Saturday was an odd day of travel through Costa Rica, a country whose residents are called Ticos and whose motto is “Pura Vida!” (Pure Life), a phrase that is supposed to evoke sensations of happiness brimming over at the pleasure of being in Costa Rica, land of the happy upbeat cheerful joyous Ticos. 
If you wander the pages of Instagram, a place where photos are collected and shown you will find travelers describing places they have visited as “paradise” a term so overused it has lost its meaning.
Apparently travel is supposed to induce wonder and envy in the viewer, my journey is better than yours, so when I see that I seek out the classic photos and the creative photos, the interesting photos usually of times past that Instagram will post if you ask it to.
When I first started posting photos of Key West online people used to ask me for travel and vacation advice and they got mad when I suggested they seek out Trip Advisor or a travel agent (this web page has been around a long time). I just liked to post photos, of the good and the bad of Key West. I think most of the pictures were quite bad and you can see them on this page as they are still here online to show what a crappy digital phone I was using in 2007.
So I am supposed to describe this journey of ours as a voyage into “paradise” because that is what is expected of us in this digital world of ours. I would rather tell a story about what a pain in the ass life on the road can be than pretend it’s all paradise all the time. That word does get annoying with overuse doesn’t it?
We took the ferry across the Gulf of Nicoya to Puntarenas yesterday and the experience was a giant pain in the paradisiacal ass. I’ve taken ferries all over the world and Costa Rica stands out as the most mystifying complex process in the world. My Saturday was a complex muddle of misunderstandings and a general lack of information that makes your struggle to get your boring old Saturday chores done look like paradise from here. Yes I know, this is heaven on earth and I have no right to grumble. But Costa Rica brings out the bafflement in me. This place can be an absolute madhouse.
I tried to buy a ticket online. I’m not sure why the Paquera Puntarenas ferry refused me an online reservation but the web page refused to go to the payment page. I tried for two days on and off and I had no luck. This meant we had to hope the 9am ferry Saturday wasn’t full (more than 170 cars lining up? It seemed unlikely) but it also meant we had to pay cash and with plans to move on to Panama next week, calculating how many Colones we need this final week is getting tricky as we can’t use Costa Rican currency in the dollar economy of Panama.
We stopped in Paquera to buy some fruits and vegetables and to pick up cash at the ATM and to get gas for GANNET2 that we might drive uninterrupted off the ferry in Puntarenas. The first bank didn’t accept our First State Bank of the Florida Keys debit card. Why? Because in paradise banks only take either Visa or Mastercard but not both. And there’s no way of telling which takes which until you’ve tried them. Nuts? I think so. At eight am we arrived at the terminal.
No one was there to greet us so I stopped and went to ask an idling cop nearby what I was supposed to do. I startled a motorcyclist by wishing him a great weekend of riding and got back to the van to be greeted by a ferry employee who yelled at me I was holding up traffic. I told him if he had been doing his job I wouldn’t have had to ask where to drive and weirdly he calmed right down. Perhaps he expected a gringo to be cowed instead of answering back. He looked inside the van and gave us a laminated card. “This keeps your place in line” he said. Off we drove to the ticket office.
It turns out you need the laminated card to show to the ticket issuer what kind of vehicle you have. GANNET2 is “liviano”which means lightweight. Because we have no seating in the back (much to their surprise!) we aren’t a minibus but a car in ferry language! If I’d paid online I’d have overpaid as I thought we were a minibus. However I got in line without any idea what to do with the card. Round one: I had to go back to the car to retrieve it. And get back inline.
Round Two saw the ticket paid in cash, $27 for two people and a lightweight car. Jolly good. I got the receipts back to the car and we had one car ticket and one person ticket only. Much swearing. I could have sworn I said loudly and clearly two people. Back I went inline. My mistake (again) the vehicle ticket includes one driver. Jolly good, back to the car for more waiting.
As we started to load we noticed passengers being required to get out of the car and walk with the foot passengers…hmm. Layne got her stuff together and took the original of the passenger ticket to present to the collector at the ramp. Wrong! The ticket collector had to have the copy naturally not the ticket marked “original.” Back she came…Round Three.
I drove on in the fullness of time and was directed to the upper deck to park behind a small truck. Small sedans and SUVs were sent below, directed to drive down a terrifyingly steep ramp into the bowels of the ship.
This process may look familiar if you have taken a Washington State Ferry as I believe these ships are surplus ferries who did service in that part of the world.
It all went very smoothly because the crew have obviously had some practice at loading cars. Rusty got open windows, a roof vent with the fan and our two other fans blowing in the cabin on GANNET2. He slept through the whole crossing as an hour later we found him still comfortably in his bed with sleepy eyes.
Personally I’d rather have done the trip with him as we did on our ferry ride from mainland Mexico to Baja but rules is rules. The TMC ferry ride described:
There was a snack bar with insipid pastries and junk food so we were glad Layne had come across a bakery in Paquera with some robust chicken empanadas which we ate on the drive to the terminal. The indoor seating arrangements had a weird feeling of sitting in a pew in church. I skipped the air conditioning to stand outside.
The ship left the dock precisely on time at 9am. Brilliant. This is Costa Rican precision on display. They are grumpy old coots but things seem to work.
Time to settle down and get bored for the next hour.
My handy dandy speed app on my iPhone said we were doing 10mph or 9 knots or 17 kmh if you are continental.
There wasn’t much to see but here it is:
The regular riders immediately bagged the shady seats in the best spots. I was happy to wander with my camera as I had plenty of sitting to do later.
The ten am from Puntarenas. I think they run daily from 4:30am to midnight.
The smaller Playa Naranjo ferry. We rode these ferries 25 years ago when we sailed through these waters with two dogs!
Me looking gormless in Portobelo Panama in 1999.
Our boat Miki G, a 34 foot Gemini catamaran which we sailed from San Francisco to Key West. The Gulf of Nicoya was a welcome calm anchorage on the journey.
Travel is much simpler by van. Which may or may not be a good thing but I am lazy by nature.
I have no idea who these people were or what they were doing or where they were going.
They were having fun and they had a dog so they can’t be all bad. Their boat is what a Santa Cruz friend of mine called dismissively a “hovel-craft” of which you can see many fine examples in harbors around the US with people existing inside them. Not so much in Costa Rica but there is this one!
Land ho!
Puntarenas means “Sandy Point” because the town is a peninsula built on a sand spit. Behind the city is the channel you see here backed by mangroves.
The town itself is a dull but useful provincial capital with all services but no charm. Nevertheless everyone was suddenly in a hurry to flee the boat.
And just like that we were released into the city speedily and efficiently. I was ready for lunch.
Layne had read reviews of a “Soda” in the town of Jacó an hour south of here so we were driving to Jacó (“hack-OH”) for lunch. A soda in Costa Rica is an economical local eatery, not something to drink.
Another word I learned driving the Puntarenas beach road was “toldos” (awnings) which means below “ we rent awnings” for people looking to have a shady Saturday picnic on the waterfront.
Like I said Puntarenas is just another undistinguished Costa Rican town. Unremarkable, tidy, trash free with solid homes, no street dogs and about as much color as a US suburb. You come to Costa Rica for the national parks…where dogs aren’t allowed.
I do enjoy driving and I find this open ended wandering to be stimulating and fun. Not every day is great and there’s nothing wrong I believe in noticing the bad and the good. But just because paradise this is not, doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeing. The road for me is just people living their lives and they may not have the time or inclination for here today gone tomorrow travelers. We paid 38 US cents (200 colones) for this absurd expressway toll. Another Costa Rican oddity.
I rather enjoy slipping by on the periphery of strangers lives. I know I am supposed to want to explore the reality of other peoples’ being in detail but sometimes you just want to be apart and not be in paradise. This is just me looking as I go and trying not to varnish and polish the crap that comes my way. Tomorrow may be paradise but don’t believe all the fascination you may find online. You might find it completely different in your real life if you want to see it for yourself. Does this look like an expressway to you? Me neither. Lucky the toll was so insignificant! Bloody Costa Rica…
¡Pura Vida!
