Bodyguard

Thursday, June 28, 2007
12:31 AM

Ah, Costa Rica. So we are getting back into the Central American spirit now. We had a 4 hour bus ride through the mountains and ended up in the little town of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. We had previously heard about Puerto Viejo from our previous tour leader from last year. We had asked her if she had any advice on places to go and things to do and she said to avoid this place because it is getting dangerous. Then this morning right before we got on the bus to come here with our group our new leader, Myra, told us of her recent mugging. She was down here about a month ago and got robbed right outside our current hotel. Two teenagers came running up to her shooting off a handgun into the air and demanding all her money. She freely gave up all she had and went straight to the police who did nothing because the boys were minors. In the month since that time, there have been more muggings, including an entire group of travelers. While I don't think we will get mugged ourselves, I am sure to carry as little money as possible, enough to just get by.

Oh, and I'm also not worried because we have a bodyguard, Roberto. He seems nice enough and did come in handy when a local rastafarian kept on trying to sell us some "good weed." Of course I think it would be better if the gun holster he has on his belt were to actually have a gun in it. No, I'm not kidding, the man has a gun holster with no gun. He does have a cell phone however, and I don't doubt that he is prepared to use it.

After arriving into town, Haley and I walked around with Crystal, an aspiring schoolteacher from Canada and Tyson, a twenty-something professional traveler. Tyson has spent the past year and a half traveling to Switzerland, parts of Europe, spent the past snowboarding season in Canada, probably a couple more places I can't think of and is now doing the entire central America thing. He plans on traveling for the next three years as well. I guess he just got tired of work one day in Australia as an electrical engineer and decided to head out on the road for some travels. Us Americans don't really even think of traveling like that. In fact, we don't do much traveling at all. I'm proud of Haley and I for stepping out of the box and getting away this time. We have a good group and I think we will have a lot of fun in Panama. Tomorrow we are gonna go see a sloth rescue farm and have a bonfire on the beach. Then the next day we are gonna do a little whitewater rafting down the "best" whitewater river in central America. Should be fun as long as our bodyguard continues to watch and protect us. (there is both sarcasm and truth in that last sentence).