Taximoto ride to San Jose

Thursday was our day to travel further south along the coast to our next destination, Hostal Cuna Luna in San Jose. We like the taximotos so much that we decided to see if we could hire one to go the 38 km (about 25 miles) to San Jose. Our first quote was $30, then another driver said $25, finally the one at $25 said $20, a reasonable price since Bill, our new American friend in Puerto Lopez, said a taxi would be about $15. However, the motorcycle half of his taximoto had homemade wiring, so we said no to him after inspecting his taximoto. A third driver was watching, and as we walked toward town from our hostel, he drove up to us and said $20. We agreed, and as we got in, he looked back at his buddies, laughed at them, and yelled out “veinte!” which means he got the fare for $20. The driver’s name was Jose, and we bought him a bottle of water when we stopped for gas before we headed out of town. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of Jose and his taximoto, but it looks just like the one I put in an earlier blog posting.

I’m glad we weren’t in a hurry. At times going up the hills, we considered getting out to push. Consider that the moto part is a 200 cc motorcycle, but in additional to the weight of the driver, it is hauling a metal seat framework, axle, and us and our luggage, and we added about  350 pounds (that includes luggage weight not just our weight! we haven’t eaten that much here). I’m glad we took the taximoto. It has no doors, so we could see all the lush greenery on one side and the ocean at times on the other as we made our drive.

The only problem we had was that Jose knew where the town was, but not where the hostal was. I did not realize it was not the main road, rather directly on the beach. We passed on thru the town and did not see it or a sign, so Jose stopped and asked two men walking. They didn’t know either, but we knew we had gone thru the town, so Jose turned around. When we got back into the town, I asked Jose to stop, pulled out my cell phone and the number to the hostal, and asked him to call. The person at the hostal gave Jose directions off the main road, down the dirt roads thru town, to the hostal. Jose got an extra $5 for the trip.

Cuna Luna has no Internet, so although I am writing this on Friday, I can’t post it yet. Our room is the second floor of a two story cabin. The interior is rather sparse, but the great part is the balcony with the hammocks and the fact that we are right on the beach. The screen on the doors and windows seem to work well since the mosquitos did not get in. Good thing as we don’t have netting over our bed like Hosteria Mandala did.

The hammocks are a great place to lie back and read a book, or in Phillip’s case, sing along with his MP3 player. I had my iPod on while I read, so only a few times did I hear Phillip singing. I think it was when the Cher songs were on. “Believe” does make you want to sing with the chorus of the song.

A beautiful sunset over the water last night. I love taking pictures of sunrises and sunsets, so I just have to put this in, a picture I took from our balcony, just before the mosquitos arrived out there!