My host parents say that traveling a distance longer than 2 hours is not very common for ticos. Seriously? In my family 2 hours was the minimum travel time. So when I told them 4 hours to Hilton Head beach was not bad, I can now understand the surprised looks on their faces. With that being said, yesterday I really witnessed why many ticos do not like to travel far and it goes a little something like this...
It was a 6 hour bus ride to get to Bocas del Toro, Panama. The country south to Costa Rica. This trip was going to be a little more independent than the Nicaragua one since we were on our own. I woke up at 7am and met up with friends at 730am. From there we walked to the bus that goes to the main city San Jose. Once we got to the last bus stop, we got out and took a taxi to our bus station. We got there and there was already a huge line. Once the bus arrived the chaos started. My friend Kennesha went up to the guy in charge and told them we pre bought our tickets. The guy led us to enter the bus in the middle door. As we started to get on the bus people yelled that we were skipping. Linsey told them to calm down and that we had pre bought out tickets. However, thats when people started flooding on the bus, ticket or no ticket. We had to save rows for all our friends to make sure everyone got on. It was craziness. We were supposed to leave at 9am and ended up leaving at 930am. The bus ride... was hot. As I may have said before, AC is rare. I'm glad I took pills because our seats were in the back of the bus. We of course ran into traffic... its simply unavoidable when you only have two lane roads! Can we start some sort of road expansion project? So we ended up arriving to the border at about 430pm. yeah, 7 hours. Then we had to wait to get a stamp out of Costa Rica. Then we had to walk across a bridge of wooden boards held together with nails... this was a trust God kind of bridge... if you know what I mean. Then we had to wait on another line to get bus tickets proving we would leave Panama in the next year. Then we had to get our passport stamped again, then we had to buy a $3 Bocas del Toro sticker for our passport for who knows what reason. Then, because we got there so late, we had to take a charter van to the water taxi place because it was 530pm and the last one was leaving at 630pm and we were still an hour away. That charter bus was $10. Then we had to take the water taxi for 20 minutes to get to the Bocas del Toro island. The water taxi was $6... it was $4 but that was before 6pm. You know you are an American when they can get away with ripping you off with everything! Finally we got to the island and were led to our apartment. Other students in our program went to a hostel but I definitely strongly encouraged my opinion towards renting some sort of condo apartment. Luckily my friend Kennesha was right there with me and found a great apartment which everyone is completely thankful for. Its only $30 more for each of us for the entire week. We get our own private bathroom with tons of towels, AC, a clean kitchen with utensils because we are making our own food! A nice bedroom and a pullout couch. There are 5 of us here so one person is sleeping on an air mattress.
Today we woke up to the sound of rain, which I love. We hung out, made pancakes, took pictures, and took 5 hours to get ready. We are going on tours the rest of the week but decided to get settled in for the time being. So far it has been tons of fun! Taco night tonight! I'll post pictures at the end of the week!
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