I awoke once around dawn in the morning because I swear I heard a tree fall outside our complex of bungalows. I was able to fall back asleep. We got up and about a few hours later, and had breakfast at a German bakery next to the cabins.
The night before during our brief introduction to the whole GAP group, we learned that a large sub-group was going to leave around 7am for a hiking trip at the nearby Manzanillo National Park. We opted out of this. We’d discussed visiting a sloth sanctuary near town with one of the other couples who didn’t feel like jumping out of bed that early.
We hadn’t yet had a proper introduction to the country. Sunday had been all about transit. We considered a trip to a sloth sanctuary to be more our speed for the day, and we were under the impression that it wasn’t too far from town. For the time being, we left the logistics to our new companions Melissa and Anthony, an English teacher and director of an after-school program, respectively. They lived together in San Mateo, California.
Before meeting up with them, we took a leisurely stroll on the beach around town. The beach itself was a small strip of sand only a few meters wide. For most of the length of town, a forest of palm trees formed a canopy that extended almost all the way to the water. This would have made for nice surroundings, but within the city limits the beach was filthy, and didn’t seem entirely safe. There were piles of seaweed mixed with trash, and I had to warn Mere not to step on a homeless person curled up on the beach in the rain.
We met up with our friends again and spoke with Gloria, the female innkeeper, about options for getting to the Aviaros del Caribe Sloth Sanctuary. When given the option of taking a taxi or the public bus toward Limon, we opted for the cheaper option, thinking, of course, that we’d all used public transit before and we could figure out where (and how) to get off.
None of us actually knew where we were supposed to stop. We thankfully ran into a helpful young couple from Georgia who had been traveling around the country by bus who helped us navigate and gave us the rundown on how the bus system supposedly worked. They had a true sob story. They had had their money stolen from them as they slept with their bags between their legs on a public bus.
They barely had 10,000 colones ($20) to make it back to San Jose for their flight out that night. Anthony had a Clif bar that he practically forced them to eat, as they were not going to eat until that night on the plane. Meanwhile, Mere sat next to a girl from Pittsburgh who was going to marry a man she had met in Costa Rica.
The “bus stop” was only a few hundred feet from the sanctuary. It was a very well put-together place. There was a large auditorium building with sloths painted on the walls. The owners were originally from the States, and their grandson Jeff was our tour guide. He looked about sixteen years old, but he was very knowledgeable about sloths and their unique biology. He introduced us to some very nice and affectionate sloths. The very first sloth that the family had ever taken in, Buttercup, might be just about the most famous sloth in the entire world. Her picture is on Wikipedia.
When we finished the tour, we stepped back out to the road hoping to catch the next bus. There was a small convenience store across the road from the sanctuary and we asked the attendant, who performed her duty completely from behind metal bars, if the rickety leaning shelter outside was the parada de autobus. She spoke no English, but we gathered that if we wanted the bus to stop, we would have to partake in much waving of arms as it flew by.
As we saw buses approach from around the bend, all of us gringos began our wild bus stop dance. It was to no avail, and our desired bus simply carried on its manic path. By the Grace of God, a taxi stopped in front of the store to let out a family. I asked the driver “?Puerto Viejo?”, and he made a phone call to his dispatch. He came back with “?Dollars or Colones?”, and I impulsively stated dollars, as that was the only currency I was carrying because I had not yet had an opportunity to make a switch. I am convinced this locked in a higher rate. For four people, it would cost thirty dollars to go twenty five kilometers. But this was our only way back.
On our bus ride the previous day, I had taken solace in the fact that our bus was a big thing on the road, and that in the unfortunate event of an accident, it would absorb the shock of a smaller vehicle (or pedestrian) that might strike it. In the Toyota Tercel that would taxi us to Puerto Viejo, we did not have this advantage. Our driver Patricio (Patrick in English) increased our momentum (momentum being the product of the small mass of the Tercel and our high speed), perhaps in an effort to make up for this disadvantage.
Sitting in the center back seat with an unfortunately clear view of the road, Meredith attempted to defuse her concern about Patricio’s driving by cursing him in English. Anthony and Melissa tried to formulate questions in Spanish, and he gave answers which we only vaguely understood. We did gather that he had previously driven the public bus, he was thirty-four years old, and that he was getting us to Puerto Viejo much faster and by a much more direct route than the bus took.
Meanwhile, I prayed for a bend in the road that might force him to slow down, as the pouring rain had not done. When the road was straight or there wasn’t a car in front of him, he accelerated. When there was a car in front of him, he passed it, regardless if there was a car or large truck in the opposing lane.
We did make it back to Puerto Viejo in one piece, and gladly bid farewell to our new friend Patricio. It was after five, but none of us had eaten a proper lunch. We ate a very good meal at a restaurant on the beach and played cards. We had been warned not to drink the water and to be wary of ice as well. The positive aspect of this was that I was free to order a bottle of Coca Cola whenever we went out.
We returned to the hotel and Mere and I had our official debriefing from our guide. Afterward, as a group we went to a restaurant and celebrated Jimmy the bartender’s 23rd birthday. We hadn’t had a chance to get to know him yet. He was from some small time near Springfield, IL, and he was traveling with his two cousins Tracy and Dave from Orange County in California. They would collectively come to be known as “Team Imperial”, for reasons which would become obvious over the next few days. Mere and I ordered casados, the ubiquitous local dish of some meat coupled with rice and beans. Casado, or some derivative means “married”. Rice and beans are always served together.
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