Bus Ride

That 110-lb. man with nerves of steel – our bus driver – seemed genuinely surprised and happy to see us again. All smiles, he greeted us heartily and shook our hands as he took our 700 colones for the bus ride to town. We’d hiked just over a mile to the village to catch the 1 p.m. bus to San Isidro.

Our village is at the top of the mountain and thus lies at the end of the bus line. The morning bus leaves for the city at 5:30 a.m. and returns here about noon. The driver pulls the bus to the side of the road and rests under a tree until 1 p.m. when it is time for the afternoon trip back to town. The bus leaves the city again at 5:50 p.m. for our route back up the mountains.

As the bus engine sputters and spurts to regain its strength for the return trip, adult and child vendors step aboard before departure to loudly cruise the aisle, selling zip-lock baggies of colored beverages, deep-fried plantains and chicaronnes (pork rinds). Our same driver steps aboard and shouts for them to leave, then wrenches the bus backward from the huge station. We will arrive back at the village at 7:30, already very dark since the sun sets at 6 p.m. each day .

Either way, morning or afternoon bus, we walk in the dark wearing headlamps to scan the road for snakes.

Two stops down, our former landlord, Luis, and two of his friends stepped aboard. Luis greeted me warmly – perhaps too warmly, depositing two sloppy kisses on each side of my lips – and, ignoring Pecos, asked me if Pecos was still my novio. Why yes, I said, thinking that the facts that the man travels to Costa Rica with me each year, that we’ve built a house together, and that here we were, shoulder-to-shoulder en bus should be evidence enough.

Our bus is still the 1950s-era, rusty school bus as last year. Our driver leans forward to wrench the steering wheel as he maneuvers hairpin turns. His soda bottle swings wildly on the wire above his head and he yells out, “Yo!” to everyone we pass. The bus grinds painstakingly slow uphill and rumbles wildly down the steep slopes just inches from treacherous drop-offs at the edges of the crumbling dirt road.

There are a few dozen stops en route to San Isidro. At each and every one Luis, lecherous as ever, leans far into the aisle to admire the women coming aboard or departing. In between these diversions he brags to me about his horse and his cows and all that he can offer.

I’m tempted to carry a chair and my computer to the high point of his empty rental house on sunny afternoons for a decent internet connection, but then again Luis is often there tending his many flowers. I would hate to distract the man from his work. 