A briskly refreshing, ghost-free night led to a cloud and rain free morning. Things were looking good. As Fiona prepared for another long and hard day of adventuring, I took a stroll around the grounds.

Our Door to the Outside World.

While I was strolling, I ran into yet another member of the Costa Rican – British invasion. How many of these people could there be?

Turned out he was a member of an earlier British invasion, thirty-five years earlier to be exact. His name was Wilhbur, he was the owner of the hotel. He told me that way back in 1973 he and his wife were on a week long vacation similar to ours. However, they found this farm for sale on their last day, and fell in love with the place (admittedly, an easy thing to do.) They bought the land and farmhouse on the spot, moved to Costa Rica, and have lived there ever since. Wilhbur said that the grounds were also a working farm, with one hundred dairy cows, countless chickens, and a large garden. Breakfast consisted of all local produce, making me hungrier and hungrier as we spoke. The rest of the Brits we’d met previously were friends of his down from Old Blighty, visiting for a few weeks. They must have talked about us after last night’s dinner, because he knew Fiona and I were the drifters in off the street, and he said he was glad to have us.

The breakfast spread was delicious, and we shared it with guests Gladys and Rolf. She was from Cuba, he was Hungarian, and they both lived in New Orleans (naturally). Rolf said they wanted to see the volcanoes, and had so far been disappointed by the constant cloud cover. Gladys jumped in and said she thought all the talk of active volcanoes was a bunch of bullshit printed just for the tourists. “Oh yes, last week the volcano was so active, too bad you weren’t here then. Now – just clouds covering the top. Bullshit!” I liked Gladys immediately.

Bullshit or not, we decided to try our luck with Poas. More twisting mountain roads led to the volcano. In the daylight, I could see just how deep the drainage ditches lining the roads were, and what a mess it would have been had we drifted just a bit off the road into one last night. Yeah, the previous night’s drive had been an adventure all right!

We climbed to well over eight thousand feet, and finally came to a toll booth. The admission price was $20 per car plus $5 per occupant. I asked the ranger what the chances of seeing the mile-wide crater were.

“Eh, I’d say about twenty percent or so. The people that are leaving so far have been disappointed. It’s up to you.”

We came all that way, it would be silly to turn around now. So, stubbornly, we paid the fee and soldiered on. Our chances were more like zero percent. All we saw was murky gray fog.

Can’t say we weren’t warned. But at least we tried. And with that disappointment behind us, we turned around to start the long drive back to Flamingo Bay. On the way we stopped for an interesting lunch, as well as to take a few more pictures of churches and other interesting things.

¡MMmmm! Sopa de mariscos. ¡Muy delicioso!

Volcano Rice. Of course.

It was on the hunt for our last church photo of the day that disaster struck.

We saw the twin spires of a church in the distance, and decided to get closer for a picture. The town didn’t seem to even be on our map, and the roads were mostly one way. But in Costa Rica, they don’t really indicate one way streets very clearly. There are tiny arrows (sometimes) at stop signs telling you which way you can and can’t go. But often, those signs are missing, or pointing the wrong way. We were at one such stop sign, right beside the church. I thought it was a one way, but it wasn’t marked. As I turned down the street, an old man started wagging his finger in the universal, “Wrong way, dumbass.”

I stopped and tried to pull into the church parking lot. But the loud BANG! and the HISSSSssssss! of my right front tire losing air indicated that I’d misjudged. Yep, I’d managed to drive into one of those stupid open ditches, and gotten myself a flat tire, the one thing above all others the rental car company had warned about.

Like I said, sometimes adventures don’t seem like adventures when they are happening.

The little old finger wagging man looked at the car, shook his head, then shuffled off. Fiona got out to look at the damage (well, she really got out to laugh at me where I couldn’t see her) Then, ever helpful, she asked me, “Didn’t you see that ditch there?”

“Uhh, yes dear, of course I saw it. How else do you think I could possibly have driven into it so well if I hadn’t seen it?”

We had a problem. The tire was flat, and the Shitera was stuck. Costa Ricans apparently just keep paving over the top of old pavement, which builds up a nice ridge at the edge of the road. Our crapulent car was high sided on the asphalt ridge, one wheel deep in a ditch. And flat.

I tried to back out, to no avail. Thirty or so school children across the street in a park gathered to helpfully point and laugh at the dummy gringo. Then, just as we’d been warned, a man came up to ‘help’.

He spoke no English, and our paranoia went into overdrive. He kept saying, “Le ayudaré.” And I kept waving, “No thanks, I’ve got it under control.” He walked away, but returned a few minutes later in his grande SUV. Without a word, he took a rope, tied it to the Shitera bumper, then to his truck.

In two minutes he’d pulled me from the ditch. After that, he just drove off. Hmm, wasn’t he supposed to steal our stuff?

I found the Shitera jack, a flimsy looking thing that looked like it would hurt me if I tried to use it. But I had no other choice. I turned the screw several million times, and the Shitera rose a bit. I was able to take the flat tire off, but there wasn’t enough clearance to get the spare on.

A woman that happened to be walking by said, “Mi marido tiene un gato mejor. Él tendrá razón aquí.” I was sure that meant, “A gang of thieves is on the way. I hope there is something left for me when they are done.” But no, her husband appeared, with a jack – a REAL jack – in hand.

He proceeded to get on the ground with me to look for a point to raise the car higher. While we were under the car, another man came up. He spoke English. “I have some wood to put under your jack to raise the car more.” He set about trying to rig the old jack with the wood while the other man worked with his jack to raise my car.

While all this was happening, two motorcyclists stopped and asked if we needed help. After declining, (we had more than enough help already) a cab stopped to see if he could be of assistance. This was getting a bit unbelievable. If we were stuck like this in Los Angeles, it could be months before someone offered help. Here we were in this decidedly non-tourist town turning help down. Incredible! With the help of the two strangers, the spare tire was put in place. The two men actually started arguing with each other over who would tighten the lug nuts.

It was surreal, but also my best moment of the whole vacation in Costa Rica. All the warnings of being robbed, while probably partially true, had been proved emphatically wrong. These people were good people, helping a dumbass stranger who got into a spot of trouble. They didn’t want money or anything, other than to help. When they finished, the man retrieved his jack, wrapped his grubby hand around his wife and walked away. The other guy said he had some water in his truck to clean up. He left with a wave after letting me use his water to wash my hands.

The Church Next to the Ditch.

The rest of the ride home was much less eventful, though we didn’t bother to take any more pictures of churches that day.

After such draining adventures as we’d had the past two days, we spent our last day in Costa Rica sipping foofey drinks with umbrellas in them, watching iguanas play, and getting burned to a crisp in the hot tropical sun.

A perfect way to end a fantastic vacation.

Costa Rica is one of the few places that I’ve been that I would actually like to return. Most times in a new place, once is enough, because there are so many other places I want to experience before taking the eternal dirt nap. The seed has been planted, the little taste of this wonderful land has ignited a spark, and a lust to wander the entire area, but next time on two wheels. I can picture me and Fiona motorcycling through Central America sometime in the near future.

Until then, ¡Pura Vida!

Author: frenchy