I caught the bus to Seattle at 8:45. Have I mentioned that I despise bus travel?It was uneventful, except that a particularly large American man from Minnesota sat beside me, taking up a couple of inches of my seat, which always irritates me. I end up spending three hours trying to make myself smaller.

Though I was reading the Globe and Mail, he insisted on talking, so I finally gave up and had to converse with him. He said that what he liked about Canada was the lack of guns. I pointed out also the public health care system, but he seemed even less enthusiastic about that than Ralph Klein. I refrained from discussing politics with him, as I would inevitably have made inappropriate (or appropriate, depending on your perspective) comments about the moron that “runs” their rapidly deteriorating empire, and he would probably have slinked off to the finking room at Customs and fingered me as a potential threat. A trip to Syria isn’t my idea of a blast (and I’m sure CSIS wouldn’t be backing me up after that nasty letter I wrote to the Minister of Health is ‘88). Customs went smoothly, and though I was not suprised to see the photo of G.W. Bush on the wall, I thought the one of Dickhead Cheney was a bit much.

Anyway, I arrived at Sea-Tac with plenty of time to spare which, combined with the fact that the Continental agent seemed to take a shine to me, meant first choice of seats. He re-assigned me to the exit row on both flights (Van-Houston and Houston-San Jose), so he was my hero of the week.

We ended up leaving an hour late due to storms in Texas (desert storms, shurely!), and I didn’t arrive into Houston (George Bush Intercontinental Airport) until 1:00am. I’m not sure why they call it “Intercontinental” airport, rather than “International” except that it just happens to be the hub for Continental Airlines. Either that, or since they named it after a warmongering fascist (GW’s old man), they felt it appropriate to name it after an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

There is absolutely nothing open in GBCA after midnight, except the washrooms. As my flight to San Jose wasn’t scheduled to leave until 9:00am, I went down into the inter-terminal shuttle tunnel to sleep on a patch of floor near some other cheapskates who bought the cheap tickets. The announcement warning of leaving your luggage unattended lest it be hauled off to Guantanamo Bay and tortured (interrogated, shurely!) and the workers running cable through the tunnel, prevented anyone from sleeping for more than three minutes at a time.

I finally got on the plane at 8:25, and the plane left on time. The flight was uneventful. I arrived in San Jose and took a taxi (an adventure in itself) to the “Terminal Caribe”. I was earlier than expected and got a bus two hours earlier than planned. The ride to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca took four hours and (qu’elle suprise!) I was in an aisle seat with a woman and an infant to my left, and a woman with one infant and two toddlers to my right. I spent most of the 4 hour ride making stupid faces at babies to try to keep them from crying, which was actually largely successful. The only troublesome moment was when the woman next to me poured Coca-Cola down the throat of her 6-month old daughter.

I arrived in Puerto Viejo two hours early, so rather than Colin and Roberto meeting me, I had to find their house on my own. There are no addresses here, and all I knew was that it is about 200 feet from the bus stop. Through a process of elimination, and by asking people in my best illiterate Spanish, I found the place within 20 minutes.