Day 4

Kathy´s catching us up with day 3 as I fill us in on day 4. Well, we only stayed in La Fortuna for one day, but since we rented the scooter, we were able to fit in a lot in that little amount of time. One of our goals for this trip was to go to the town of Tortuguera which is situated on the Caribbean coast and is surrounded by National Parks included one that extends into the ocean itself. It´s well known for its protected turtle nesting grounds, crocodiles, manatees and other wildlife. We figure it´s going to take us a while to get there since we´re relying on buses the entire time. We actually love traveling this way. It makes us feel more like we live here rather than just visiting. So we have to wake up at 4:30am on August 1 to catch the bus leaving La Fortuna at 5am. Luckily that crappy little place we stayed at last night was only about a block away so it didn´t take us long - which is nice because it was pouring rain in the morning. By the way, it rains a lot here, particularly in the mountains, but doesn´t typically last too long which is nice.

We leave La Fortuna headed for Ciudad Quesada aka San Carlos. We then had to wait for 3 hours for the next bus to Puerto Viejo Sarapiqui because we just barely missed the 6 o´clock. We figured we´d call some hotels in Tortuguero to make reservations because we actually just read in the Lonely Planet guide that this was the busiest time of year there due to the fact that it´s turtle nesting season. That was probably an important piece of information to have prior to heading out for it. But, fortunately we found a room available at the place Lonely Planet actually recommended called Cabinas Princesa and when I spoke to the lady she was very nice and told me she´d hold a room for us until we got there that night.

So we finally get on the bus and are now heading to Puerto Viejo Sarapiqui. It takes about 2.5 hours to get there from San Carlos, but probably would have only taken 1.5 hours had they not stopped every 5 minutes to pick someone up or drop someone off. It may be frustrating for us, but it´s everyday life for Costa Ricans. Buses in Thailand did the same thing so we were kind of used to the concept. Actually, as an aside, Costa Rica and Thailand are almost identical countries in every aspect except for their language. If you took down all the Spanish signs here you would have difficulty telling the difference between the two. Well there are also no Asian people here, although we have seen a couple Chinese restaurants that we can only assume are run by Chinese people. Man, those people are ubiquitous.

The next bus ride isn´t so bad. It takes us about an hour to get to our next stop on the way to Tortuguero called Guapiles. It´s a typical small Latin city but with less tourists and more locals. It really is nice when there are no tourists around. It´s the best way to get a feel for a culture when locals´ lives don´t revolve around placating tourists. They are much more sincere and genuine. That´s one of the reasons we travel the way we do.

Okay, so we have to catch the next bus from Guapiles to the small town of Cariari. We ate and walked around the town a little bit. Kathy likes to go to pharmacies in other countries because she likes to see what drugs they sell over the counter there. There was a professional soccer game that started at 3pm so all the locals were walking around in soccer garb. There was a buzz in the air just like before a Suns game. As we were walking around town, we came across a guy selling turtle eggs from the back of a pickup truck... Well being a conservation biologist, I was obviously appalled by this. We´ve read that turtle eggs get poached and sold on the black market as a delicacy but this was right in the open! And when I took his picture, he covered his face. He was obviously not very proud of what he was doing.

From Steve and Kathy's Travel Blog

We had trouble finding an ATM in Guapiles so we decided to wait until Cariari to get cash out since they don´t take any cards in Tortuguero. After the 40 minute drive (Lonely Planet said 20 min.) it´s about 3:30pm and the first thing we do is look for an ATM. First one won´t work so we go down the street to the next bank - it doesn´t work either. We see another one a little further down...it doesn´t work either!! We ask around to see if there are any other ATMs around town. Nope! There are only 3 ATMs in this city and none...nada...nothing works! We´re screwed. We have about 20 bucks worth of colones left and we can´t go to Tortuguero without cash... so we have to bite the bullet and head back to Guapiles for cash - where we should have just gotten it in the first place. It turns out that it was actually a good thing we had to head back to Guapiles because we came to find out prior to heading back there that there were no other buses leaving from Cariari to the boat that takes us to Tortuguero... We would of had to go back anyway.

So, it´s about 5pm and we´re in Guapiles again. We find an ATM right away, grab the cash we need and then grab a cab to Hotel y cabinas Wilson that was listed in Lonely Planet. It was about like the place we stayed at the previous night except it had a tv and air conditioning....but no hot water. Well since we had to stay in Guapiles for the night, we thought we´d make the best of it. We went down to the park in the center of town where all the locals were hanging out watching the high school band practice. It was actually pretty cool so we hung out there a bit. Then decided to walk around some more and settled down at a little bakery and got a couple of Cokes in glass bottles. There must be something that happens to the chemistry in Coke when stored in glass, because it tastes so much better that way. A lady comes by selling Costa Rican lottery tickets. The jackpot was 90,000,000 colones, which we calculate to be about $180,000 so we buy one and decide if we win we´re going to donate it the conservation groups that work on saving the turtles down in Tortuguero - after we pay off our cars first of course.... We head to bed early since we´d been up since 4:30 that morning. We fall asleep watching tv in english with spanish subtitles hoping to pick up a few more words.

It´s now 9am on monday, August 2nd and we´re waiting to catch the bus back to Cariari. Hopefully we´ll make it to Tortuguero by about 2pm. Time to go check our lottery ticket... hasta luego.