America the Beautiful...

Well everyone… WE’RE HERE!!!  Granted we’ve been here for 2 days now so I’m sure a majority of you already know this tid bit of information.  It was an interesting last few days though, all the way from the 2 days prior to getting here, finally being here, and then yesterday.  I guess we should just start from the top…

The days leading up to being in Puerto Viejo were spent in Nicaragua and obviously Costa Rica.  Well we almost didn’t make it out of Nicaragua because the “police”, if that’s what you want to call them, are a bunch of lazy thieves trying to make an easy buck.  Well guess what, you’re not getting our money honey.

Up until this point, entry into a country had always been the painstakingly long process full of bureaucratic crap and people trying to swindle money for something you don’t need their help on.  However, this time it was LEAVING Nicaragua that gave us so many issues.

After countless hours, (O.K. it had been a hour and half by this point, I was definitely keeping track) Abasi was informed that he now needed to get a stamp from the police to allow our car out of Nicaragua.  So Abasi heads over to the police station, where they ask him where he was from and as soon as he says the United States (God Bless It) they tell him he has to come over for an inspection of the vehicle.  Now Betty, our car, had been in the country for a total of one day, they had no (major) issues with us entering and all of a sudden when we want to leave we are huge drug dealers or thieves?  Of course.  We bring the car over, to a back part of the area where only semi trucks that are loading and unloading are at and wait for the BS to begin… AND OOH DID IT BEGIN!

Immediately we were told that we had to take EVERYTHING out of the car so they could inspect it.  And I mean everything.  They said unless we did this, we would not be able to leave Nicaragua.  Well of course they were only doing this because they wanted a pay off.  One of the number one tried and true ways for foreign cops to get money from stupid travelers who will pay is to make a HUGE inconvenience for them, so that the pay off seems like the better option, and to be honest it did seem like a better option.  IF WE WEREN’T PROUD AMERICANS WHO WON’T BE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF!!!

Of course, Abasi and I, being who we are, stubborn, proud and in my opinion, AWESOME people, refuse to “take the bite” and we take every single thing out of the truck… clothes, boxes, dogs, the whole shebang.  That’s right folks, instead of paying them whatever ridiculous amount of money they thought was worthy of us to sell our dignity, we spent 2 and half hours unloading and then RELOADING the entire truck… all the while singing The National Anthem.  If you think for one second I am kidding about singing the National Anthem you are sadly mistaken… we sang it loud and proud, and Abasi obviously has a beautiful voice so it was quite the rendition.  Who knows if they understood what we were singing.  I honestly wish they all knew English because I would have taught them the lyrics to our AMAZING Country’s song. 

So after we unloaded the car, we sat back and watched them do a drug sweep of the car, checking for hidden, hollow spots, where obviously we were stashing the truckfulls of cocaine we just picked up.  I mean it was the most ridiculous sight to see this young, stupid kid, knowing now that he HAS to do the check or else risk looking completely obvious in his efforts of trying to get money.  Now I did have a sweet picture of the guy crouching inside our trunk, waving his finger “NO” at me for taking a picture of him, but I actually lost my camera on the last day, major bummer, and now don’t have that awesome picture which could pretty much tell the whole story itself.

How they even consider themselves police, I don’t know.  The female “officers” wore HIGH HEELS!!! What criminal are you going to take down in high heels?  You couldn’t even run after a child appropriately in heels.  And the male officers were like children themselves, sitting around a TV, thinking they were important.

So finally we loaded the car back up, and if we’re being honest, it was a major pain in the tush so they definitely won a little bit there, but we may have lost the battle but we won the war.  As we drove away we honked the horn, waved goodbye enthusiastically and sarcastically thanked them for their time.

We enter Costa Rica and there’s really nothing to get into there. Yes it took a long time, but only 2 hours in comparison to the hellish 4 hours we had just spent trying to leave the previous country.  So finally all the paper work is done and 6 HOURS after we try to cross borders, we finally do.  This put us honestly at almost 5pm and as we all know the sun starts saying adios at 5:45, 6ish so we really didn’t have too much time to make tracks into Costa Rica.  We ended up staying the night on the West Coast of Costa Rica, hoping tomorrow would be an easy drive to Puerto Viejo.

Well, it kinda was, kinda wasn’t.

We got a solid start on the road at about 7ish.  Right as we’re leaving I realize my camera isn’t in the car.  It wasn’t stolen because the doors were locked and other things were in the car that would have been taken too, had the car been broken into.  The night before, right before we got to our hotel, we were pretty much side swept off the road by an 18-wheeler and things went flying in our attempt to not crash.  GOOD NEWS!!! We didn’t crash… bad news is I think my camera flew onto the side of the car and must have fallen out when I opened my door without me knowing it.  HUGE bummer, second camera I have lost/ had stolen in Costa Rica over the last couple of years, but the silver lining is that it happened at the end of the trip and I was still able to post some great pics along the way.  C’est la vie?  Right?

There’s clearly nothing I can do about it, so we just get over it and continue to PV.  We are making pretty good time coming into San Jose, where we know things will get pretty dicey.  We have our map and we’re trying to follow it but people, I have said it before and I’ll say it again, the signs in Central America IF existent at all, ARE TERRIBLE and usually just not there.  We get lost trying to find our way out of San Jose, we are on roads we have never used by bus or shuttle before and hope this is just an alternative route.  We stop and ask A MILLION times for directions from locals and cabbies, even considering paying a cab to drive us to the highway that will get us there.  We continue on, trying to navigate to highway 10, and then we find it and I’m not talking about the highway.

I don’t even know if I should share our secret route with the world, but for some odd reason we found it, and chances are if we wanted to we might not ever be able to find it again, so here goes.  We were sent down this back road and we continue driving, one because we were told to go straight and two because there is no room to turn around.  We drive on this tiny road, down a hill, over a small neighborhood bridge and come out into what can only be considered Costa Rica’s Napa Valley.  SERIOUSLY!  We were SOO high in the mountains, on a tiny road, no guardrails (sorry Mom) and vineyards all around us.  It was gorgeous.  You couldn’t pay for a better view and aside from the unbelievable heights we were driving, the roads were tiny, but in great condition.  It was breathtaking… and a little nauseating… but mostly breathtaking.  We definitely didn’t know where we were and there was NO WAY to turn around and go back up the hill we just came down so we continued to drive the only way out, and eventually we found our way out… to highway 10!  Now believe you me, this is NOT the real way to get to highway 10.  But for some reason, AGAIN, we found ourselves lost in beauty and landed right where we needed to be.  We jumped on Hwy 10, said goodbye to our secret vineyard roads, and continued on to Puerto Viejo.  Being on those back roads, we by passed all traffic, had no pollution, it was just us, the grapes and the road rarely taken.

Of course we hit traffic once on the actually highway, with all of the cars and semi’s trying to get into Limon, a major port and shipping part of the country.  However with all that traffic, we still made it to Puerto Viejo from San Jose within 3 ½ hours, so we feel quite confident that we found a shortcut in our little slice of vino heaven.

We got to Puerto Viejo before 5… which means I had to take a shot of tequila because we did an over/ under bet on what time we would make it there… and welcomed our dogs to their new lives.  Candidly speaking, I had butterflies for the last hour of our trip.  We were passing all of the familiar scenes that lead to our new home.  The beaches, the shops, the signs for our favorite places, and I was so nervous.  Excited nervous I think, but definitely nervous.  I want so badly for this to be the right thing for us and our dogs and ultimately our future.  I want to do well… better than well… running the bar and making an impact.  It’s crazy to think that just 11 days before this we had sold all of our belongings, moved out of our home, and left the town we had started our beautiful adventure together in.  In 11 days, we moved from Myrtle Beach, SC to Puerto Viejo, CR.  We drove through the States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to be here… home.  We are now home.