Backing up to our miraculous bus ride...
The next bus to Mal Pais broke down and everyone had to shuffle out and wait in the “park”…There were more bugs in this park than your everyday PC. It was like an Indiana Jones park.
(The bus. The park. )
Eventually the new bus came, and we somehow successfully made it to "Mal Pais", which was actually Playa Carmen... Which is beautiful, by the way.
(Playa Carmen)
There are three places all right along a few beaches. The south-most name on the map is Mal Pais, just above that would be Playa Carmen, and above that is Santa Teresa. So we got dropped off in Playa Carmen. I knew this from reading books, and looking at the names of the shops around us. The bus driver said that this was Mal Pais...Confused, we booked a room in the cheapest hotel in town - which was still not that cheap. We pulled out our Google and books and tried to figure things out from there. The next day we walked down the dirt road to try to find the real Mal Pais. We walked for a few minutes and found the hostel I'd looked into booking - so we knew we were at least close. We kept walking....Hotel...house...hotel...and a lot more stretches of dirt road. Everytime we came up to a corner we thought we must be there now... After a good while we asked a guy on the road where Mal Pais was and he said, "This is it!"
Yup. Mal Pais is just a long dirt road with a few houses and hotels scattered along it, and a fish restaurant at the end of it. The beach is great for surfing and for those many die hard surfers, its paradise. Eat, sleep, walk to the beach, surf. I don't surf...Ryan didn't have a board. So we walked back to our room and I immediately got out maps, internet, books, and started savagely searching for a new place to go.
That day we packed our bags for San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua. Ryan thought it would be a win/win for me, who was starting to want something a little more civilized after Montezuma and our few Cobano experiences. Its all beautiful, but you're really really removed. Everything is hard to get to.
We hopped a bus to Cobano to find a travel agency that Ryan had been on the phone with that morning. This guy could sell us tickets for TicaBus which is like a big huge coach bus with a/c and everything that will take you all the way there. The big plus is getting across the border with them and not having to switch buses a hundred times at the border. Or walk through.
(Popes French at the restaurant in Cobano
(Lunch in Cobano)
(No scenes of love…)
Once in Cobano, we went to the agency...which had the open sign on, but was most certainly NOT...open. We kept checking for the guy but he never arrived. We looked online and saw that there was an agency in Puntarenas, the town on the other side of the ferry ride.
We took the 5pm ferry to Puntarenas. A one hour ride and we arrived in the total dark, in the monsoon rain. This town is kind of...sheisty. Its on my paranoid travelers list of places where crimes against tourists are more common in Costa Rica...Not big crimes...theft and mugging...but still not a walk in the park. So we ran across the street and saw a hotel. Got a room. Made sure to jam the door. Well. The room turned out to be fine, and the owners seemed genuinely nice and kept trying to help us figure out the buses. The owner offered us a ride to the bus for much cheaper than the taxis would charge....Yyyyyeah, we'll see.
The next day we found a guy named "Ricky Ricardo" or, if you want to be specific... Enrique. He was from Miami and worked as a tour guide and information center. His office was right outside his wife/friend/someone's tiny little stand for coffee, fresh corn bread, and apparently breakfast. Anyway he told us all about how we could get to Nicaragua - there were many options but the main points we came away with were: The corn bread was fresh and very very good (it was), his friends have hotels in the Corn Islands...TransNica would get us there, but for the same price as going all the way to Managua (a few hours north of where we were going), we could take smaller buses the whole way, but his friend who works for TransNica said there were places for us on the next bus. There was no agency in town. You just go to the "Crossroads" and buy the ticket on board. Its not the high season so its ok.
......SO. "Frank" the owner of our hotel drives us to the bus stop...Which is literally a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. There is a small snack shop there
(Resident “pests” at the snack shop)
and one of the employees of TransNica is also waiting so we can ask him all about whether or not we missed it, and verify the info that "Ricky" gave us.
We get on the bus. Its air conditioned. They are playing really old videos of some singers who may or may not be quite famous here...They stop at a roadside restaurant. Its so good. We're content. Except they play the movie "Innocent Voices" which is very good, but super heavy and a major downer. Its all about the civil war in El Salvador in the 80's. The kind of movie thats "beautifully made" and, sure enough, was nominated for academy awards in the foreign section, but they shoot kids in it.
Yeah. Now that you're thinking about THAT, we'll talk a little about the border process.
The scariest thing to me, when thinking about this trip, was the concept of crossing borders. This experience actually turned out to be pretty painless, although it was highly confusing, and a little worrisome. First we all get off the bus, immediately get swarmed by guys trying to change our money for us. No thanks. There are no lines, no clear signage. Some guy waves us into a room - pretty much thats how everything went. Some guy whistles and waves you into some area or another. This room has gaping holes in the ceiling and we quickly get our our Costa Rica customs sheets looked at and our passports stamped to show that we left the country.
Everyone back on the bus.
A few minutes later, everyone off the bus. Take everything with you. Just kidding, everyone sit down..EXCEPT YOU. He points to the 3 white people on the bus. Great. Whats happening.
So we get off the bus, they shuffle us to a building that looks like customs, then they stop. Say "Bags" a few times and shuffle us back to the bus. No one opens the door to get our bags out. Next thing we know EVERYONE is off the bus, and they get THEYRE bags. We're last. They tell us to wait there with our bags. Its not clear if anything is actually happening. About 10-15 minutes later, we all get back on the bus as they hand us our passports which are stamped and have our 30 day visas in them. This is a relief because for a minute I thought for sure they'd forgotten us, and when we tried to LEAVE the country we'd be in big trouble for accidentally not going through customs.
So here we are, in San Juan Del Sur.....
The End.
Haha just kidding, San Juan Del Sur is the next post.
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