The ride to San Jose

Our options for leaving La Fortuna and getting to San Jose so Whitney could fly home were either the 8 dollar public bus which takes over 4 hours and is unreliable, a 36 dollar per person shuttle, or pay a guy we knew 30 bucks per person to ride in his personal car. On a side note, 'L' the guy we paid was already going to San Jose to sell his car but he worked for a tour agency so we paid him and he wrote us up a tour reciept so it was all very legitimate.

8 am was the departure time. 815am, L's friend shows up to get us. We go pick L up at his office and end up sitting out front in the car watching him eat his breakfast for 10 minutes. Before the first hour is over..its a 3 hours drive...we have stopped for gas, pulled over to check what the smoke was coming out of the hood, pulled over so L could have a 5 minute conversation on his phone and then ended up at some bank like building where he vanished for 45 minutes taking care of personal business. We are sitting in the car calculating how much more time we needed and Whitney is becoming enraged. She had already changed her flight and paid 100us to do so, so if she missed this flight she was going to be furious. Not to mention, Leo already knew that she had a flight.

Eventually and after a lot of aggressive comments from Whitney, we are on the road again...that is until the car breaks down on the side of the highway and he ends up in a screaming match with Whitney. He flags down a random car which was headed to san jose and puts our stuff in it and off we go. So much for the shuttle ticket to San Jose.

Luckily the car was that of 2 young guys who were on their way to some music tryout in San Jose and they got us safely to the airport without a hitch. We also ended up emailing the owner of the company that L works for, who we paid, and telling him what happened. The next weekend I went back to Fortuna and got myself a refund and an apology.

A lot of drama just for a ride to san jose...