Thursday, 7 March 2019
Sarapiqui, Costa Rica
Some village drunk was singing outside the hotel until the early hours. Another disturbed sleep. Not good as it’s a 0530hrs wake up call.
Still dark and chucking it down with rain as I stir from my hibernation. Public water shuttle speed boat to the mainland full of locals either off to work or returning home after the carnival weekend. Somewhat bumpy as we speed across the Caribbean in the early morning light. Thought the Caribbean was meant to be a nice calm sea. Back breaking on these fibre glass seats where you feel every single jolt as it skims across the waves.
Private mini bus to Sixaola but we’re giving a lift to a young French surfer dood who completely ignores us. Ignorant Frenchie.
Drive through the Chiquita banana plantations. Most of the banana bunches have blue plastic bags around them to protect them from insects and not yet ready for harvesting. Those that are ready are cut and hung on a conveyor system that runs through the plantation to take them to the central packing area and a chilled shipping container.
Arriving at Sixaola, quickly exchange some US Dollars for Cost Rican Colons. In a supermarket down a side street. All above board and fully official. Of course.
The Panama Immigration office is tucked away down a side street and as we’re the only ones there takes no time at all to have passports stamped and fingerprints scanned. This is why we’ve had to get up early. To avoid the queues at the border when the big coaches arrive.
Having waved goodbye to the Panamanian mini-bus, have to walk the few hundred metres across the bridge forming the border and over to Costa Rica, to then pick up a Costa Rican mini-bus. Hot and humid. At each end of the bridge is a contraption which should disinfect all vehicles crossing by spraying them with disinfectant from hoses. Like a glorified car wash. Judging by the state of it though, doesn’t seem to be in operation.
Fortunately beat a crowd off a coach at the Costa Rican immigration office and so stamped in quickly.
More Chiquita banana plantations as we drive along. Costa Rica looking very much like Panama at the moment with poor and basic accommodation. Told this is very rural because of all the plantations. Costa Rica has its own Chiquita port to ship all the bananas over to Europe, and elsewhere for that matter. Plenty of chilled shipping containers stacked high every so often waiting to be filled with bananas.
Arrive soon after lunch at Tirimbina Lodge (https://www.tirimbina.org/). It looked to be one of the worst places we are staying at on the trip but is actually quite clean and comfortable.
Set in a rainforest am expecting lots of mosquitoes. Rather surprisingly though. Not seen any.
Short walk through one of the trails. Only 900m long. But takes 1hr. Necessitates crossing Costa Rica’s longest suspension footbridge. Swinging and a swaying as we go.
Some fool (me) shouts out, “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!”, because that’s what it reminds us of.
Expecting great things from this walk. We’re in Costa Rica. We’re in the rainforest. We’re in a nature reserve. We’ll be seeing lots and lots of wildlife. Won’t we.
Er.
No.
There’s diddly squat.
Disappointed is an understatement.
It’s just dense green jungle.
Spend most of the time looking at your feet to make sure you’re not going to trip over anything.
Oh. And did I mention the heat and humidity?
A very sweaty TT.
One response to “75. Border crossing”
One of my clients has a haulage company. He meets bananas at a port in the UK. They are transported on the ship at 14 degrees. They come off the ship and are loaded onto his lorry (which isn’t chilled) and he has 24 hours to deliver them to the distribution centre. Then he turns round and goes back to the port to get some more.
Small part of a longer conversation which started by me asking if the microwave he bought was for business use. It was for his cab. He also has a coffee machine. Sounds quite luxurious.