Shakedown!

Jill and Mia got me a sloth sticker in Playa Santa Teresa and begged me to put it on my laptop. They made this request, knowing full well that one of my pet peeves is people who put stickers on expensive electronics. But, since I love both of them so much I relented.

We lounged around the house on Friday morning, but decided to take the Moshers for pupusas before their flight.

Jill and I saw the Moshers off to the airport with Javier at around 2:30PM Friday and then we set sail right behind them for Playa Potrero, which is a Pacific beach town 3 1/2 hours north of Atenas. The drive was uneventful until it got dark. We’ve mostly avoided driving at night except for a few airport pickups and short trips to restaurants in town.

We got to within an hour of Playa Potrero before it got dark. Once it was dark it was incredibly challenging. There were people riding their bicycles toward us in our lane of travel, people walking in the roadway, big buses riding our bumper, and people on horseback using the road. One time a driver flashed their lights at me and I was thinking there was a Transit Police stop ahead, but it turned out to be a loose cow wandering on the road. So… Pretty much a standard Friday 🙂

We made it to Play Potrero right around 7PM. We picked Playa Potrero for our final field trip because a friend-of-a-friend moved there from Austin about 9 months ago and we thought we’d go click rings with her and see how her Costa Rica experience has compared with ours. Kelle met us at our hotel and she was delightful. We grabbed dinner and a bottle of wine within earshot of the crashing surf and chatted away for a couple of hours. Our take away from that conversation is that our experience is within one standard deviation of normal.

After driving every day in Playa Santa Teresa and then driving from Atenas to Playa Potrero we agreed to just stay put at our hotel in Playa Potrero. It was one of our favorite hotel setups of the trip. The hotel and our room were right on the beach so we could hear the surf at all times. The restaurant had good food and there was a swim-up bar at the pool. We had a super relaxing day yesterday and slept like the dead both nights (my cold has finally subsided to the level where I can sleep well).

We got up this morning and had a leisurely breakfast, packed up, checked out, and got in the car to head back to Atenas.

A funny thing happened on a completely desolate stretch of road between Nicoya and Punta Arenas. We were zipping along at a moderate speed when a transit cop stepped out into the road and waved us down. Jill and I had seen enough of these random stops to know that we needed to keep our passports handy, as the transit police also check that you are not overstaying your 90-day stay. I was all smiles with my drivers license and passport — we were a little excited to have our first random stop.

Turns out it was not so pleasant. It was a tourist shakedown. He asked me to get out of the car and follow him back to his motorcycle, which I did. The officer said I was going “very fast.” I asked how fast. And he said “very fast.” We went back and forth like that for a little while. I could see where we were headed and he finally told me the fine for going “very fast” was $200 (odd that the fine would be in $USD) and I would have to pay my fine and retrieve my license plates at the Banco National in Liberia, two hours back the other direction. But, it being Sunday, the Banco National was closed today. He asked when we were leaving the country and I told him Wednesday. And he said that might be a problem because the system works slowly and I might not be able to get my license plates back in time. It went on like that for what seemed like about 5 minutes.

Now here’s the thing: If you know me, you know how averse I am to rewarding bad behavior. If we had another week in Costa Rica I would have happily called his bluff, just to make sure he didn’t pocket any of my money. But we really are leaving the country on Wednesday and the last thing I wanted to do was saddle Cesar with the chore of picking up his license plates in Liberia.

The officer and I stared at each other for a couple of minutes and he said. “Or I could let you off with a warning for $100.” I forked over $100 and we were on our way, feeling a little less rosy about how great a country Costa Rica is.

When I exited the car, Jill lost sight of me so she got out to see where I’d been whisked off to. We have not seen two mosquitoes in Costa Rica in the entire time we’ve been here. When Jill stepped out of the car she was swarmed by mosquitoes. I didn’t see it but she said she was waving and hopping frantically around like a madwoman. And, of course, we’d left the car windows down. So when I got back into the car it was thick with mosquitoes. We got rolling ASAP and kept the windows down for the next 30 minutes trying to shoo them out. But some of them made it home with us.

It’s sad that one of the last vivid experiences we will have in Costa Rica is a corrupt police officer, because it will definitely tarnish the memory. But we are already both laughing about it and waiting to see how may mosquito bites we have.

Jill waved goodbye to the ocean right after Punta Arenas and we made it home to Atenas with no further drama.

We just got in the car to go get some dinner and there were about 10 mosquitoes lying in wait for us. I won’t be surprised if there are still more when we head to Spanish school tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow is our last day with Profesora Maria. We are excited to see her because we have a present for her. We had her order a pair of shoes on Zappos before we went back to Austin last week and tomorrow we will present them to her. We also stopped at Pop’s (the local ice cream shop) after dinner and bought a pint of coffee ice cream. Profesora Maria LOVES coffee but has never had coffee ice cream. So we will break that out at snack time tomorrow in class.

Jill and I have both done some backsliding on our Spanish. We’ve spent the last two weeks either out of the country speaking English or in a touristy part of Costa Rica where we have to beg people to speak Spanish to us. We’re a little nervous about tomorrow’s class…