Costa Rica Part 4

The Finns headed off in the morning and after breakfast I spent a large chunk of the day writing up the blog as far as I got last time. When I met Dom at the correct time to get the bus it turned out the timetable had changed and we had to grab a beer while we waited for the bus. We managed to grab the last bus down to Quepos near Manuel Antonio and bumped into some Austrian girls randomly on the bus. Regina who was rather nice and seemingly interested in Dom and Martha who was apparently 37, but I made her show me her passport to prove it as I did not believe her. We chatted for a bit and made plans to possibly meet up in Bocas Del Toro at the weekend. Once we got to Quepos we spoke with Tom and suggested he come back or meet us in Bocas, but there were problems with the buses and it looked like he would meet us in Bocas and would get there for saturday or sunday. The town had looked quite promising for a night out but we were a bit knackered. We had an eat as much as you like Italian meal (where they seemed annoyed that we had actually decided to eat as much as we liked. A visible sigh accompanying each new plate request) and then went to a few dead bars (managing to avoid giving any money to a gypo drug dealer who refused to believe we had gone on a night out with as little money as I said I had) before settling on an old school blues bar full of old Yankees.

We were staying in Hotel Majestic. Its a bit of a shitty wooden affair and the old man doorman kept following me around to check I turned lights and water off. He was also a little senile. One day he asked me what day it was and other times he just talked gibberish I could not understand. Manuel Antonio is a really cool national park. Its smallish and based around a beach and we saw so much wildlife. We saw sloths immediately upon entering, found a vulture that had shit on a Yankee and even some random black things we could not identify on the waterfall trail. Now the waterfall was dry, which you may think was a disappointment. It was, but the trail is so much remoter and as most of the guests are lazy Yanks the wildlife stays close to the trail. The black things (I was still hoping it was a cat, Dom thinks it was raccoons) made a large crash and we only caught their retreating backs as we chased them. We saw lots of lizards, a few iguanas, some raccoons and some more monkeys down on the beach front. The place is just loaded with wildlife. We even sort of saw a stick owl through someone telescope. The highlight was on the trail up to the mirador though. We suddenly found ourselves surrounded by Capuchin monkeys. We had been advised not to feed them, but they seemed not to obey these orders themselves. They seemingly had us surrounded. Everywhere we looked were monkeys and everytime you turned your back on them they would creep that little bit closer. One stole some food out of Doms hands and one of the others had a very mean face. I put my bag down to take a photo for Dom and one of them whisked off with my bag. It had only a book and a ball in it and once the monkey discovered this he seemed a little disappointed as he abandoned it. Should have got a photo, but its not instinctual for me to reach for a camera now I have not had one for 6 years. Anyway the monkey had no taste. It was Mark Twain after all. Then again maybe the monkey could only read Spanish. On the way back down the same monkey grabbed my carrier bag and after some tug of war, tore open the bag, stuffed in his hand and was again disappointed there was no food. Damn menaces, but kind of cool at the same time. The beach in Manuel Antonio is awesome however and the water really warm. Dom and I decided to vegitate around there for the rest of the afternoon before heading for some drinks in El Avion. This is an old American bomber plane thats been turned into a bar and is a cool place to grab a drink. Afterwards we headed back to town and grabbed some cheap beers to drink out by the rocks while we waited for town to get livelier. It never seemed to and so we decided to go back and sleep for a bit before heading out. In the end neither of us could be arsed to get up and we figured we would save it for the next night.

In the morning we grabbed a bus to San Jose (where I picked up both Roughing It and Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain) and got another bus on to Turrialba. We got there a little late and the others had been waiting out in the park for us. Dom's knee was still giving him trouble, but it turned out that Yoana was heading down to Colombia when we were going to be there so that was some really good news. We ended up back in the old hotel we had stayed in last time. We had let them know we were headed for Panama the next day and while I waited for Dom to get ready, the landlady told me there was a phonecall for me. I could only presume it was Karla but that was strange. I answered the phone and said hello. They said hello and what did I want. I answered I did not know because I was not sure why I had hold of the telephone. It was awkward and my Spanish was not up to it. I think it turned out that the woman had called a friend who could tell me how to get there, but I already knew that. Weird and awkward moment. Somehow the pound had also rallied. Good news all round. We gathered the old crew together when we met randomly in a restaurant which neither knew the other was in. A fate is kind sometimes. We had been joined by another older Dutch lady and did a lot of drinking, philosophising and eating around Turrialba. I had been trying to work over to chatting with Marscha but seemed to keep immersing myself in philosophical discussion. God damn it. Why can't I shut off my brain when I choose to or opt to not debate something. Ingrained stupidity is the only acceptable answer. People dropped off one by one until it was just myself, Marscha and Karla left. Karla had rightly complained that we did not get to spend any time together (and it was true and I apologise for that as always seemed to be at other ends of tables), but she also astutely saw I wanted some one to one time lol. By this point Marscha had turned down an invitation from the friend of her Dutch friend's Costa Rican boyfriend to go back to his and me and her were busy playing with each others hands, while she rejected any advances I made. Probably a good thing. I would have respected her less if she had cheated, even though I would have enjoyed that more in the short term. I tried to persuade Marscha what she really wanted to do was come to Colombia, but to no avail. Karla even tried to persuade her of the same thing and told me to take advantage of Marscha, which is not my usual style unless I am very drunk. Eventually it was just us two and we talked about hypotheticals if she hadn't had a boyfriend. Hmm hypotheticals always seem a good idea at the time, but they really are building houses with smoke clouds. The bar eventually turfed us out and we headed for the bandstand where we lay out of the rain and talked until the security guard unceremoniously threw us out. Git. I hate it when you know time is running out on you, but we headed back to the hotel. Through another random twist of fate, Marscha's family house was directly opposite our hotel. Quite funny. Less funny was the fact I could not get into my hotel. Shit. Luckily for me Marscha agreed to keep me company and we went up to the hospital to watch sunrise, still playing a bit and enjoying each others company without much expectation from either side. I can only really speak for myself, but I really enjoyed my second lack of sleep in Turrialba. She is a smart, gentle, good looking girl with a good bantering personality in a softly enticing way. Rarely for me I could enjoy someones company almost without the need to talk. Always a shame when fate deals you a good hand, but its not really yours to play. I still hope she decides to change her mind on having children. Its a waste if her genes are lost on the next generation. It had felt very comfortable on the night and there was a sort of a glow to the evening. Hmm maybe next time eh lol. Fate will throw stuff back around if something is meant to come from something, but she left a good impression on me and hopefully I at least left some mark on her. I can at least say its the most fun watching a sunrise, playing with hands that I have ever had lol. Eventually Marscha had to leave and get some sleep and I wandered around town before Dom eventually found me skulking outside and let me in. I did not sleep again and on the way to the bus station we bumped into the others. After such a good evening and a good goodbye it felt cheapened by a sudden bus station meeting with one minute until the buses left and I think I handled it really awkwardly and badly by leaving it alone when I should have said something. Oh well you live and learn. If you read this Marscha, then apologies for that ending. I fucked it up a bit, but have fun wherever you are and if you get bored feel free to trek down lol.

Anyway we hopped on a bus to Siqueres where we missed our connection and were forced to spend time in this shit town before getting a bus to Limon. On the way we chatted a lot with the bus driver and I was dead on my feet at this point. My second all nighter in just 6 days was having an effect. From Limon we grabbed a bus to the border and realised that we had not missed much by avoiding the Caribbean coast. The Finns confirmed this when they let us know they had only spent the one night in Puerto Viejo. We randomly bumped into the Austrian girls again on the bus and they said they had just written to me. We would meet them the next night in Bocas Del Toro. I finished off the remainder of Huckleberry Finn despite no sleep and it was even better than I remembered it being. I love Twain. So funny. Witty and yet not up his own arse like Oscar Wilde. If I can write this up eventually even a fraction as good as his stuff I will be very happy. The border itself was a long railway track bridge over a dirty river. Kind of like a derelict run down border (even by border town standards) and we managed to traverse the problem of onward tickets by telling them how we planned to get to Colombia. Woohoo we were in Panama. Country 41.