Planes Trains and Automobiles

This title is of course referring to the “classic” American movie from the 80’s that starred legends, Steve Martin and John Candy. Full disclosure, there’s really nothing about planes or trains in this story but anytime I have a long travel day or use multiple modes of transportation to get where I’m going, this movie title always pops into my head. And with as much traveling as I’ve done in the last couple of months, especially in the last week or two, it’s fair to dedicate a post to it.

We all know how I got to Belize then to my island three and a half months ago and back and forth to other islands and mainland Belize: planes and boats. What might have been the pinnacle of hardcore international travel utilizing everything but a donkey with a saddle, was eight days ago when Anna and I left Belize early on a Friday to take a three-hour water taxi to Chetumal, Mexico. We stayed overnight and at the absolute buttcrack of dawn hopped on a shuttle bus for a six-hour trip to Cancun, Mexico where three hours later we jumped on a plane to fly to San Jose, Costa Rica. Then one of us finally got WiFi jump started on our cell phones and took an Uber car from the airport to our apartment, all while taxi drivers were aggressively chastising us for not using them. With each “No gracias” the drivers got more hostile. Just writing and rereading about this travel day makes me feel like napping!

The bright spot in all of the travel so far was four days after all of this when we took a very nice sprinter van from San Jose to La Fortuna. Anna and I were the only two people on the shuttle and our driver, Oldemar (from Ridecr), was as nice as they come. He is also the best driver I’ve seen in years. Not only that, Oldemar let me sit up front so I wouldn’t throw up on anything and I got a free three-hour Spanish lesson from him. He let us stop for coffee and a quesadilla and when we saw a very nice fruit stand he pulled over and helped us find some produce and eggs. Oldemar saw me eyeing some bumpy green fruits and said something to the lady who ran the produce stand and she cut one up for us to try. That was when I tried guanabana (soursop) fruit for the first time ever. It is the craziest, most delicious, weirdest flavor and I am all in. Sign me up.

Two days after that – somewhere around the middle of October – I was being slathered in coffee and chocolate, followed by a glorious massage. The next day I got a shuttle to take me to a nature park, with a driver named Jesus, who was trying to break the sound barrier with a small Costa Rican sprinter van as if we were gun smugglers running across borders to countries we have no business being in. Surely he learned how to drive in Phoenix or New York City. Three of us in the shuttle were from Arizona, three from London and two from Canada. The three of us from Arizona would have sworn Jesus was from Phoenix the way he took corners. Having been without a car for four months and only riding a bicycle for the last three, cars already feel fast. With Costa Rican Uber and bus drivers you never know if you’ll get a tranquil experience or if you have to let go and let god. For the most part they have all been relatively stable with their driving skills, it’s just the traffic and sometimes road design that makes things more “interesting.” They do some wild traffic maneuvers sometimes and I’m not sure I understand all of their road signs but deep down it seems like they don’t either. The good news about Jesus’ driving is that the motion sickness barely had time to catch up to me since we were there in record time on those winding roads. We had basically driven faster than the speed of light and by doing so eliminated the lag time it would have taken my stomach to figure out it was being flung around like a washing machine spin cycle.

That all encompassed a span of 36 hours last week: Belize to Mexico to Costa Rica, then six days there. This week it was Costa Rica to Panama and including stops it was almost a 12-hour journey. I woke up at 4:30am in La Fortuna to make sure everything was packed as smartly as possible, knowing it would probably get ripped open again during a Customs search like it did in Chetumal. By 6:00am we were picked up by a man whose name I never quite got for a company that is NOT the same as Oldemar’s. We are going to call this guy Ed. Now I’m no genealogist but I would almost bet that Jesus and Ed are brothers, or, learned how to handle tourism vans at the same driving school. At least Jesus was personable and along for that ride I had a very fun group of people that were scared for their lives too.

In Ed’s case, he picked up Anna and I, who were definitely worn out from grabbing as much “pura vida” as we could in the short Costa Rica stay, and also retrieved two young women from another hotel who passed out the minute they put their seatbelts on. To be as lucky as them! Like Jesus, Ed drove extremely fast and also incorporated a small element that felt as though he were trying to defy gravity once in a while. For a while there was a lot of driving down the road the opposite direction of all other traffic. I didn’t ask – I had already let go to let the gods handle Ed and our van. “Pura vida,” as Costa Ricans all say for every situation! For extra fun, Ed’s cell phone was mounted on the dash for safety. He was able to stay on WhatsApp and message the shuttle driver group or his friend, who sent him a video of two naked people dancing. I wasn’t asleep yet and saw this video come in blurry, as they do before they’re downloaded. I thought to myself, surely Ed isn’t going to open this video with at least two of us staring ahead through his windshield which is directly above his phone. Yeh, Ed opened it, to a naked Latina with very long hair up against an older man sporting a dad bod, just dancing away to banda music. He even managed to forward the video to someone else while keeping us on the roads which were not straight and also full of construction crews. Well done, Ed.

We get out and kiss the ground in Puerto Viejo then have lunch, stretch our legs and wait for a different shuttle that will take us down to the border of Panama. From there we walked across a bridge at the border (Sixaola) after checking in with Customs and getting fingerprinted, to hop onto another shuttle for a short time until we found ourselves at a dock in Almirante, Panama. The water taxis at Almirante were old fiberglass boats that sit low to the water and have about six rows across that seat three people with backpacks comfortably. We were forced to squeeze four people across, all with backpacks. Before I realized just how packed it would get I was still thinking ahead and scooted over to the far right in the front row bench and laid myself and backpack across the pile of bright orange life vests in one corner. If this ship goes down, I’d grab a few of those floaties before heading in. Luckily, Anna was sitting right behind the vests so I knew she’d be able to grab a couple as well. She’s British and would probably only grab one; I am American and have a cat son at home who I can’t leave motherless, so I’d take three.

This boat was so full but we headed out anyway, slowly at first. Then we tried to open the throttle on the water once away from the dock. Ten or fifteen minutes in we came to a complete stop in the middle of what I think is the Caribbean Sea but to be honest, my geography sucks and I was exhausted. I “signed up for” this two-week excursion doing little to no research on where we were going. I managed to book a couple of Airbnbs and a flight back home to Belize but that was it for me. Anna booked all of our ground and water travel. It turns out we were stalled in the middle of the ocean because – surprise, surprise – we had taken on too much weight in this little boat and had to wait for another water taxi from the Almirante dock to catch up to us. To be fair, my carry-on was deceptively small and deceivingly heavy so I could be completely at fault for our sea craft trying to sink.

The other water taxi, carrying several less people than ours, sidled up to our boat – two inches away! We then realized the boat captains were asking volunteers from our overloaded boat to step onto the other boat. Hysterical. Once we threw a few people overboard, so to speak, the new boat captain carved a path to Bocas del Toro like the boat was on fire. It wasn’t. What it was though was hitting every single wave hard, so we were bouncing through the water as if we were taming a wild horse. Well, they were small waves and no one was hanging on for dear life so maybe like a miniature horse whose breakfast is five minutes late.

Ten hours into the trip we arrive on Isla Colon and discover they don’t allow Uber drivers on the islands so we stand in the rain and finally get a yellow taxi to throw our luggage in the back of his pick up truck and take us across the small side of the island to our bed and breakfast.

I know everyone has some funny or harrowing travel stories and these are just a few that I can recall from the last ten days. Yes, this all happened in ten days and I am wildly grateful for all of it. There would be no way to get to some of the breathtaking locations and see the wonders of nature and other cultures if I couldn’t push past fear, frustration or even the unknown to find out what’s on the other side. And what’s on the other side are completely different worlds of people and surroundings that teach us so much about our planet and ourselves. I will leave you with those inspiring words because I’m trying to brace you for the next post when we dive into culture and human behavior if you will. And by “dive” I mean I will go into detail about an annoyance while traveling again but also marvel at the incredible people you meet along the way, like Maria…but Kevin won’t be one of them.