Last week was Holy Week and for the first few days we visited some friends in a town 3 hours south of San Jose. We returned home on Thursday morning, taking the last bus back to the city before transportation services ended for the Easter holiday.
I have a love/hate relationship with public transportation here. I love that it is cheap…$3.50 for a 3 hour trip. I love that I get to be with all sorts of different people…old people, children, etc. But I don’t like that I have to travel by someone else’s schedule. When the last bus leaves that means I have to leave, even though it is 6 hours before I wanted to. And I don’t like that it’s not always pleasant to be around people who are different from me.
It became clear right away that the person sitting in front of me on this journey was different. The person looked like a woman with long black hair, thick makeup, a yellow halter top, and platform heels. I realized quickly it wasn’t a woman… “she” was too tall and too muscular. It took the first hour of the trip for him to get settled in his seat. The settling in process included re-applying makeup every 5 minutes, and leaning over to fling his long hair into the aisle. It invariably landed on my knee. With my huge backpack under my feet my leg had no escape from the cascade of hair that fell on it.
I was free from the hairfall during the second half of the journey. He turned around in his seat so that he was facing backwards on the bus. The situation was incredibly awkward as I couldn’t look up without meeting his gaze. To make matters worse, he played music out loud and sang along for everyone’s entertainment. I wasn’t amused.
According to one of my Costa Rican friends, I am a magnet for unusual people and circumstances on buses. In all his years of riding the bus, he hasn’t had any experiences that compare to mine. Stay tuned for the next bus adventure…I’m sure it’s about to occur.
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