You have a little blog on your shirt.: What's the worst that could happen?

My father has a motto: "What's the worst that could happen?" In college my friends decided that the worst possible scenario should always end with "And then you can never have sex again!" which requires quite a bit of creative thinking. And although it can be a little annoying when my dad says it, I find it a useful exercise to hypothesize about all the horrible situations that could happen and how I could handle them. (In fact my father and I did it just this morning when I found out that the building I live in is foreclosing and we decided that the worst would be if I had to move back in with them and commute 2.5 hours to school which would be logistically impossible because I don't have a car and I rarely leave the academic buildings to begin with...and that would most definitely result in the situation that my college friends foretold)

Anyway, L and A and I were all set to leave the ecovillage and head on to the beach (!!!). We had called a taxi to come at 7AM, figured out the bus and ferry schedule and gotten all packed. The taxi showed up! On time! And despite my bruised little bottom the ride was not too horrific. The taxi driver and I spoke briefly about the semantics of the words parque, plaza and cancha...after he corrected me several times when I told him to drop us off in the central plaza. (Evidently their soccer fields are called plazas, their plazas are called parks, and their stadia called canchas...they also give all directions using meters instead of blocks "de la esquina 500 metros" which made me feel like I had to triangulate everything or carry a surveyors tape).

We arrived at the parque and the girls ran for breakfast while I again guarded the bags and verified the bus schedule....we were an hour early. As I sat, I noticed that some buses arrived with standing room only which worried me because we had a lot of gear and I didn't want to stand for 2 hours. So we got on line early and got seats and set out....on the slowest and hottest bus known to man. About a half an hour out of town the bust stopped for the gazillionth time, but this time people were muttering "Puntarenas, puntarenas directo, hay que bajarse, Puntarenas." A quick survey revealed that the bus behind us was going directly to Puntarenas (our intermediate destination) so we quickly got our stuff and switched buses. I actually thanked my lucky stars because if we were in Bolivia people would have silently debarked just knowing that the other bus was better and having no need to state it to the hot and frustrated tourists. Although equally oven-like the new bus was indeed better, less crowded and much faster....and thus we arrived at noon to Puntarenas described by my trusty rough guide as the hottest place in all Costa Rica, fading and wilting in the sun. I had a general idea that the next ferry to Nicoya Peninsula (yet another intermediate destination) left in two hours but I was hoping that there might be an earlier boat so we rushed into a taxi to the other end of town. No luck. A two hour wait. We chilled in a lovely gulf-side restaurant in perhaps the only town in Costa Rica where it is not recommended that you drink the water. A declined to take this advice citing the fact that she's Indian.

I am a nervous traveler and one of my quirks, besides needing to be fed at regular intervals, is being early. When I get to the airport I like to go directly through security and to the gate and then go to eat or pee or whatever. The same with buses or ferries or any mode of transportation. I am irrationally afraid of being left behind. (This phobia is in the same category as being afraid of being locked in the bathroom. Both situations have happened to me numerous times...sometimes with one causing the other.) So even though we could see the ferry from the restaurant and knew that it wouldn't leave for a half hour I was still nervous because we weren't actually on it yet.

But we didn't miss the ferry and not one of my numerous forays to the bathroom resulted in being trapped. It was at this point that I realized how ridiculously bad I smelled, which A had said was her travel quirk. Besides also needing to know where she would be eating next, she detested smelly people. L declined to let us in on her weakness but I suspect it's control. We quickly deduced that she is a youngest child and must always get her way. Luckily A and I are middle children and are capable of compromise or alternatively joining forces to get our way. The ferry was actually quite nice, although slow like molasses, and we arrived at Paquera to be shepherded into a waiting bus. The ticket taker was the least pura-vida Tico we met the entire trip and he was in such a hurry that we finally just threw some money at him and got on the bus. We had to stand.

Even standing wasn't too too horrific. At least we were in the front where there was a breeze. And hanging on for dear life builds arm muscles. So at approximately 7PM we arrived at Montezuma our final beach-front destination. Hooray! I walked up to the hotel and the man at the desk opened with (in Spanish) "You're the three girls who reserved yesterday. Please don't yell at me."

He had given away our room! Despite his request, I started to yell (just a bit). "What do you mean you gave away our room? I reserved with a credit card! Why didn't anyone verify it on the phone! Are there any more rooms? Are any other hotels free? Are you fucking with me?" At this point, my brain busted and my Spanish completely failed me so L took up the charge, "Can we call your manager? Will you pay for the taxi to another hotel? You have the responsibility to make the customer satisfied! You can't just give away rooms!" This man was exasperatingly smug and just sat there as we fumed.

We calmed down a bit while talking to a shirtless American tourist named Michael (Michael was a good distraction but A said he wasn't suitable because he didn't have six-pack abs just a four pack and I said he wasn't suitable because he was an idiot.) and the receptionist eventually found another hotel for us (far far outside of town). He was not willing to pay for the taxi or the extra cost for the other hotel and he declined to call the manager saying that she would only yell at him and at some point he made some comment to the effect of "At least you guys speak Spanish" which caused another round of yelling and fuming.

We left our bags and went to dinner where we took photos of our comic distress and decided to construct an alternative narrative of our day...something about a yacht and catching seagulls with our bare hands and enjoying cocktails at sunset. We finally arrived at our new hotel; L remained exasperatingly optimistic and went night-swimming while A criticized everything about it before going to bed. I bridged the gap by criticizing before going to check out the beach.