Day 8: The road to Pavones is not paved...

We’ve survived the first week and to celebrate this achievement, we took a trip (as we’ve been doing the past four days since we have a car). Left the humble abode for a while to seek out a place yesterday’s tour guide, Josh, told us was his favorite location in Costa Rica – Pavones. We pulled out the guidebook, found out it’s supposed to be a gem of a place at the southernmost point of Costa Rica, bordering Panama, that attracts mostly surfers seeking the longest left in CR (I had no clue what that meant but I’m figuring out the surf lingo). In hindsight, rather than just ending the conversation with Josh after his answer, we probably should’ve followed it up with, where’s that? How long does it take to get there? Is the road drivable? Could you give us directions? But no. We haven’t learned much and again took it upon ourselves to head into the unknown without much information.

(If we did ask, these would be his answers: It’s way the hell down there, way past everything else on the pacific side. Man, it probably takes about 5 hours, maybe more. Drive? Yeah right…good luck with that.)

To be fair, of the five hour drive, about 45 minutes were in the wrong direction. We found that out after we drove up a practically non-existent gravel road to an old Tico’s farm house. He came to my window and I pointed to Pavones in our guidebook. We should have known it was too far away when he responded as if he just saw someone get hit in cajones. After rubbing his head a few times we were able to figure out the translation with some landmarks and the all important hand gestures. Back on track, we finally reached the road our guidebook warned of – something that resembled river crossings and required a four wheel drive vehicle – which we already had for the infamous road to our house.

Of the rest of the hours, three were on a road that looked like both an avalanche and earthquake destroyed. I clung to the door handle with white knuckles as Mike maneuvered the monster potholes and mother-nature-made speed bumps that kept us at a crawl. As we got closer, the road got narrower and forced us to cross at least three bridges that looked like they were made out of dilapidated picnic table pieces. The puddles (aka rivers/ponds/lakes) were so deep at one point that Mike had to park the car and throw a rock in the middle to see if we could cross. I wasn’t particularly sure how that helped gauge depth, but he was sure it didn’t land too far down, so we crossed.

While Pavones isn’t a very touristy area, it is home to foreign surfers while they wait for that left so it provides a good amount of sleeping and eating accommodations. After realizing there would be no way to cross the Road of Devastation in the dark (which is around 5:30pm here) we had to find a place for the night. I’m not gonna lie, I got a little excited about the idea of a hotel room (Hot water? Internet? Air conditioning? Sign me up now please.) that I could almost shed a tear. And then I did…but not the happy kind. Our first option was a hostel-ish hotel that, in my opinion, looked more like a community of sheds. The room had 2 beds that looked like they were dragged out of the ocean, neither of which was thicker than a Harry Potter book. A shared bathroom was downstairs with an outdoor sink. It was open air (aka, put a flashing neon “Bugs Welcome” sign in our window) and had a balcony with a hammock which means Mike was sold. My lips said “sure” because I didn’t want to insult the manager from Michigan, but everything else in me said no. As we walked to the car I gave Mike a look of death, mumbled something about downgrading from our current bug shack and started to cry. It wasn’t particularly a cry-worthy moment, but as I explained to Mike after I composed myself, I have been physically and mentally uncomfortable for about a week and the thought of sleeping there, a place worse than what I’ve already had to get used to, pushed the tears out. Honestly, I also think I was a little upset that my dream of sleeping in a nice hotel seemed as far away as we were from home.

For anyone unfamiliar with Lonely Planet guides, they are super helpful - normally. Today wasn’t a good day though. They gave us the wrong directions for how to get to Pavones (or at least directions that were difficult to understand) and they rated the Shed Hotel high among backpackers - that’s where we went wrong - backpackers and I are NOT on the same page. But, desperate, I gave it one more chance to redeem itself. The Riviera was described as a hotel that was the closest to a “proper” hotel with tile floors, full kitchen and air conditioning. Sounded proper enough to me and I asked Mike to get us there. It took five hours for us to find Pavones, I didn’t care if it took two more to find comfort.

And we did. We got a villa in the gated resort that the guardskeeper described as tranquilo. It had everything our guidebook described and more: hot water. So it was more expensive. I didn’t care. And as long as I didn’t cry again, Mike didn’t care either. He understood that I needed my comfort even though he thought it would be “fun” to be in the shed. We argued a bit about the meaning of fun if that’s what he considers it to be until we agreed to disagree.

So instead of being trapped in our home today, we trapped ourselves in the car, and in a more remote location than our place. But at least it resulted in a hot shower and a bed that is somewhat of an upgrade (Sleep Number at 2, I’d say). But more importantly, I won’t be sharing it with any bugs. I may have gotten used to them in my house but not in my bed. There’s no fun in that for me.