It was time to say goodbye to Congo Bongo Eco Resort. Pingping sauntered over to say goodbye while we were packing. She had that look in her eye again. Like all her new owners, we were about to abandon her. She would get over it.
We had a long drive today. Fortunately, we’d had a practice run at the first half of the journey when we’d met Jenny at Gualipe for the passport exchange. Today we had to drive back to Alajuela, back to the very start, to return our hire car.
Once we’d finished that awful section with all the roadworks, we stopped at a little roadside coffee place where no tourist had probably ever stopped before. It was filter coffee but very cheap. It was nice to see Christmas decorations up already.
The second half of the journey took us through the Braulio Carillo National Park where no roadside development has been permitted. This makes it a wild road through rugged forest, steep hillsides and deep valleys. I didn’t get much chance to admire the views because the driving was quite hair-raising.
The road was the main trucking route between Limon and San Jose, so there were lots of trucks. The sections of dual carriageway were intermittent. When they ended there were queues. Not all the dualled sections were uphill. We often found ourselves stuck behind a big truck crawling uphill, while two lanes of trucks thundered downhill in the opposite direction. Overtaking was not for the faint-hearted: I crawled along behind the trucks.
The car hire return went smoothly. The Vamos people really are very nice people. And so we passed from their care into that of the Nomad people who were also very nice. Our Nomad rep picked us up and transferred us to their office, which was just a short way out of Alajuela. As we drove into their gated compound we couldn’t see many vehicles. There was, however, one huge, ostentatious Toyota.
“We’re not taking that are we?” said Sarah, like me, looking at the size of the thing with a mixture of awe and wonder.
“No,” I said, “We’ve booked a two-door Suzuki Jimmy, much smaller than that.”
“That is your vehicle,” our driver said. “The car you were due to have is unavailable for technical reasons, so we’ve upgraded you to the Land Cruiser. Don’t worry there’s no extra charge.”
After first being rather daunted at the idea of driving something this big, I soon got the hang of it! In Costa Rica no one lets you pull out of junctions. It isn’t rudeness, just patience, something most drivers have in surprising abundance; you just have to pull out in front of people. They don’t seem to mind, as long as it’s not done dangerously, especially when you are driving something as big as our truck!
We headed off to our first campsite in the hills near Volcan Poas. This was on our way to the Arenal area where we plan on doing our camping. After five hours of driving up from the Caribbean coast this morning, another hour’s driving into the hills was more than enough for today.
We stopped at a lovely campsite called Capiriland. We managed to get the tent set up, helped by Jose the campsite owner, Sarah successfully cooked dinner while I failed to get a campfire lit. The wood was too wet – that was my excuse. We were all set for our first night of camping in a tent on top of a car.
