Oaxaca, MX to San Jose, CR

Oaxaca - Juchitan MX
Juchitan- Tapichula MX
Tapichula MX - Sal Salvador, El Salvador
San Salvador ES - Managua, Nicaragua
Managua, Nica - San Jose, Costa Rica

Some people travel to get to beaches. Others to museums, restaurants, discotecas. Intrepid travellers combine these iteneraries, flowing from one attraction to another, with rhythm and grace. A chillaxed backpacker will find a cheap hostel with enough people and amenities to stay for months.

Me, I like the bus. I like the clusterfuck of confusion and chaos of bus terminals without schedules or tickets. I like travelling without maps, aiming a certain direction, and moving towards it. I like small buses, custers, where people get off and on every few kilometers, and where you sit with your backpack on your lap and your legs tucked. I like big buses that travel over night with dubbed movies and air-conditioning. I like paying .10$ to pee and brush my teeth at terminales terrestres and i like eating emapanadas filled with anything at any hour of the day or night.

Central america, according to the guidebooks that I don´t have and didn´t read, is certain to be full of treasures-- colonial cities with 500 years of art and architecture, pre-colonial ruins, beaches, mountains, rivers and lakes. And in the three days that it took me to pass through Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, I saw none of these things.

What happened is this: I got moving and I couldn´t stop. After checking on the Tamayo museum of pre-hispanic art in Oaxaca, and eating some enchiladas, I got antsy. And I figured out how to take a colectivo (combi, gua gua, whatever) to the second class terminal. This got me on the cheap bus to Juchitan, Chiapas. The trip was phenomenal- mountainsides of cactus dotted with small villages and mezcal distillaries. It´s weird to pass through a place with six months of travel left and think, I´ll come back here someday. But it´s freedom- I keep moving and mezcal soaked Mexico stays still, pickled in its booze, waiting for my indefinite return.

I spent about 6 hours in Juchit(l)an. The city was notable for its bicycles. I stopped for a beer near the plaza and was served a plate of oranges, then a plate of tuna salad and crackers, and finally a portion of hot dogs in tomato sauce with toothpicks. All for the price of a Carta Blanca, and I didn´t have to buy dinner. I made another dent in the Great Railway Bazaar and boarded the bus for Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala.

The bus to Tapachula, a custer, was small, crowded, and barrelled down mountain curves. This feeling tickles me as i drift in and out of sleep. It reminds me of Peru and I love it. In Tapachula, i staggered about for a few blocks and happened upon the Ticabus, leaving directly with its final destination in San Jose. Without hesitation, I spent my last pesos mexicanos on chips and bottled water and boarded.

There is very little direct service through Central America, and Tapichula is not a place to stay, so I felt glad to get on the Ticabus. That said, I had no idea what I was getting into. It is a big bus, comfortable enough, and taxis people accross five borders. What makes it unique is its blend of passenger, and the strange fact that it makes you stay in its hotel service at least twice between Mexico and Costa Rica. Not understanding this Ticabus phenomenon in the slightest, I purchased passage through to Managua. I figured that wherever I might get off I would find a bus terminal and have the flexibility to stay or go as I pleased. Mostly I was hoping to pull my favorite trick of travelling over night, spending the daytime wandering around a city, and boarding another bus come night.

This is not how Ticabus prefers for its passengers to travel. Ticabus wants Americans, Europeans, Ticos, Nicas and the odd Mexicana to get on its bus and go directly to its hotel. As such, we blasted through Panama, stopping only briefly at the Ticabus station on the outskirts of the capital. Isolated, I got back on Ticabus and it flew through to San Salvador. Here, Ticabus deposited me in its hotel, also far from any kind of city center. I felt irritated as hell, cheated out of Guatemala and now, El Salvador. The Ticos and Nicas that I talked to told me that it was incredibly dangerious to venture more than several meters away from the Ticabus, and without a guidebook or a map, I acquiesed to their paranoia. When people tell me that I will likely get robbed because I´m a gringo, it´s either a totally rational warning, or they´re saying this because they´ve already thought about robbing me and need to vent this urge to avoid doing it. You look like someone who should be robbed, they are saying. I might not rob you, but if I don´t, someone will.

The only consolation I found was in the comeraderie with my fellow travellers. First I met Luis, a gentleman who talked constantly on the bus, to everyone in sight, especially women. At first I found him irritating, and then I realized, wait, other people. Other people are important- they will keep you alive. And we struck up a conversation, ventured away from the Ticabus, found some pupusas and beer. This marked an important stroke in my trip- I had relied on old friends- Liz and Brian and Patricia... but with months and miles ahead of me, I would need to meet people, make friends, share my experience.

And so I met Benji, a Nica about my own age who had travelled from Managua to Tapachula with a fake Costa Rican passport. He had been turned away at Mexico, and then hustled out of $150 with promises that paperwork could be taken care of. He returned to Managua to mount another trip, with a better passport, to eventually reach Atlanta via Mexico and coyote.

Benji and I talked at each of the borders, and eventually sat next to each other. He narrated the road into Managua, a city with little charm but plenty of movement. Benji, having been cheated and robbed and set back considerably, was eager to help anyone so that the same would not happen to a foreigner in Nicaragua. His intention was genuine, and I enjoyed his company.

When we got to Managua, I had planned to roam around a bit and was considering a side trip to Granada. According to Benji, Managua has the biggest market in Central America, and I´m a market lover. What happened from here, though, speaks to the strength of my trip pulling me forward, coupled with Benji´s distrust of his own city. We finally escaped the grasp of Ticabus and Benji shared a Taxi with a Mexican lady, Olga, and myself to another bus company, so we could orient ourselves and plan to move forward with our journies. We tried each of the three companies with direct service to San Jose, and they were each sold out for the next two days. Somebody mentioned that this was a good time for Nicas to work in Costa Rica.

Finally we stopped at a less formal bus stating, where a cobrador assured Olga and I that if we spent the night at the station and got up and got in line, we could leave the next morning. Benji thought this was an excellent plan, as did Olga. Tired and disoriented, I did not think for myself, and trusted the judgment of my peers. I left my bag at the station and went to have a couple beers with Benji, to thank him for his time and energy, and to relax a little bit before preparing to sleep at the bus station.

Benji is probably my favorite person I´ve met so far. He has a story just like a lot of people- a lot of people at home for example. He grew up in Managua with no father, and when he was 5, his mom moved to Atlanta to work and send money back. Benji grew up with a grandma. He hasn´t seen his mom since. As Managua is entirely fucked up and offers nothing to anyone who lives there, he became addicted to crack, etc, at a young age. He last used a couple years ago- What happened is that me met a girl, she got pregnant and he straightened up. Already pregnant, she travelled to Atlanta to have the child. With the child due soon, Benji scrambled for resources to get to Atlanta in time for the birth. That´s how he ended up in Tapachula, and back in la Nica, damned by his passport.

It was great to share stories over a beer, and I tried to be as candid as I can about what I´m doing and why, though I´m not as sure of my purpose as he of is. Or I just don´t have one. By the second beer, the conversation got a little strange, as tends to happen. Benji asked me to help see Olga, the weyward Mexican lady, safely to Costa Rica. We talked about karma. Benji and I exchanged email addresses (his doesn´t work) and I went on with my life and he with his.

I returned to the bus station with 8 hours before my departure from Managua to San Jose. The bus station has two large, empty rooms at its rear, each with several piss-stained mattesses in the corner. It was this or the floor. I sucked it up, laid out my towel and cozied up on a mattress. Throughout the night people came in and out, so I kept my head propped up and facing the door, and made a movement to prove my alertness whenever someone came in.

This experience, for better or worse, is not in Lonely Planet.

The night in Managua was rougher than anything I had ever done in the Peace Corps, and not really for any good reason. The next morning I woke early and rushed to the taquilla, but it was too late, the bus was sold out. I couldn´t identify the sunk cost, and along with Olga, we boarded a 10 hour bus without seats. She occupied the space in front of the bathroom, and left me to sit on top of the defunct coffee maker at the rear of the bus. I regularly bumped my head on the bus´s ceiling. I kept thinking of Eddie Cochran, the early American rocker who bumped his head on the ceiling of a limo and died. Finally I joined Olga sitting down next to the bathroom door. Miserable but slightly safer. The cobrador came back and poured chemicals into toilet and we both started coughing.

But at least I had Olga. Oh, lady Olga, retired postal clerk from southern Mexico. Olga got on the bus with a purpose similar to my own- to go south and see some more of the world before old age or death catch up. Unfortunately for both of us, she was totally personality disordered, in exactly the way a retired postal clerk would be. This woman is the reason it takes months to get mail from one country to another. As people tried to sleep or read on the bus, she would meander over and start a conversation about herself, and how much money she has, and how great she was at postal clerking.

When I told Olga that I was heading towards Peru, she said that she would go to Peru also, with me. I realized that she had no plan. She was travelling with a pouch full of dollars and at each border crossing, would ask everyone in sight about the relative prices of things, and then buy a large amount of food to eat and brag to everyone about how cheap that seemed to her. Then she´d eat in front of all of us. That was her plan.

My favorite Olga moment happened at the border to enter El Salvador. As per her routine, Olga asked everyone about currency conversion and relative prices. She learned that El Salvador uses dollars, so she took several out of her pouch and bought some fried chicken. Then she walked over to me, eating her fried chicken, looking for some conversation. Knowing where I´m from, and that the US also uses dollars, Olga asks me if the money in my country is made of gold. I gave a quick, gracious explaination that the US uses the same fucking dollars that her fanny pack is full of.

Not satisfied, Olga attempts to start a conversation about the nature of monetary unions, the EU, and the plausability of a monetary union in central america. The worst part is that it strokes my own goddamn ego, as I ordain myself as the only fucking gringo in El Salvador who can actually hold a reasonable conversation about currency unions.

Finally we pull into El Salvador, and satisfied that I´ve paid my debt to Benji, I gather my things and get off the bus quickly. Olga catches up with me and asks if we can have a special talk over by the terminal. I have no idea what she wanted, but I felt satisfied that I had met the Benji threshold of usefullness, and bolted from the old postal clerk before she could suck me into anything else.

I found my way to TJ´s dream apartment in San Jose, the finish line at the end of my sprint through Central America.