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What a crazy long day. This morning we were up and ready to leave by 4.45am. I know 4.45 AM!!!
We caught a minibus back to the ferry terminal to catch the first ferry out of Ometepe Island.
I was anticipating the lake to be quite rough again today, but when we arrived it was as flat as a tack. Maybe I didn't need to take that seasickness tablet after all?!
All on board the ferry set sail... and it was a nice flat ride across. The only annoying thing about this ferry trip, was the fact that they turned the tv on, which was playing one of those Japanese cartoons. It was so loud, that I'm sure the people on the mainland could hear it. It was so dramatic too!! A little boy having flash backs to being bullied at school, and how he was going to seek his revenge. Eventually one of the crew members turned it off.... and we cheered him for doing so!!!
We arrived at the mainland, where we piled into taxis. We were taken to the other side of town, where we were let out on the side of a highway. Is this right??? Should we be getting out here?? I then saw some other people from our tour... Yep this is the place. We literally had to wait on the side of the road for our first class bus to arrive. Waiting, waiting.....then the rain started. We all ran to the shelter with our bags and waited there for the bus to arrive.
About an hour later it arrived... We scurried around in the rain, making sure our bags were put on the bus. We then drove about 30mins until we got to the border. The first side was to get checked out of Nicaragua. The bus company employs a man who collects all of the bus passengers passports and gets them stamped out of Nicaragua. Easy. We then line up outside the bus, and wait for the driver to call out our names from our passports - only then are you safe to re-board.
We then drove a couple of minutes to the Costa Rica side of the border. Here we all had to get out, with our bags and line up. We all had our passports stamped in and then we put our bags through the scanning machine!!! No problems today!!
Back on the bus we then drove for about 6-7 hours until we arrived in San Jose. The bus trip was fine....however I was seated right at the back of the bus. My seat was right next to the bus toilet. I may have also failed to mention that the toilet door was broken and would not remain shut. So the entire bus trip the toilet door was flinging open and shut. People in there or not!! I had learnt on a previous bus trip with a broken toilet door how to manage this situation. When you need to use the toilet, you need to hold the door like you are waterskiing. Which isn't an easy feat when the bus is going round corners, over speed bumps and braking suddenly. The fear of the wee soaked toilet paper piled up on the shelf behind the toilet falling on top of you is also an incentive to only use the bus toilet if you are desperate!!!!
Bus trip survived....we finally arrived in Costa Rica at 4pm. We caught a minibus to our hotel. This is when the rain started. Boy is it hammering down. Welcome to the wet season!!
Tonight we are having a farewell dinner for half of our tour group who are leaving the tour tomorrow. Then tomorrow we will have a welcome dinner for our new group members joining us for the Costa Rica leg.
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