Out of all of the travel days, yesrterday has to be the worst. I've had bad travel days - 24 hours on a single train between Istanbul and Bucharest - that wasn't fun. But this was the worst.
The only redeeming factor of the whole day was that I met 3 people to share the misery with. Without them, I really have no idea what I would have done.
The day wasn't supposed to be horrible. I had my flight from Bocas del Toro, Panama to San Jose, Costa Rica. I walked to the airport in 10 minutes! When I arrived at the airport, I was told that I needed to produce a piece of paper printed with my US return itinerary. It never occurred to me that I would need my itinerary, so I didn't have it. The stress began. I didn't have time to return to the hostel and even if I did, I am not sure they could have helped me. The airline check in guy said I would have to wait, but I could use a different airline's computer.
Apparently, Costa Rica has become particularly concerned about people arriving in Costa Rica and staying. After a nail-biting 20 minutes, I was finally allowed to use the computer (the same one they use to check people in with!). I found my itinerary, they printed it, and the crisis was averted. Smallish hiccup, but it didn't help that some old bag kept asking me questions and yapping her squashed face off about how this is new and they should have signs and blah blah blah blah...
I arrived in San Jose early - there are 2 buses a day going to Montezuma, 1 at 6.00am and the other at 2.00pm. The plane arrived in San Jose somewhere around 9.00am. I took a taxi to the Coca Cola bus station (where the bus was leaving from) and walked around for a bit. I stopped at a cafe for breakfast, went to the grocery store for some food fuel for the journey, had lunch, and then went back to the bus station.
I arrived back at the station around 1pm expecting the bus to leave in an hour. When I arrived, there was a sign saying that there was a problem with the ferry (from Puntarenas to Paquete) and that the bus would leave 2 hours late. Great.
It was then that I met 3 other people (2 from Canada and 1 from Nigeria) who were also going to Montezuma. At least I wasn't alone.
After 2 hours of waiting, we boarded the bus. Eight hours later (to make a long, excruciating story shorter), we arrived in Montezuma. I do want to mention that the "directo" bus required us to get off the bus at the ferry port, ride the ferry independently, find the bus again on the other side, then switch to a different bus in a small town called Cobano. That's not very direct if you ask me.
So around 12.30, the four of us straggled into the hostel I had booked for myself (fortunately people were still up and about). Thus ends the horrible, no good, very bad travel day (in as short of a post as I can muster).
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