So we spent the night in the Los Volcanes hotel. After going to the market, we hopped in the van to head to Dominical.
The roads were curvy but pretty smooth pavement, so the beginning wasnīt so bad.
We stopped at a large river to see really huge crocodiles. We parked and locked the van just about 50 yards from the bridge and walked back to the bridge. In the 10 minutes we were gone, some Ticos (Costa Ricans) broke into the van and stole a bunch of people`s daypacks, mine included. They got 3 passports, cash, packs, credit cards, and lots and lots of gear. I lost about a grand worth if you go by retail prices. (more like 4 or 500 if you look at what I actually paid)
We were all mad as hell and very very upset. We found a police officer on the road ahead and stopped to tell him what happened. He supposedly radioed ahead to see if another officer would pull over the truck with the banditos in it. We then booked it to try to catch up with them (we had a pretty good idea who it was and what their truck looked like) but never caught up. We stopped at the next police station and asked about the radio ahead, and they promptly laughed in our faces, and pointed us to another station.
At the other station, they wrote us a complete police report, which we will need to show the US embassy so we can leave Costa Rica. They are keeping an eye out for our stuff, but we all know its long gone.
I am frustrated that these people donīt know what they are doing when they steal from us. The money they got they will undoubtedly drink away, and they stole from largely poor college students. We will have to leave TFI a day or so early to secure our passage back to the US, we all had to cancel our credit cards, will have to order new IDs and had to have money wired to us. A huge hassell for some stupid Ticos.
That took about 2 hours off our trip. The next few hours of driving wasn`t so bad. We say palm plantations, the Pacific ocean, and the varied landscape. We saw the VERY poor communities that are located by the remote palm tree plantations. Then we hit traffic. There was a big storm here a few weeks ago, and lots of the roads are washed out. We had to take the coast road instead of the Pan American Highway to Dominical. There was lots of sitting in traffic in the rain, and several VERY VERY sketchy very narrow one lane bridges. (I mean, boards with sheet metal across them = a bridge) Then just before dark we hit the dirt road. We were on the dirt road for about 3 hours. Wide, rough dirt road with no signs or street lights. It was definitely interesting.
We finally pulled into Dominical around 8:30pm. (it gets dark here at 6pm)Instead of trying to make it to TFI that night, David and Dr. Flood decided to stay in a hotel in Dominical. It was nice to have a nice place to sleep and a hot shower after a very trying day.
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