San Jose to Montezuma

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Get on the bus

On Monday we set off from San Jose to Montezuma to join the turtle conservation project. We travelled on a public bus to Puntaarenas, then caught a ferry across the Gulf of Nicoya to Puerto Paquera. At the ferry port everyone got off the bus and bought separate tickets to travel on the ferry as foot passengers, re-boarding the same bus once off the ferry. We had a final change at Cobano to get the bus to Montezuma, luckily stepping off one bus and onto the next without any waiting.

Public buses in Costa Rica are comfortable and seem to run to a good schedule. There are no toilets on board, so it may be worth spending a few colones to use the bathrooms at the bus station before boarding. There is also no air con, but you can open the windows which keeps the temperature comfortable inside. The real attraction of public buses is the price; we paid around 6700 colones (around £8/$12.50) for the bus tickets for the whole trip, and 810 colones (£1/$1.50) for the ferry tickets.

Be careful on the roads

Unfortunately, on the journey from Puerto Paquera we saw the aftermath of a road traffic accident. We had just passed a service station when the bus driver stopped and reversed about 200 metres back down the road. It was fully dark by this time so we didn't know what had happened, but assumed that the driver had missed a turn. When we got level with the service station, I looked out of my window and saw a local man laid in the road, not moving. From the damage to one side of his head and face, it was fairly clear that his injuries had been fatal. A small group had gathered round him, but they were all either on foot or riding motorbikes, so with no other vehicles at the scene, we assumed that he had been hit by our bus. After a bit of discussion between our bus driver and the bystanders, we drove on. We later found out that the man had been hit by a van, and that the van driver had returned to the scene.

I don't want to use some lazy cliche about life being cheap in this part of the world, because it was obvious from the reaction of everyone at the scene that this wasn't an everyday event, but it did highlight that walking by dimly lit roads could be dangerous, especially in more rural areas. This was a reminder to us all to take care when walking at night - even if the man had somehow survived his injuries, it would have been some considerable time before he received professional medical attention.

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