police

Day 5 was a very interesting day. Or to put it another way WET. It was raining when we woke up and carried on throughout the morning. Now it is well known that the weather in Costa Rica is nothing if not predictable. It is warm and sunny in the morning, clouds over about noon and then starts raining at about 2pm well into the night. So keeping this in mind, Annie and I decided that today would be the day that we visited the beach in Hajo. It is about and hour and half away so we were pretty confident that we would drive through the weather and get to the beach well before the rains came.

Off we set in our little 4 x 4 along the highway. We had the Sat Nav on and life was good, albeit still wet at this point. Now the trouble with having a Sat Nav in Costa Rica is that there are no postcodes or even proper addresses, as I mentioned before in a previous post, everyone just gives directions. Telling Mrs Sat Nav to go past Charlys bar to get to the beach really doesn’t cut it in GPS world. Anyway we had typed in Hajo and picked one of the options given but about an hour into the journey we realised that we were heading in the wrong direction. Unfortunately we had just driven up to a toll and asked directions there. The woman in the booth made us pay to go through and then again to come back even though we only did a U turn. She gave us the right directions though so we put it behind us and carried on. It was still raining.

About 10 minutes later we were pulled over by the police who asked Annie for her licence and said that she had made some kind of illegal manoeuvre. He stood there for ages repeating himself before saying. “The fine is $500 but you can pay me $20. A big difference and one that left us with little choice. The police here are notoriously corrupt but as they only get paid the equivalent of $1 per hour it’s not surprising that they do this to supplement their lowly income. Having said that, of course I do not condone this and it couldn’t be more different from my days as a police officer in London. Once we paid him he then told us that we were yet again going in the wrong direction and pointed us back the way we came, yes you guessed it, through the toll once more. Oh, and it was still raining.

Finally after about 3 hours in the car we arrived at Hajo and drove down to the beach. Yes! there was the golden sand and the deep blue sea and…. nothing else. No one sun bathed, no one sold ice cream, no one badgered you to rent a lounger. Why was this you wonder? It was STILL flipping raining. Ok then so we spent about 2 minutes looking at the beach before retiring to a local restaurant for lunch and souvenirs.

We spent a total of 1 hour in Hajo before getting back in the 4 x 4 and driving home.

Does the story end there? Nope, not really. We got lost. Again. Annie got more impatient with every turn that led nowhere. We were diverted at least three times due to works being carried out because of recent landslides. Eventually I dozed off to the sound of the rain and just hoped that when I woke up we would be on the right road home.

Once we arrived back and I climbed out of the 4 x 4 I knew I would be glad if I never had to get in it again. It was still raining.