With my car doing what it does best– sitting idly in the carport awaiting a part– I walked twenty minutes in the dark down the long incline of the main street of the barrio to line up for the 5 am bus to Quepos. A red taxi pulled up. The driver stepped out and said, “Quepos! Dominical!” The going rate from Perez Zeledon to Quepos is 25 to 30 thousand colones. Not worth it as after 35 years here, I live happily on Tico time. Then he quoted his price. Mil to Dominical, mil quinientos to Quepos. Me and 2 other guys stepped forward. He loaded our gear in the trunk and off we went.
You pay your money and you take your chances. The first thing I noticed about my driver was that he liked to drive fast. The radio was tuned to a local station. Between latin dance songs,I heard an ad for a Tico restaurant in New Jersey. We crossed the Rio Pacuar bridge, recently expanded to two lanes, and began the ascent toward the 1,200 meter (3,900 feet) El Alto.
My back seat partner wore a head and neck cover and dark glasses. He reeked of garlic. I assumed he was a construction worker and not a terrorist. We passed a meat truck going up the mountain. The early morning hour meant fewer slow vehicles and we made good time. At the top of the mountain, a small pack of young men on motorcycles passed us in a swarm.
The downhill descent takes 16km (10 miles) to reach sea level. My driver wanted to cover this distance in record time. He tailgated slower traffic. Every curve felt like a carnival ride. I grabbed the overhead handle. It was broken, hanging by a screw. On a short straightaway, he breezed past a couple trucks and flew through the curve. I thought about Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper, skipping the slow bus ride to catch a plane to their next destination.
We were also a trio who decided to skip the bus and save time. Death comes in threes. A long time ago, a guy I knew drove off the side of this same mountain in the fog. The smell of burning brakes lingered in the air. I was about to tell our driver that I wanted to arrive in Quepos, but not in a body bag. Then we hit the village of Platanillo, where I lived over thirty years before. We got behind a solid line of cars that descended the final mountain at a steady, unpassable pace.
We reached the costanera and were soon flying along at 120 kph. This is 75mph, the average speed on an interstate highway in the states. If I am in a car going this speed, I prefer to be in the driver’s seat. But my driver was a robust middle aged man and who knows how many tens of thousands of kilometers he had sped over the challenging roads of Costa Rica. I relaxed and went back to word games on my phone.
Twenty minutes outside Quepos our driver decided there was room for one more. An elderly woman at the bus stop climbed in. We were barely back to top speed when she began talking of her beliefs. In a loud slow voice the words streamed out. Yehova, Jesucristo, Gloria a Dios, gracias al señor. The car windows were down and a rush of wind through the car muffled a lot of what she said, which was fine with me. At one point the guy in the dark glasses said something about servidores de Satanas. I couldn’t hear enough to know if he was pro or anti Satan.
We got to Quepos and I paid the driver and found out he had an appointment in Quepos. He had covered the 80 kilometers in an hour fifteen. The money he collected went into his gas tank. A bargain is a bargain, and It’s not often you find a bargain while waiting for a bus at five in the morning.
Read more of Don Mateo’s writing from his newly published ebook.
