Liberia, Costa Rica –
Did you know that there is no disease in Costa Rica?
Well, it’s not that there’s no disease, but that whatever you have, it can be easily cured.
Of course, part of the cure requires you to have a Costa Rican mother.
There’s always a catch…
We were expecting a short bus ride to the river.
Why we were leaving the resort at seven AM, none of us could understand, and none were too happy about.
What we got, was a three-hour bus ride (each way) and a guided tour through all aspects of Costa Rican life.
And our guide kept threatening to make the ride even longer, with all sorts of side trips.
I guess this is what happens when you put a group of a dozen travel bloggers in the same bus, heading to a river-rafting tour.
You get much more than you signed up for. After all, everyone wants to show off.
It all started with a one and a half hour ride to Liberia from our resort on the coast. Just us and Albert, our driver. We stopped at a gift shop for a restroom break, at which point William, our guide for the rest of our bus ride, joined us.
That was when the history lessons began…
The lessons started with the usual topics, how the country got its name, why the Guanacaste region is the dry part of the country, and other general history and cultural topics.
One topic kept coming up again and again. Amidst examples of how the country is self-sufficient, William began rattling off all sorts of natural medicinal cures for whatever afflicts you.
It began with an unripe coconut, and how drinking the juice from two green coconuts would cure your kidney problems (at least I think it was the kidneys.) Then again, I think this is what’s behind the current craze of drinking packaged “Coconut Water.”
Next, we learned how to cure bronchitis by taking a ripe coconut, drilling three holes in it to drain any remaining milk, then filling it with brown sugar, and burying it under your house for a month.
We soon moved on to other natural cures available from the various fruits and vegetables that grew naturally in the country. According to our guide, all of these cures are commonly known by Costa Rican mothers (I’m assuming passed down from their mothers). At least, that was the impression he gave.
Of course, between cures he would rattle off some unrelated topic, like the tribe in the northeastern part of the country that buries their dead in their houses.
Remind me never to consider buying a house in that part of the country.
Eventually, we reached our destination, and had our ride down the river, followed a couple of hours later by a nice lunch, during which William announced that we would be heading from there to a waterfall where we could go swimming.
Not that any of us had brought swimsuits. This was a part of the tour we hadn’t known about.
And we still had a ride back to our resort (another three hours), along with scheduled activities once we had arrived.
And we were already going to be getting back later than originally planned, pushing our schedule back.
Jackie, our group coordinator, leapt into action, asking that the unexpected waterfall visit be skipped.
But once we were back on the bus, William announced another side-trip that he was taking us on, only to be nixed again.
Determined to provide us with something more than just what we had requested, William had Albert stop at a road-side stand where he asked who in the group wanted to try the fresh coconut water kidney cure, at a dollar a pop.
This he was successful at. As everyone slowly realized what was going on, more and more dollars came out, which were exchanged for freshly cut, and very hot from sitting in the heat all day, coconuts that we could drink from through very long straws for the duration of our ride.
Our butts may have been sore from the long bus ride, but our kidneys would be in good working order…
Sorry, I don’t normally take photos while on a bus ride, and thus have none to share. If you want to view a variety of my photos from around the world, click here.
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