Back In Puerto Viejo Costa Rica

I finally was able to upload pictures from last Sunday. It took me over an hour. You can see them if you scroll down to the post below that says Yesterday's Pix. I have not been able to get good connections lately--when there was a connection at all.

Yesterday we caught an early water taxi from Isla Bastimentos to Isla Colon, where Shar had time to buy more muchillos before catching another water taxi back to the mainland. There were 17 passengers on the aproximately 25 ft. boat that maxes out at around 20 passengers I'd say. The taxi crosses the channel between Isla Colon and the mainland and follows rivers & canals to a point where you can catch a collectivo (toyota crew cab pickup) taxi to the border. When we reached the river mouth the captain head for a very narrow channel right up against the mangroves. He tried twice to inch his away across the bar and bottomed out each time. The other tourists were puzzled. I explained to them we had been across this river mouth about 5 times now, and had never had this problem. Perhaps it was due to tides, or the previous day’s heavy rain. The locals in the boat sat silent. The captain reversed out and turned back to open water. For a moment I wondered if he was taking us back to Bocas when he then swung a U turn, and jammed the throttle full ahead. As the distance between us and the bar shortened I thought to myself, this will be interesting: Either he’ll get us across the bar or. . . or, I don’t know—what does happen when you hit the bar at full speed and don’t make it across? We did shoot across. A few tourists behind me cheered in approval.

The bus from the border overheated and the driver wouldn’t go beyond Bri-bri. Rather than wait another hour for a bus that would then be twice as crowded, we asked a couple other Americans we saw at the bus station there if they would share a taxi with us. A taxi driver agreed to take the 4 of us the remaining way (half hour ride) to Puerto Viejo for 5000 colones—about 10$.

We’re back at Rolf’s where we think we’ll stay until the day before our flight next Thursday. We’ll do day trips from here or just “chill out” (cheeloat) as they say in Bastimentos.