Bob LaGarde

A few thoughts on Business, Politics and Adventure

Road Trip - Part 5: Arrived Costa Rica!

I am here in Canas, in the Guanacaste area of Costa Rica just a bit south of Libera, sitting on the balcony of the Canas Hotel watching the sun come up over the horizon.  I made Costa Rica yesterday, arriving at the border about 10:30 am.  I took a helper as I departed Niagara and he passed me to his friend Oscar to assist me with entry on the Costa Rica side.  Costa Rica turned out to be my most difficult and expensive border crossing yet.  But let me go back to the point where I left off in my last post.

Canas Hotel, Canas, Guanacaste region, Costa Rica

Both my friend Hector, who I had met at the  Honduras/Nicaragua border and who I will talk more about later and the cab driver who had given me directions from Managua had told me that it would be cooler in the mountains.  Now thought, as I have been checking the map to get the names of the towns correct, I see that my route was actually down the west side of the Lake of Nicaragua.  I followed the cab drivers directions closely and passed by all of the towns that he told me would lie along the way so I am confused.  I thought the cooler mountain route would be the route to the east but clearly Managua, Rivas, Dirioma, all towns that both of my advisors mentioned, were on the westerly route. 

 

 

I was also told it would be cooler along that side of the lake.  Whether I was on the correct route or not it was cooler.  I found a hotel that looked suitable around 5:30 and stopped.  I was very tired when I stopped.  I believe the town was Sapoa, Nicaragua.  The hotel was off the road and up a long hill. There was a young boy, maybe eight or nine years old shivering in a light short sleeve shirt out front begging for coins.  I gave him some pocket change but really wished I could have given him a coat to wear.  

 

I had thought that I had negotiated a meal with my hotel room.  Once I got my negotiations completed, with help from an English speaking patron who was sitting near the reception desk with his family, I quickly unloaded a few things from my car and then took the car up the hill as directed to a “secured” parking area behind the hotel.  There had been a man milling around in the parking lot below and he followed me up into the secured parking area nodding and muttering to me occasionally as I got the car parked and then closed the gate and walked back down to the hotel.  I at first thought he was a hoodlum hanging out in the parking lot and when he followed me up into the secure area it was still unclear whether he was friend or foe.  He followed me back down to the hotel however so I felt a little more comfortable. 

I am really beat up at this point in the trip. Its very hot and since my air conditioner is not charged I ride with the window mostly down. The border crossings are hot and dirty and I still have not shaken this cough.

 

 

I quickly dragged myself downstairs to the restaurant and order a grilled fish for dinner. I have no idea what fish it was.  It was grilled whole, completely whole including head, tail and guts.  It was decent though and gave me some much needed nourishment. 

The lady proprietor was a shrewd sales lady I believe.  I finished my meal and went back up to my car to get a sweatshirt so that I could enjoy a few minutes of night air and a smoke.  I asked for a coffee and went and sat outside.  After a few minutes the lady proprietor brought me a cup of that warm sweet milk which I enjoyed sitting there outside in the mountains in Nicaragua. When I came back in she presented me with the bill for the room and the dinner. As I said in my previous post, the hotel was about $20 and the meal around $10.  I went straight up after my smoke and went to bed around 8:30.

It turned out that my room did not have hot water so after a cold splash bath I was ready to depart at about 7 am.  I had gotten up at around 3 or 4 and written quite a bit.  After waking I wandered downstairs into the restaurant area and found a table and chair where I could work and sat there in the dark for sometime trying to catch up on my posts.  It wasn’t like I had any choice, I was locked in.  The doors in the restaurant were all locked and secured with metal rods folded across the inside of the door with padlocks attached.  I didn’t try to make coffee for myself this morning.  I just washed my face and went straight to writing. 

After a while the night man woke and after a bit I asked him about coffee.  He gave me meaningless nod leaving me uncertain as to what my inquiry might have meant to him.  To my surprise he returned a few minutes later with a nice cup of coffee.  After a while it started getting light and I decided to get moving.  I went up and brought my car down and parked in front of the hotel and got some fresh clothes.  After my splash bath I quickly packed up and said adios and hit the road again.

So now back to my entry into Costa Rica.  The problem that I encountered was that they do not allow rebuilt autos into the country.  Here I was, about to arrive at my destination, the point of this whole endeavor. I have traveled well over 3000 miles with my newly acquired car without any problem of a mechanical sort whatsoever and I am being told that I cannot bring the car into the country. 

 

My helper offers two solutions.  One is to register the car in Costa Rica at an estimated cost of around $500 or to pay bribes to get the car into the country. Bribes I am told will be about $300. I flatly refused spending that kind of money and said that I would deal with the matter myself directly with the vehicle permit officer.  Oscar escorted me over to the office and sure enough, just as he said, the lady looked at the title and immediately told me I could not bring the car into Costa Rica.  I protested but of course she could not understand my words, much less my reasoning and she simply handed the paper work back and dismissed me.  Oscar shrugged his shoulders and said I told you so but not in too harsh a way.  I finally said that I would perhaps pay $200 to get the car in and asked if he could get it done for that amount.  He said perhaps, that he had to clear it through two different offices but he would try. He told me that another agent came on duty in the permitting office at 1 pm and that he would go to work on it.  

 

I went back into the bank that that was conveniently located there at the immigration center and withdrew another $200.  At a little past 1 I handed the money to Oscar with a heavy sigh.  About 1:30 he came back and escorted me to the permit office and there was a new officer just entering the building.  Oscar stepped back and told me to take my paper work to him for processing. I did and after a few simple questions he issued the permit.  We then went onto the second office, a few hundred meters down the road and repeated the process and I was finally cleared to enter Costa Rica!

 

 

I drove past Libera before starting to look for a hotel for the night.  I stopped in Libra and spent some time updating my resume for the job opportunity that I will be checking out in Alajuela near San Jose.  Once I got that finished and sent off I got back on the road. Libera is a larger, touristy town and I did not want to stay in a larger town and did not want to pay tourist prices for a hotel.  So after another 45 minutes or so of driving I arrived in Canas and found the Canas Hotel for my  first night in Costa Rica.