Wel­come to the jun­gle
It gets worse here every­day
Ya learn to live like an ani­mal
In the jun­gle where we play

Once we had crossed the Costa Rican bor­der, we decided to skip San Jose and to stop at a big town a few hours before the cap­i­tal: San Isidro Del Gen­eral. From there, we were plan­ning to take another bus to go to Que­pos, on the Pacific coast.

It took us a good three hours to reach San Isidro, and we feared we had missed our bus to Que­pos. But the sched­ule had changed we had just had time to make it.

When we saw the bus pulling in the sta­tion, Feng turned to me and asked: “where do we store our bags?”. Indeed, the bus was very old and it did not seem to have any room under­neath. The dri­ver told us to carry our bak­packs on board and we just left them at the back of the bus. The seats and the win­dows were cov­ered by a thick layer of dust and dirt, and I guess we should have asked our­selves why…

Nonethe­less, we jumped on the bus, already tired and sweaty. The first part of the trip was really nice, although the bus was packed. We climbed in the moun­tains, crossed rivers on tiny sus­pen­sion bridges and hold our breath every time, went down the moun­tain again and plunged to a sea of green.

At sun­set, we arrived to the small coast town of Domini­cal. Most peo­ple got off there and the bus was almost empty. We were the only for­eign­ers there, for sure. From there, the road isn´t paved and our bus just reversed and started the dif­fi­cult drive in the jungle.

It was crazy. The road was bumpy and extremely nar­row, we were sur­rounded by the rain for­est. We passed other trucks and there were barely enough room for both the bus and them, one of us had to stop each time and we were inches apart.

All the win­dows were open in the bus and we were soon cov­ered in dust, our back­packs, our clothes, our faces… we put on our sun­glasses in a des­per­ate attempt to block it… didn´t really work. There were signs here and there, “despa­cio” (slow down) with pic­tures of ani­mals, such as mon­keys and jaguars. Didn´t see any, but we were deep in the wood.

All in all, it took us about two hours to make the 47 kilo­me­ters to Que­pos. It was pitch black when we arrived and all we could think of was to take a shower to wash the dirt and the dust.

Crazy ride… and many more to come, I´m sure. Mean­while, we checked in a hospedaje and fell asleep watch­ing the tiny TV in our room.

Wait­ing For The Bus In San Isidro

San Isidro Del Gen­eral, In Between Buses

In The Bus

In The Jungle

Related arti­cles:

1. Wel­come To The Jungle
2. Costa Rica, Pacific Coast
3. It´s A Wild Life…
4. Par­que National Manuel Antonio
5. Beach Bum­ming In Uruguay