Hi there,
From Playas del Coco to Santa Teresa it was a very long road due to how poorly connected the country is with public transport. In order not to do the barbarity that we did from Tortuguero to La Fortuna, we decided to spend a night in Puntarenas.
We booked a hotel that was very cheap, although it was far from the port where we had to catch the ferry. We arrived at the hotel and there was a scandal as a group of Spanish drunks was doing Karaoke.
We waited half an hour for our room and when we got in, there was a very strong smell of disinfectant, and the floor was still wet. So, my cold got worse. I had to open everything, but that smell did not go away; add to it the scandal of the drunken Spaniards and that it did not stop raining, so we could not go anywhere. Also, on the other side of the room there were rude children screaming.
We decided to go out for dinner even though it was still raining as the hotel restaurant had nothing interesting and we didn’t want to eat with karaoke bursting our ears.
We took the bus and arrived at the town of Puntarenas which was horrible. We walked and walked looking for some soda (typical local restaurant) to eat and the only thing that was there were fried chicken stalls.
We finally found a restaurant. The surprise is that they added a 23% tax to the bill, something that we had not seen in Costa Rica until now.
At one point Diego stared into infinity and said, “This place is depressing, it encourages alcoholism.”
It was one of the few times in Costa Rica that we were afraid of being robbed, of how ugly and decadent that town was.
The next day, we had breakfast and caught the first bus. There we met a lady who was also going to catch the ferry and she told us to go with her.
We told her that it seemed absurd to us that there was no direct bus to the port or schedules compatible with those of the ferry. The lady said that we were right, that the bus drivers were cunning, but since it was the only job there was, they took advantage of it.
This corroborates my theory that, in Costa Rica, instead of making things work well, each one sets up his own mafia and takes advantage of everything he can.
The lady told me “Before Costa Rica was not like that, before we were more Pura Vida”. As she told me, Nicaraguan immigration was a big problem because the government gave them everything and gave the Ticos nothing. “The government pays for their studies, and they start working as human resources to put their own people in companies.”
She also told me indignantly that when they interviewed Nicaraguans on television, they said that Ticos don’t have balls. “If they have so many balls, why don’t they fight in their country?” She stated that the situation was so serious that it was no longer possible to speak in the street because it was no longer known who was Nicaraguan and who was not. So, you had to be quiet to avoid getting into trouble.
This lady lived in Puntarenas, but she was from Paquera where her mother still lived in the countryside. She was bringing her chickens in a little box since she couldn’t keep them in her house because they disturbed the neighbors when they sang.
Before the ferry left, we saw the lady get off and not get back on.
Diego with his stories, said that perhaps she was selling drugs and going to visit his mother was a “cover.”
The ferry departed and so we left behind that decadent place.