Valentine's Day

I spent most of Valentine's Day with a trucker. A short, balding trucker named Roger. Yet by my method of measurement, it was one of the best and will go down in history as exceptional. At least until I fall in love and Valentine's Day has more significance.

This morning I decided that I wanted to travel to Monteverde with some people I had met in Bocas. I had only been back in Rosario de Naranjo for 24 hours, but I feel ready for action and I haven't had my fill of unpredictable adventure yet. By the time I did laundry, packed a bigger bag and arrived at the bus platform I realized that I had two options. Wait for a bus to San Jose and hope that I was in time to make the bus to Monteverde, or gamble everything and wait on the other side of the road for a bus to Monteverde and hope it showed up. I walked across the highway four times trying to decide which was the best option. At last I determined that it was ridiculous to go in the opposite direction to San Jose and began to wait for the Monteverde bus to pass by.

I am not a very patient person. Ten minutes of waiting and it suddenly crossed my mind what an adventure it would be to hitch-hike. I had a large knife in my pocket that an older gentleman in Bocas had given me when he discovered I was staying in a hostel and sharing a room with men (his words were "You need this more than I do"); it was the middle of the day, and I determined that if the right opportunity presented itself I would give it a shot.

Five minutes later, Roger showed up. He was alone, I happened to know that the road was well traveled and that I could jump out and run faster than he could. But more than that, I looked in his eyes and no alarm bells went off. I felt perfectly calm and secure. That will sound stupid and naieve, but it proved true. He was a gentleman the whole way, even stopping to buy me a water bottle. And I arrived in Monteverde two hours earlier than the bus. I was waiting at the bus station with a big grin on my face when my friends arrived.

I can now cross off "hitch-hiking" from my list of things to do.