When we got on, we squished our way through people standing in the bus aisle, and stood next to our bags (which were placed overhead). When we looked at each other all we could do was laugh. How did we get here? In a sweaty overly-full bus, standing with our bodies pressed against other peoples bodys for a hour bus ride. This is the true definition of a chicken bus. During our trip, there was two children very close to me, one with his head and hands resting on my right side of my waist, and the other with her head resting in the small of my back, and two other adults behind those kids, which were squishing me in to the people in the seat in front of me. Loooking back I found Joshua in a similar predicament, and could not help but laugh. Again, how did we get here? Oh, the fond memories we made on that bus. : )
However, in route, one of the workers was coming around getting money from the passengers to pay for the ticket. Some people had already paid earlier, and thus were not paying. The guy told Joshua he could pay later. When we arrived to our destination, the man got off the bus with us, and told us the ride was going to be 200 cordobas (8$USD). Joshua gave him 100, and the man insisted on 100 more. The guy received his money then scurried off. At that time, we realized we had been scammed from the getgo. (Those bus tickets usually cost 50cents to 1 dollar per person). They hunted us out, told us there was not going to be another bus until much later, told Joshua we could pay later (so he could get more money from us not around all the locals), and stepped off the bus to recieve his money. It is not so much about the money, but about the scamming. We hate that, that happened as our last thing we did in Nicaragua.
We then took a seat at a local diner, relaxed for a few minutes, to realize what happened, then headed to get stamped out of Nicaragua! The process of leaving Nicaragua was very informal, there were no guards or policia, and it was rather quick. Then we took the 1km walk to Costa Rica! Upon arriving to the border in Costa Rica we stood in a long line, that took about 1.5hrs to get our passport stamped, and then, we were officially in Costa Rica!! We found a very nice Greyhound bus, and left for Liberia. We immediately noticed Costa Rica felt different. Joshua says the GDP per capita is 10xmore than that of Nicaragua, and it was noticeble. There were no people yelling "taxitaxitaxi" or yelling to sell there food (which we actually wanted for the first time, because we were so hungry). The roads, the bus, the houses all were nicer. (Nicaragua is very impoverished in alot of areas, with cardboard boxes and rusty tin folded around tree limbs from the woods to make a house).
In Liberia, we found an awesome place to stay for 20USD, very quaint and historical, and very cute. At night, lighted seashells and some classical music played in the courtyard. Joshua and I took a evening walk to the park, (parque de central), and got some popcorn and seveche! (Joshua had been wanting some good seveche for so long, so he really enjoyed it!)
It is now morning, we just had some oatmeal, and I had some coffee (with milk!) and they both were delicious! I must get off as we need to decide what we are going to do today!! : )
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