Journal

Sunday, 2 March, 2003

Meeting Zenon and Agapito

I’m still working on getting this journal looking right with MovableType.  The beauty of it is that since it is not a commercial site it doesn’t have to be perfect, so if you don’t like the way it looks, look again in a week or two and it will probably be different.

In other news, my camera is busted and they want $280 to fix it in San José, so I am thinking maybe it’s better to just buy a new one.  No pictures for a while unless I decide to start putting up old ones.

Yesterday Alaine and I took a trip to the indigenous community of Amubri.  We had to meet the guide who does the transcontinental hike that is listed on the ATEC page.  We have had a lot of people inquiring and the phone number we had to contact the guide wasn’t working.  Mel set up the meeting and he and Sarah also went to Amubri.  They went on the moto, but Alaine and I had to go by bus.  It was a long trip.

We had to get to Bribri by 8 to catch the bus to Suretka.  In order to do that, we had to catch the 5 o’clock bus to Puerto Viejo.  We got to town around 5:30 and went to the office to do a little work because the bus for Bribri isn’t until 6:15.  We got our stuff done and got to the bus stop at 6:05, but the bus was already gone.  We had to go back to ATEC and try to call a taxi, which wasn’t easy at that hour.  Finally Alaine talked to someone and he said he would come for us.  We waited for what seemed like forever and then she called again and the woman said the guy was cleaning the car.  We didn’t care if it was clean, we just wanted to go!  Alaine told her we would be walking back to the bus station to try to find a taxi.  We headed that way and saw a taxi there, but then the other guy showed up.  We made it to Bribri at 7:20 and it cost us 3,000 colones instead of the 500 it would have cost for the bus.  We got a couple chicken empanadas at the bus stop and got on board.  This was an ancient school bus.  The shocks were so bad that body of the bus was literally coming apart at the seams.  I could see where it had been riveted back together and was separating again.  It was a bone-jarring ride, but the countryside was beautiful: a lot of forested hills, thatch-roofed houses alongside modern cement and wooden buildings.

We arrived in Suretka at 8:05 and looked around the town.  It was getting pretty hot so we decided to wait for Mel in the shade of a little gazebo-like thing near the school.  We waited and read the Tico Times.  We waited some more.  9:40.  I decided to call ATEC and see if maybe Mel had left us a message.  There is only one public phone in town and I had to wait to use that.  I finally talked to Ivette and she said she had not heard from Mel.  She gave me his cell phone number, but it wasn’t turned on.  We waited a little longer and then decided to go check by the river crossing and there were Mel and Sarah getting ready to board the boat!  We caught up to them and got on the boat.  They had had a flat tire and when they arrived in Suretka, had asked the boat guy if we had crossed.  He said he had seen two gringos, so they figured that was us.  After crossing the river and helping Mel and another guy get their motos out of the dugout canoe, we hitched a ride in the back of a delivery truck that was taking stuff up to Amubri.  The guys in the back of the truck told us we could catch the bus back down to the river at 12:30.  We arrived in Amubri and looked around.

I would have had no idea what to do next, but Mel suddenly came up on the moto and said he would ferry us one at a time to the meeting with the guide.  He took Alaine first and then me.  We sat in the shade of a big tree and talked with two guides, Zenon and Agapito.  They said that sure they could still do the hike.  They gave us a new phone number to leave a message when we have someone interested.  They exchanged news with Mel about common friends, and told stories about people trying to hike in Talamanca without a guide, getting lost and dying.  They said Mel should do the hike, but he said no.  They said Alaine and I should and we said we would like to.  Then they told about a guy who had crossed with them who had to go to the hospital when he finished and ended up losing all his toenails.  Then Alaine wasn’t so sure if she wanted to go!  Around 12 o’clock, Mel mentioned that we had to catch the bus back to Suretka and they said that it just passed!  It still had to make the circuit around town before going down to the river so we had a chance to catch it.  Mel took us back to the center of town again, one at a time on the moto.  We made the bus and got down to the river.  One strange thing about this bus is you have to pay when you get off; I guess that saves time during the trip.  Alaine said maybe they do that because they don’t know if the bus will make it or not.

We crossed the river and went up into the town.  We had been told that the bus back to Bribri would be between 2 and 3, so we had plenty of time.  It was hot, so we thought about having an ice cream and then we thought of having a beer.  We walked around looking for a bar or something and asked a couple people.  Then we thought to ask when the bus would come and the woman in the store said 1 o’clock.  So we settled for a frozen treats and walked down to the bus stop.  Talking to the folks at the bus stop, we found out that the bus would pass on it’s way to Shiroles and then come back and pick us up on the way back to Bribri.  The bus came about 1:10 and we asked a woman at the bus stop how long it takes it to go and come back.  She said about 15 minutes.  An hour later the bus came back.  We boarded and got the last 2 seats.  From that point on it was full all the way to Bribri.  A lot of the windows wouldn’t open so it was hot and stuffy.  At least it had pretty good shocks.

We arrived in Bribri just in time to catch the bus to Puerto Viejo, and in Puerto viejo just in time to catch the bus home.

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