Leaving Panama
It is the 1st of February and one reality has replaced another. The bus ride here was uneventful, crossing the border inefficient, but not as tedious as expected.
Lackluster service had me half-sucking my teeth. There’s nothing on the ticket telling you where to take the bus. I happened upon ‘Information’ where a purple haired woman pointed to the room next to her in a way that made me look up and read the sign above it to see if it gave any information. The sign had gate numbers. There is no gate number on my ticket.
I arrived early with a little less than an hour wait. I was told, handing over the bag going in the hold, that I needed to check it in at the desk where I’d bought the ticket. There, I’d get a number someone would write on a tag. Frumpy-face, instead of sitting all frumpy faced by the exit leading to the bus in the waiting area, should have been making sure this didn’t happen, but seemed proud she’d guessed that was the reason I’d been sent back.
The bus left at 11:55 p.m., a surprise because that was when it was supposed to leave. I didn’t look through the window and only side-eyed the young lady sitting next to me to see if she noticed me exchanging heart-eyed emojis with my boyfriend. Back and forth with Carlos we talked about feelings about seeing each other. We are very direct which is something I like about us. I felt the same as before an important presentation.
Leaving Panama was emotionally easy, even after a year there…but I’m good at not becoming involved emotionally (until I am). Judging people by their lack of consideration for pedestrians and general pride in nation, which seemed more a passive-aggressive xenophobia, made it easier. However, the process of leaving a place: the unsolicited goodbyes; the expectation that you be sad to leave when the Internet keeps you as close as you want to be; money matters – receiving what is owed; exchanging coins collected in an empty tomato sauce bottle (almost 40 US dollars!); sifting through papers; deciding what to leave behind.
3.55 a.m. – The bus swerved, and my eyes opened to a change of direction away from the bumper barrier lining the road’s shoulder. Sleeping after that was something that had to creep up on me, although I attempted to settle myself by saying that there were no cliffs for us to fly over, so what was the worst that could happen if the driver fell asleep at the wheel?
4:33 a.m. – A policeman came on board. “Are you cold?” He kept asking the passengers which sounded to me like code for something else. He spotted his flashlight at my bag of concealed fruits and nuts and soy cookies, but waved away my move to untie the bag. The woman next to me had moved to another seat, so I put up the arm rest and failed at being more comfortable.
We parked at 6:40. No one in a uniform even let us know why we were waiting, but I overheard another passenger showing off his knowledge, having done this trip “several times before”, saying that we were already at the border.
7:10 a.m. – We’d lined up our bags in the middle of a room and were told to stand behind three tables, ends pushed up against each other and so separating us from the suitcases. A man in pixelated camouflage ran a Labrador along the bags.
Drugs didn’t worry me, it was having to explain when they pulled it out…my masturbator which, for a reason I can only guess at, has a ring of imitation pearls embedded on the inside, around the entrance. And how about the enemas? Enough for a year! You can’t get them in Costa Rica without a prescription, but I need clean access to my prostate. The embarrassment would be exactly as imagined after reading a review on TripAdvisor about how your things are examined in front of everyone. This would not be the first time I would have to let go of pride and let shame wholly, but briefly, take its place.
They took a roll call. My shame was to have a name! I didn’t even hide my deep breath out when the bag search turned out to be a joke. Not looking forward to repacking my backpack since you can’t get into that without taking out everything, they started patting down bags. They didn’t even open mine.
7:24 a.m. – Got out of that room relieved. Lined up for immigration on Panamanian side. Got fingerprinted.
Welcome to Costa Rica
Over there
Bus gone. After walking around in a circle, the answer to my question was that it was waiting “over there”. Over there was a five-minute walk down a road between houses, past a funeral of vultures feasting on garbage, to get a ninety-day stamp to enter Costa Rica and….
The other bag search
7:50 a.m. – Another line for a baggage search! This time we queued in front of five tables resembling those used for autopsies, but made of concrete. The one next to the wire at least wouldn’t have people to witness the death of shame from both sides. There’s the guy…only passenger to not respond in Spanish to the attendance call. Everything about him seemed well thought out, manufactured, relying heavily on features people learn to consider good-looking. He looked Italian in his reflective aviator shades…24-hour shadow.
8:06 a.m. – Three men in shirt jacks with seven-month beer-belly pregnancies appeared swinging clipboards and walked up and down inside the bus. They looked in the luggage compartments. I didn’t even hide my deep breath out when the bag search turned out to be a joke. The inspectors all went to the first table to start the autopsies, but then other inspectors came and the one that appeared late to check the bags for my line, with his tight, matching clothes (down to the shoes) and cockatoo hair, obviously had in some sugar, making my worry marginal. I unclipped one backpack clasp and he motioned me through.
We were back on the bus at 8:20 and by 8:31 on our way again. And that’s when I wrote “I am on Costa Rican time now bb” – the clock had automatically gone back an hour on my phone.
8:55 a.m. – Stop at Rancha Ti Tica where people ate big plates of rice and beans for breakfast.
9:28 a.m. – We left again.
Whales?
10 a.m. – Playa Hermosa
10:19 a.m. – Aguas Termales Quepos
11:46 a.m. – Jaco
12:02 p.m. – Playa Pogeres
1:30 p.m – Arrival in San José. Good. Had expected to be there around 3 or 4.
The taxi man didn’t want to take me to the bus stop because, according to him, there was too much traffic. He offered to take me all the way to La Peregrina though. Taxi men make me sick. They’re like wrasses, the cleaner fish on the reef, only, whenever you pass close they try to clean you of your money.
I walked to the bus stop.
2-2:15 p.m. – Wait for bus to La Peregrina
Everything was fine until the bus came to its final station…while I was still waiting for it to stop at a major stop and make a right. That’s what “the bus will make a right” meant to me, but for Carlos it could also mean it would ‘follow the road to the right’…turns out he’s more Bajan than me with the way he gives directions.
Asking a few people led me to the place where I was supposed to have gotten off and there he was through an open door.
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