Economics With A Face

Ten minutes later we were off the bus and under a bus stop in the pouring rain along a highway. We were on the wrong side of the road and I could see a couple buses heading our way so I quickly ran across the road to see if one was ours. They weren’t, and although I was planning on just staying on that side of the road, it started to pour even harder so I decided to run back across the road and get under the bus stop shelter.

It was a pretty wild road and cars were speeding by at good clip. I was also running around with a 50 pound bag on my back as well as a smaller backpack on my chest so I wasn’t at my most agile. I looked to the left and there were no cars coming so I started to sprint back across the road. Looking to my right now there were no cars coming from that direction either so it didn’t look like I would need to stop and wait in the middle lane that divided the road.

But just as this thought crossed my head I heard a brief skid and the next thing I knew my leg was swept out from under me, I was briefly on the hood of a car, and then on my side in the middle of the road looking at a taxi that had just hit me. The guy yelled “Are you alright?” as he rolled down his window. I wasn’t sure. I immediately reached for my leg that had been hit thinking that it was going to be hurt, but there was nothing. I pressed it harder thinking it was the adrenaline but it really was fine. I stood up and noticed that the side I fell on was hurting a bit, but it seemed like I was alright. I told the driver it was alright, still confused as to whose fault it was (did I just not see the guy?), and turned around to run back to where Em was under the bus stop.

I knew I was okay, but I was also scared because I knew Em was going to let me have it. I had no doubt that it had scared her to death and she was going to lay into me for not seeing the car. I was shocked though when I approached and the first thing she said was “Is the computer alright?” (Our laptop was in the smaller backpack).

“Uh, I don’t know… I think so...” I replied. I felt my hip which was pretty sore then looked at my arm and found out it was cut up a bit. “Well that was a first.” I said to Em as the rain continued to come down.

“What was a first?”

“Getting hit by a car.”

“You got hit by a car?!?!” she asked, her voice a couple decibels louder. She hadn’t even seen it. She was getting something out of her bag and had missed the whole thing. When she did look up and saw me on the pavement she had thought I had just slipped. That’s why she was so calm when I joined her under the bus stop.

[Em´s version:

“Is the computer ok?” I asked. Peter gave me an even stranger incredulous look. And then I found out that he was hit by the very taxi that sped off and must have done a u-turn in the middle of road. His arm was all scratched up and bloody, but nothing more. We are very very lucky that now it is just a funny story.]

Back to Peter´s version: Right at this point we spotted an old white school bus with “Monteverde” written across the top coming from the other direction. We flagged him down and ran back across the street together, looking VERY carefully before crossing. It turns out that the guy that hit me had pulled out from the bus stop and that was why he wasn’t going that fast. He was looking east for cars just as I had turned my head and was looking west. He didn’t see me until a second before the accident and I never saw him until I was on the ground. I blame him, although pedestrians don´t really seem to have the right of way around here. I’m just glad the guy was going slowly and it turned out to be so minor.

On the bus, the only two seats available were all the way in the back, next to a leaking window. We grabbed them. Em pulled out the medical kid and we patched up my arm. We retold the story to an American girl from Wisconsin and two Ticos she was traveling with.

The adventure wasn’t completely over. After a few hours into the trip with people getting on and off and retrieving their belongings from the back of the bus, eventually my backpack was propped up against the emergency door in the back. I looked at it and thought that the last thing we needed was the door to fly open and to my bag to fly out. About a minute later, feeling a breeze, I looked back, and there was the emergency door unlatched and wide open, the backpack partially hanging out over the road. Em and I both dove for it and pulled it in as another passenger closed the door… firmly this time.

Four hours later, after slowly climbing up into the mountains, we were in Santa Elena, just outside of Monteverde. The bus was held up for about 40 minutes along the dark winding dirt road because a mudslide had covered the road in front of us. As it was being cleared, I began talking baseball with two Nicaraguan guys who saw my SF hat and wanted to make sure I knew that Marvin Bernard was from Nicaragua. I one-upped them when I told them how one of my friends from college, Cesar, went to school with him when he just arrived from Nicaragua and Cesar had just arrived from Guatemala. To their displeasure they never get to see televised baseball from the U.S. in Costa Rica.

In the dark, we found a nice little hotel and were happy with the discount they gave us because of some construction they are doing during the day. Fine by us as I think we could sleep though anything at this point. All our clothes, even the ones in our backpack, are soaked but at least we made it. Tomorrow we’ll get ourselves organized and explore Monteverde.