Journal

I woke up around 2:30am and couldn’t get back to sleep.  We caught the 5am bus to Limón.  We were short on cash, so we went to find an ATM near the bus station so we could buy a ticket to San José.  The second one we found accepted our card and then we headed back to the station.

While I was buying the tickets some kid was asking Alaine if we had gotten lost because he had seen us get off the bus and walk away and come back.  It made us a little uneasy that someone had been paying attention to our movements.  We boarded the bus and made it to San José without incident.  We didn’t have a plan when we got there except to call Alaine’s friend Curt.  It took a few tries, but she got through and we agreed that he would pick us up at 2pm.  It was only 10:30, so we decided to wander around and do some shopping.  We were looking for a CD player to replace Selva’s which was stolen from her friend’s house (but which we also had been using).  I also needed some new sandals since I lost half of my other pair.  We ran into Selva on the street and she decided to help us with our shopping.  We found me some shoes, which I bought, and we found a CD player that we thought we might want, but decided to keep looking.  We were walking past the Central Market, having just bought some candied peanuts, when I heard Alaine call my name.  I turned around and she was about 20 feet behind me with a panicked look on her face and looking in a direction at at a right angle to where I was standing.  I thought she had lost us so I called to her, but she told me someone had stolen her purse.  She pointed out a woman across the street whom I ran in front of and stopped but she denied taking the purse and Alaine wasn’t sure she had the right person.  Selva found a policeman on the corner and we reported it.  He said most likely the thief would just toss the passport somewhere out of sight, and told us we had to go to the police station and report it.

Selva led us to the police station and they told us to go the the OIJ, which is the investigative branch.  We finally found that in an unmarked building and there was a room with 20 people and only one person to help them.  We took a number but it looked like we would be there all day.  I went to call ATEC to get Alaine’s passport number because there was a copy there, but there was no answer and I remembered that ATEC is closed from 12 to 1 on Saturday.  I went back to the OIJ and waited with Alaine and Selva and shortly a second employee showed up.  Somehow our number was called next and we talked to the woman.  She said we didn’t need to do anything there and should just go to the U.S. embassy.  It was getting close to time to meet Curt, and we were hungry.  We decided the embassy could wait until Monday.  We called Curt and asked if he could pick us up at the resaurant/bar where we were going to eat and he said that would be fine but he would pick us up an hour late.

We ordered beers and food in the restaurant that Selva had brought us to.  We noticed that people were making out in the booths on the back wall.  This was in the middle of the afternoon.  We wondered what kind of place this was.  The food was good and the beer was cold.  Curt showed up just as we walked out to the street to look for him.  He was driving a big luxury SUV (funny that I don’t even know what make it was — I don’t care about cars anymore) and he introduced us to his wife, Beatriz, and Alaine’s friend, Bill, and Bill’s girlfriend, Kim.  We put our gear in the back and squeezed into the back seat with Bill and Kim.  Curt drove us up to see the new house he is building out of concrete block.  It looks like it will be nice.  Then we went to find a place for Bill, Kim, Alaine and I to stay for the night.  We stopped at a cabina near the place Curt and Bea are renting while they get their house built.  The owner wasn’t there but we called her on Bea’s cell-phone and agreed on a price for a 2 bedroom cabin.

We went to Curt’s after that and met Bea’s mother who is visiting from Colombia.  Bea made capuccino in a blender and it was really good.  She showed Alaine and Kim how to do it.  Bill took a nap and the rest of us just hung out in the living room.  Curt is a fan of a show on HBO called “Band of Brothers” which is about the WW II soldiers.  We watched that.  It was good, but too gory for Alaine.

The six of us went by our cabina and dropped off our stuff, then headed to a restaurant for dinner.  Alaine and I were tired and had headaches, but we didn’t want to be party-poopers so we went along to a dance club with the group.  Curt and Bea danced a lot and Bill and Kim danced a little.  Alaine and I didn’t dance at all.  We hung out in the bar drinking bottled water and wondering if the fish in the tank had a low life-expectancy because of the loud noise.  Some time after midnight we made it back to the cabin and fell gratefully into bed.