I needed to print a bank statement because Panama is crazy and won’t let you in if you don’t have $500.  Isn’t that crazy?  Anyway, a quick trip to the copy place, packing, and I was on my way.  But just wait until you hear about the bus ride….

After the bathroom stop, halfway to San Jose, a lady got on the wrong bus.  Luckily, they were a little ahead of us and flagged us down on the highway.  The lady got on and told everyone about how she didn’t recognize the other people and everything.  She made such a big presentation of it; she must have been super embarrassed.  I was glad we could get her.

Then, the lady behind me randomly started making monkey noises as we got close to San José.  It was like she had turrets or something.  Then, the bus fell off of a curb and she didn’t stop laughing for 10 minutes!  After that, I have no idea what she was doing. 

We finally arrived in San Jose after going 1 mile per hour through traffic.  Now, there is this super loud dog that is chasing each bus out of the terminal while loudly barking.  Nobody seems to mind or have any desire to do anything about it.  Pura Vida. 

So, yeah…. What an exciting trip, already.  Right? It’s weird how going on a trip within a trip feels.  It’s like I’m just as wound up as if I was going to another country from the US – but I’ve already been on a 3 month trip… so you’d think it would be no different.  It’s almost like Inception… a trip within a trip within a trip. 

Bus Ride to Panama

I am now writing to you from the bus to Panama.  I am watching the jungle pass by while the bus blasts salsa and cumbia for all to enjoy.  I love it.  What better way to travel through the selva than with cumbia, verdad?! Even though I have been here for 3 months, I still can’t believe how green it is… Everything I see that bright, bright green that shines in the sunlight, it takes my breath away.  There are so many different colors of green… I wonder if all the shades have different names like how the Eskimos have so many words for snow. 

I need to tell you about all the weird things I have seen in San Jose in the past 12 hours. 

1. The McDonalds in San Jose is the fanciest thing I have ever seen.  It is nicer than Starbucks in the US.  I was waiting for my friend there and ordered a tea from their “café.”  It was in a glass cup!  There were couches there was an entire upstairs section.  People were on dates there!  You needed a ticket to go to the bathroom because there was a bathroom guard.  The tea was so good!  It was like tea you would get a an organic farmers market.  ¡Que raro! I want to go back there. 
2. My friend was telling be about her students and she said that a student wanted to say something that directly translated to “grandmother pimp.”  I could not stop laughing.  My friend is unsure of what she really wanted to say, but reassured her that “grandmother pimp” was not it.  This reminded me of how my student the other day just could not pronounce “thought.”  The “th” sound is very difficult, but I have no idea how she made “thought” into something that sounded exactly like “f***.”  I didn’t react, but kept correcting her and having her repeat.  I just couldn’t let her go into the English speaking world saying that.  She never really got it…. Maybe next time.  Oh, the responsibility of being an English teacher. 
3. This morning, when we were walking through downtown San Jose to find our bus, which by the way…. Is a bus that leaves from the side of the road at 9am every day.  How one would know this, I have no idea. Sometimes it seems like everything just works through word of mouth.  It’s like… if someone doesn’t tell you something, it just doesn’t happen.  Anyway, back to my point:  When we were walking through San Jose, there was this random guy dressed in Peruvian clothing with a Native American headdress on… playing the pan flute.  I have no idea why – he was also selling Peruvian CDs. Haha.   Remember how a few pages ago, I told you about the monkey-noise-lady on the bus last night?  Well, now there is a woman barking a few seats behind me.  What is with these people?  Ok, it’s getting bumpy so I’ll write more later.  Oh, wait… I have one more thing to add that I forgot.  When we were waiting for the bust to leave San Jose, I saw a lady washing the walls of her storefront with a sponge.  Now, out the window, I see someone sweeping her wall with a push broom.  Interesting cleaning methods.  Intermission for pictures of beautiful Bocas...

The only way to get to the island is by boat...

The view from our hostel... you could jump right off the back deck into the water

Playa Estrella :]  So beautiful!!!

Bus Ride Home to San Jose

 This trip was definitely not lacking in adventure. When we got all the way to Bocas Del Toro, Panama – which you take a bus, then walk across the border, then take a collective, then a boat… to get to – we saw a sign that said that the bank (for the entire country of Panama) was out of order until Tuesday!  We needed to go back to Costa Rica on Monday, so just like any other situation while living abroad, we began to utilize our creative problem solving skills.  I had $40, my friend Erin had $160, and our friend Sacha had $60.  We new we had to set aside $28 each for the journey back to Costa Rica.  We had two more nights to pay for at the hostel at $15 each.  This left us with a total of $86 for 3 days, split 3 ways. That’s less than $10/day per person.  We knew we could do it.  We were trying to think of a ny random way we could earn money or stay until Tuesday when the banks began running again.  Because the bank was closed, places wouldn’t run credit cards either. 

We found one grocery store that was, for some reason, accepting credit cards and I asked them if they could over charge us and give cash back.  They wouldn’t but told me maybe the pharmacy would. I told them our story, making it a little more dramatic of course; I told them we couldn’t get back to CR and needed to be at work… etc.  They gave me $60, which made a world of difference.  We just crossed the border with $9 extra – which is a whole other story, I will explain later on. 

Saturday night, we went to this crazy bar that you needed to take a boat to.  Everywhere you go, pretty much, you take a boat.  It only costs $1.  So, us and everyone else in Bocas was there.  It was real “Ladies Night” which was very lucky for our financial situation.  They gave ladies whatever they wanted for free.  

The bar had swings where you could jump off into the ocean.  You could also just jump off the deck of the bar into the ocean.  There were cut away holes in the middle of the deck as if the ocean was one big swimming pool.  As you can imagine Latin dancing, swings, and an ocean used as a swimming pool made for a pretty fun night. 

I convinced a guy who I was dancing with that I was a Tica and that I had a boyfriend back home in Costa Rica.  He kept calling me “Mae,” the slang for dude in CR and insisting that what happened in Bocas stayed in Bocas.  Luckily, my escape route from him was launching off the swing, into the ocean and swimming under the dock.  Hahaha!  Don’t you wish you could do that in every bar?! I do.

Another story: one day, we rode a tiny boat to another island.  We were on the boat, when suddenly it starts pouring and we can’t see anything.  We’re soaked.  We stop moving, altogether, and I think, “great, it’s like Sam’s Amazon story,” when I realize why we have stopped. There is another little boat in the distance and it is sinking!  It was packed full of people an d it was too heavy.  Why they didn’t know that would happen, I’ll never understand.  So, we of course, transferred half of the people to our boat and continued – wet, but safe – to the island. 

One more story: the way back to Costa Rica… We took a collectivo and the driver was singing Latino opera or something like that.  He would sing the words right before they came up.  He was driving like crazy.  We passed about 20 people in el campo and they were all waiting at the bus stop.  The bus driver stopped, suddenly, and backed up down the curvy freeway.  We stopped next to the bust stop and I saw that the people had a medic hammock.  The Peace Corps Volunteers we met at the hostel had talked about this, so I knew something was wrong.  He asked if they had an ambulance coming or if they needed help.  An ambulance was on its way, but we added one woman to our car to bring her to wait at the hospital for la señora.  They said they thought that she had Dengue.  She looked bad - I hope she was ok.

When we got to the border, we had to walk across a rickety bridge with slots you really could fall through.  That is what connects Costa Rica to Panama.  You actually have to walk out of your way to show your passport and pay the exit taxes… so much so, that we missed paying it on our way out of Panama, which explains how we returned home with 9 extra dollars.  Whoops.