Coffee, Costa Rica, and Rolling Home (Saturday)

Once again, we got up early, though not quite as early.  I headed to the showers first of all, and there were the Ngobe women getting ready for their days.  I returned to the room and packed everything up - not difficult since I never really unpacked.  The guys took all of our luggage out to the bus before breakfast and we trooped to breakfast.

Then we climbed in the bus and went on our way.  Onto the Pan American highway and into David's outskirts where we picked up Anna who was to guide us today and several professors from UTP-Chiriqui in David.  Then we climbed up into the mountains again.  This time, Elba had an antiemetic from Anna which really helped her endure the climb.  Winding and laboring up, then quickly heading down just to turn and climb again.  Once again, no AC - except in the rainy bits.

We arrived in Rio Sereno in sunshine.  I recognized the main street - the shops, the people, the traffic.  It felt really good to be returning somewhere that I knew.  We turned up to the border patrol and the official border crossing.  There, we immediately all queued up for the one toilet in the border patrol!  How funny!

While they were waiting, several of the lads posed with one of the Border police.

We walked up the muddy road to a station similar to the one we went to yesterday, except that this one was on the Costa Rican side of the border.  It was still under construction.  There, Anna explained what they were doing there.

Then we trooped back down to the border crossing, where we posed as a group.  Those photos are supposedly in a shared Dropbox folder and I'll add one once I have it.  But for the moment, these will have to suffice.

From there, we walked down and into Rio Sereno itself.  Some of the kids picked up snacks at one of the many M/S stores.

(It was the best photo of the parrot, not
of the woman, however)

Then we climbed back in the bus for our final descent.

Down we went, not stopping at the coffee fields as we had hoped because by now it was late, and the rain had started in earnest, no longer a gentle drizzle but rather an energetic downpour.

We reached David and dropped off our local colleagues, and then hurried back to get as far as we could before nightfall.  Unfortunately we didn't make it as far as we would have liked.  We bumped and slewed and shuddered across Chiriqui and then on into Veraguas where we took a brief pit stop in Santiago again before we hustled back on the bus to make tracks.

On through the dark we rode.  I had decided to make bracelets for the girls on the trip and was almost done, but I worked most of the way across the country to get them all done in time.

As the time grew later and later, it seemed that we sped up.  And so we did.  The driver was only authorized to drive the UTP bus until midnight!  So we raced the clock. And pulled into the entrance to UTP at exactly midnight!  By this time, the gates were already locked, and most of the people who were there to pick us up were locked in.  But with our arrival, they opened the gates and let us all out.

Wonderful Elba's cousin and aunt had driven to pick us up and they delivered me to my doorstep.  A long but fruitful journey.