Local Bus Adventure - San Jose to La Fortuna

As I'd arrived near midnight in San Jose, the airline paid for a hotel room. It was only a shuttle ride away from the terminal. The time was midnight by my wristwatch.

I contented myself for an hour with showering up, translating Costa Rican television using Google, and eating Tico snacks from the vending machine.

I checked my email and discovered, in spite of my protests, I would be charged a 100 percent "no show" fee from Interbus. As one could not purchase a one way ticket with their service, I cancelled my return trip.

I could hardly believe I was charged $40 for a service I never recieved, due to problems beyond my control, without the option of rebooking.

If I was going to go to the trouble of using my poor Spanish to navigate through the local bus system, the "learning the way there" service Interbus could have provided me would not be worth my loyalty.

Their email response indicated my return trip refund would take, "up to two weeks for processing." Anyone who runs returns can tell you, a return takes only two minutes to process. How much time did they need? They'd already had $80 of my money for over a month.

When I woke up the next day, I was already too late for the Grey Line bus that stopped in front of the hotel.

My supposedly hardcore guidebook listed the bus terminals in San Jose as "dangerous." The front desk worker told me, "I live in San Jose and I won't go down there." The concierge also advised against it.

I went downtown anyway.

The eight square blocks on Calle 10 and Calle 12 between Parque Merced and the San Carlos bus terminal presented a less aspirational image than either the guidebook or the hotel employees. They were hardly treacherous, however.

There were some corregated tin buildings and chipped paint jobs. There was some rust and ground in dirt. The stores were small and crowded, but open and doing business.

Everyone was dressed well if not up-to-date. The Sodas were lit with ambient light and workers packed them during the lunch break. There was perhaps even less litter than there would be in any other city. I asked for directions twice and got good assistance.

Parts of industrial Oakland have felt far more menacing to me for their lack of purpose.

In fact, I felt more like a target at the airport and in the hotel than in San Jose downtown.

When I reached the sales window and told the bus driver I wanted a ticket to Fortuna, he told me the last direct bus for the day had already left. I pressed for another route and was directed to the San Carlos bus. I could catch a bus to Fortuna there.

These "busses" are in fact what U.S. citizens would call "coaches". The seats are high and well cushioned with storage compartments above and below.

I wasn't the only gringo on the bus. I did misplace my ticket, however, so when the driver came to take it, I stuck out. With a backpack and an overnight bag, I was not packed as lightly as the other passengers, either.

Just beyond San Jose and Alajuela, the urban valley escalated into young, undulating mountains. The roads twisted like switchbacks up and down hills. All the drivers navigated these at speeds approaching 60 km/hr.

We passed family sized coffee and banana plantations. No plot was larger than 10 acres. Signs offering regional tours were everywhere. The only livestock I saw was cattle. They were perched on the sides of steep hills, grazing unsupervised.

Though they did not have bathrooms, the coaches had front and back doors. Vendors occasionally boarded the busses at the front and sold snacks to passengers quickly, exiting at the back.

At our first small town, Naranjo, a retirement age man dispensed chips, peanuts, and agua frescas in sealed plastic bags. He complimented all the women who purchased from him. Three girls, who the vendor refered to as, "The Latinas," ordered the carrot flavor, chewed off a tip of the bag, and sucked up liquid through the tear.

We passed through Zarcero. On a long plaza, elevated from the road, bottom-heavy topiary archways opened to a small Catholic church. There were lots of signs announcing organic produce and an organic food delivery service located just north of the town center. Apparently, Zarcero is the center of the nations organic agriculture movement.

The first movie theater I saw (showing "G.I. Joe") was in Ciudad Quesada, popularly known as San Carlos, where the bus disembarked. I immediately got in line to board the La Fortuna local which left 15 minutes later.

I handed the driver a 5000 note, equivalent to $10, and he had difficulty making change. "Fortuna," he said, pleadingly, as though I'd done something extravagant.

The fare was 150 Colones or about $.25.

I sat down with my overnight bag in my lap as did the gringo sitting beside me.

On this bus, the locals boarded last prefering to stand. Quite a few rode without paying. One woman at the back of the bus made a cross sign her chest as the bus transmission choked into ignition. She had on a wooden rosary and a horseshoe shaped gold and diamond watch.

I'd begun to notice there were a lot more watches in Costa Rica than in the US. Also, everyone had a good cell phone. No one wore hats or sunglasses. In fact, it's illegal to wear a hat and sunglasses in public buildings and banks here - it's considered a disguise.

Like an ordinary city bus, the driver stopped this bus whenever a passenger pulled one of the cords over the windows. Not frequently, but at odd places, someone hopped off. We once stopped at a pasture and another time at a private school. The driver seemed to know who was going where.

One stop consisted of an two apartments atop two orange plate glass window stores, like one would expect to find in San Francisco. The easternmost shop was a small gym with a half-dozen machines and free weights. The westernmost shop was newly painted and for lease. This structure was bordered on either end by papaya plantations.

Approaching La Fortuna, I noticed a change in humidity. Dense clouds hung over constantly errupting Arenal.

The air wasn't particularly sulphurous, perhaps owing to the precipitaion and all the greenery.

But for the palms, the broad variety of trees was totally unknown to me. I was about the enter the rainforest.

My Airline Adventure Part 2

above: a bag of chips and a bag of sugared peanuts was all there was to eat after midnight at the Holiday Inn Express.

Traveling by plane is one of my first memories. Was I even old enough to walk? Perhaps my Dad carried me to the cockpit (which was open) and let the pilot pin a plastic pair of wings on my t-shirt. Mom played solitaire. I saw things I was just learning to identify by name - clouds, mountains, water.

When we flew over a city at night my Mom would say, "The Lights of Los Angeles," "The Lights of Honolulu," as though each city was famous for the adoption of electricity.

I also remember our flights in the early 1980s. The flight attendants were still called, "stewards," and "stewardesses." Days after the end of a labor strike, my family traveled to Hawaii.

The jet was a DC-10, wide bodied aircraft with lounges on board up a narrow, ten-rung spiral staircase.

They would inexplicably publicized as "dangerous" by the news media though statistically they were no more prone to failure than narrow bodied jets.

The planes were, however, expensive to fly.The modest protests by the otherwise powerful and well regarded airline industry seem suspicious in retrospect.

The flight attendants and maintenance workers would soon buy one of the airlines. The airline would be assailed by corporate raiders until the communal operation went bankrupt.

These were the beginnings what is now resolutely an anti-consumer, anti-worker industry.

Are consumers so easily placated by low fares? It costs about the same travel to four cities in Europe in 2010 as it did to travel to Brussels alone in 1980. Where are those rising fuel costs? That weaker dollar?

For their part, workers seem happy to keep their jobs and senority in the company. The benefits of this are less evident as retirement age approaches.

The basic thrill of flying, that motivates both of these parties, hasn't changed. Clouds, mountains, water. The sense of being "above" is powerful.

But there must be a reason, unrelated to front line workers and consumers, that the industry is weighed down by horror stories.

Every year it seems an airline is going broke, bankrupt, merging. From a business standpoint it seems as though business is never good.

It's not all those long gone packets of playing cards. Or the continuing absence of peanuts and pretzels (which would still be worth their weight, from a liability standpoint, as alcohol absorbers.)

What if it is really related to fuel and labor? What if it is old airplanes? Worn parts? Dangerous mechanical conditions?

Aren't all of these items a small part of the bottom line? A part of the bottom line consumers would pay a little bit extra for?

Do we need an expose on the price of access to airport terminals? On the salaries of top airline executives? Is this business even motivated by bad publicity anymore?

Personally, I would cheerfully accept an amount in the mid-six figure range to be an top airline executive. I would probably save lives, jobs, money, and be popular with consumers.

If I'm deemed unqualified, I'm sure airline executives in Latin American or Southeast Asian countries would happily accept a million a year, regardless of the benefit package, for the chance to transform an increasingly ugly U.S. industry.