Day 21 Riding the Bus

Tom arrived today!
In order to meet him in San Jose, pick up our rental car and drive back to San Miguel together, I took the public bus to San Jose. The crazy thing is, is that I feel like I am living on the edge of nowhere, yet there is a bus that runs past the bottom of the driveway—way out here---that will take me all the way to the capital six hours away. All I have to do is wait by the road (hopefully not in vain like for the produce truck) at 2:00am and flag the bus down with a flashlight.
Waiting for the bus at the side of the road at 2:00am is interesting. I got to watch tiny lighting beetles that crawled around in the roadside ditch, their little behinds glowing and dimming rather than blinking. I had time to enjoy the stars and discover a few new constellations, there being no street lights or any lights at all to block out the starlight. I also got to appreciate the night noises of various types of crickets (all have a different song), cicadas, and even the soft hoot of a nearby owl.
The bus finally chugged up the steep hill at 2:30am and stopped beside my suitcase. When the driver affirmed that this was the bus to San Jose (as if there was another bus at 2:30 out here going somewhere else!), I dragged my suitcase up the steps and plunked down on the front seat of a bus that might have looked modern back in the eighties in some large American city.
This old bus handled the rocks, potholes and hills better than I could have imagined and in two short hours we were in Jicarel after having picked up twenty or so passengers all waiting for this vital rumbling vehicle of transportation to pick them up. We all transferred to another bus in the metal shed that was the bus station, this bus being much newer and plusher with reclining seats.
Sometime on this leg, a woman boarded and rode the bus for a few miles, selling baked goods out of a basket to the passengers. I bought a small plastic bag with six cheese biscuit like crackers each with a bit with sweet filling which are a bit of an acquired taste but they looked familiar from a previous trip here so she had me as soon as she said “queso.”
Later a man boarded selling CD’s which he described in great detail, not that I understood all of what he was saying since I was still trying to sleep. But his voice carried well past the end of the bus, and I learned that his selections were wide ranging and ranged from rap and hip hop to marenge and tropicale, to the music of “Frozen.”
We passed through small towns that got larger as we got closer to San Jose dropping off and picking up passengers at will. After two hours we stopped for a bathroom and breakfast break at a small restaurant alongside the Pan American highway that we were on by now. Everyone got off with most of the women heading to the bathrooms and most of the men ordering a breakfast of eggs rice and beans and coffee which they quickly downed. I didn’t know how long we would stay there so I ordered a sandwich to go and some coffee “para llevar” also. I piled back on the bus with my food and coffee which turned out to be so hot it was halfway to San Jose before I could take even a sip.
At 8:30am, the bus drove up to the airport, dropped me and my suitcase at the curb and an quick shuttle ride took me to the rental car office across the highway where our car was waiting. Easy peasy!