Collect-Tico

I am heading to the end of the road. The real purpose of me being in PJ is to visit with a conservation group that is looking for ongoing volunteers. I had e-mailed the science director before I left and he invited to me to visit their biodiversity center set in the heart of the peninsula´s rainforest. He also invited me to spend the night, but first I have to get there.

There is only one road that wraps around the tip of the peninsula connecting PJ to Carate and it dead ends in Carate. I´ve already learnt that Costa Rican addresses are comical and lacking in detail. Specifics like street names and numbers do not exist. Directions often read something like: turn left at the yellow house with the barking dog and the walking palm, but not the yellow house with the cackling rooster and the standing palm. Even in San Jose, the nation´s capital, my friend Stephanie´s address states the name of the nearest main boulevard (only main roads get names), then reads: Super Boulevard (which is the name of the shop at her corner), 500 north, 100 west, 50 north, white house right side. "500 north" means travel 500 meters north, etc. Yes, that is the actual address to which she recieves mail.

With only one road aroud the peninsula, I figure it must be easy enough to find where I need to meet my host. The directions he e-mails me tell to take a taxi to Murko School then pass between the old house and the school. However Amelia and her husband, who own the hotel in PJ I´m staying at, are convinced the cab will cost my $50 and the site I need to get to is an hour´s walk past Carate. There´s a lot of confusion and ideas start flying about, in minutes, a whole town meeting has been called to asses the best mode of transport to get me there. A freind of a friend of a friend is able to radio the science station, get a more precise location (1000 north of the turtle shaped boulder) and it´s decided I will take the "collectivo" departing for Carate at 1.30pm. Luckily the station entrance is actually before where the roads ends in Carate. I arrive at the collectivo stop with an entourage of Ticos who interpret the directions to the driver while I quietly assess this latest mode of transport.

The concept of a collectivo is the same as a bus, except the vehicle itself resembles something used to transport cattle, not people. Picture a covered wagon from the days of the wild west, but one with a square top instead of a rounded one. Wooden planks run the length of the bed like a split rail fence with wooden benches below them. The whole cargo\passenger area is wrapped in a blue plastic canvas to protect us from sun, rain and the low hanging branches we´re about to encounter.

About a dozen of us climb in and the gate is folded up into place and secured with a pin. My fellow passengers are a woman with two elementary school aged children, a woman with her teenaged son, two elderly male farmers, a guy with a surf board and three French Canadian women who speak Spanish, French and no English. Under the benches are sacks of rice, flour, tomato paste and cookies for other jungle outposts.

The truck bounces out of town on a road studded with rocks and pocketed with holes. We had about 40kms to cover and the going is slow. We have rivers to ford and missing portions of road to navigate, but gorgeous views of hills, valleys, cow pastures and coastline. Somehow the teenage son falls alseep on a road so rough I couldn´t hold my dictionay still enought to read the word I was looking up or find my mouth when trying to put a handful of trail mix in it. We crossed a small bridge where another collectivo driver had taken his truck into the river and was now washing it tenderly with a rag. About an hour into the trip one of the mothers let lose a shrill whistle. The bus stopped she and her son, now awake, climbed over the gate and disappeared down a narrow trail into the forest. Soon after a sign told us we´d only travelled 18 kms. Ocassioanlly we passed other vehicles- mopeds and SUV taxis. Like the wildlife, it was good to see the SUVs in their natural environment and not roaming lost and unchallenged on I-95.

I slid to the end of the bench and watched the places we´d already passed fade into the distance. I saw two big flashes of red in the sky above a clearing. The suburban girl in my immediately figured they were kites, but then realized they were red macaws - my first sighting.... and then... finally.... my stop.