Wrapping Up My Visa Run to Costa Rica Part III

My Visa Run to Costa Rica Part III will wrap up the story, as I try to get to a place of safety.

So I’m trekking up this road in the HOT sun with a heavy suitcase, a heavy laptop and a HEAVY backpack. I’m exhausted, hungry, thirsty (this is dangerous) AND I have to to go the bathroom & can’t.

To make matters worse, there’s small stones covering the road so it’s very hard to roll my suitcase. AND there’s NO cars at all, no taxis, nothing, it’s just dead quiet & I’m scared.

Finally a taxi rolls by & I flag him. He was very nice & took me to the closest hotel. I asked him to wait to see if there was a room available & there was.

The rooms weren’t very nice, but what could I do. They were around the same price as the other one & the guy at the front desk was very nice to me.

I took a shower & then had to get some food, but unlike the TERRIBLE Hotel Mar y Luna in Golfito, Costa Rica that had a restaurant (even though it was empty), this hotel had nothing. Just a pool that the other hotel didn’t.

So I had to get a taxi to go into an area where there were restaurants.

All of this starts to add up when you have to take taxis everywhere, but I had no choice even though I was broke.

Overall the food was interesting, as it didn’t taste like Panamanian food. It was slightly different, but only one thing was very good, & that was the plantain. They prepare it differently. That & a chicken dish, but the next night it wasn’t that great.

The hotel guy at the front desk was very nice & got me a table he put on the balcony for me to work off of.

He also talked to me later that night, & I told him the story of what the Mar y Luna in Golfito, Costa Rica did to me & he was shocked. I am writing this last post 6 years later (sorry, I never finished it off before) & I don’t remember what he said, other than I think he said something negative about the owners of the hotel.

I learned a bit about the differences in Costa Rica vs. Panama. Mainly that the government pays families to send their kids to school unlike in Panama where kids usually drop out at 6th grade.

During my second day there, on the taxi ride back, I had to endure both the taxi driver & his friend in the front seat watching PORN on their cell phones. This was WITH the volume turned on.

While I don’t care about porn one way or another, to do that in front of a passenger (especially a woman), is DISGUSTING! Obviously a woman is going to start to feel fear because she’s in a car with 2 guys she doesn’t know, they are ignoring her & watching porn, but like I said, intelligence isn’t high on the traits of people in Central America.

One thing I can tell you, is that Panamanians have never done that EVER! LOL

Unfortunately it rained the entire next day so I wasn’t able to even go swimming until the last day a few hours before I was to head out. The swimming pool was heaven. They don’t put chlorine in it, rather something all natural.

In fact, I didn’t even want to get out of the pool, as I was in heaven.

Since I’m writing this 6 years later, I can’t give you all the drama that happened on the way back to Panama, other than I remember that I had no choice but to take the Tica bus.

Now normally I would have been happy, EXCEPT for what happened.

The bus was CROWDED & I was once again uncomfortable. The bathroom had no toilet paper, & the windows were sweating BUCKETS, because the bus drivers ALWAYS put the AC up so high, that the combination of the cold & it being so hot outside, means LOTS of condensation.

When I got to Panama, I freaked out because my laptop that I had put above my seat was WET!!!! I was sooo upset thinking the water had ruined my laptop. Thank gawd the leather case kept the water away from most of the laptop.

If you think this was the end of my drama in Panama, think AGAIN.

This was just a foreshadowing of ALL the drama I went through & why living in Panama as an expat turned into a nightmare for me. Now I know why a woman committed suicide there. I had heard about this when I first moved there & didn’t even think for one minute that I would get to that point of being that stressed, but I was several months later.

Think LONG & hard about whether you want to put up with all the drama that goes on in Panama, & whether your personality type can handle what Panamanians AND expats are like in Panama.

Read all of my posts to get a firm idea. I will try to finish off all the ones that are in draft mode so you’ll have more to read.

Be well!

Michelle