After the mostly Costa Rican riders got their things, the bus pulled a loop and revved its engines back to the central valley. I stepped across into non-country through a loosely-guarded checkpoint. I had expected sniffer dogs inside. Instead, there was a little strip of corrugated metal shacks selling food and water stuffed inside the…

The nicest bus I have ever ridden in Costa Rica rolled me through increasingly-dry countryside on the way from concrete and razor-wire San Jose to the small backpacker towns of Quepos and Manuel Antonio. The sleek bus, which had individual leather-ish seats and those air blowers you always see on airplanes, had picked me up…

I feel I’m more well-traveled than the average American. At 11, my parents spirited me through Western Europe for half a summer—my pious father took us mostly to Cathedrals, which I probably could’ve appreciated more if I wasn’t still years away from puberty (I remember my 5-year old brother whining about how much his feet…

IN the states, my diet was pretty abhorrent. I didn’t know how to cook (starin to learn down here…STARTin), but wasn’t well-off enough to afford to eat out three times a day. Therefore, my sporadic meals usually consisted of standing in front of my open refrigerator for five minutes whist stuffing various processed carbs and…

I arrived in Puriscal after a three-and-a half hour ride from the mountain village of Mastatal. I rode in a yellow American School Bus (Blue Bird Incorporated, the logo above the driver read), that would have failed inspection decades ago if ever subjected to strict American regulations. The windows were jammed open. Neither door closed.…

I don’t even remember the layover in Ft. Lauderdale. I genuinely don’t. All the information I have from this event is pre-memory: letters and figures on a sheet of paper—my ticket—that said I was to be in Ft. Lauderdale for an hour and 10 minutes. Post memory: the ticket still exists. I am now in Costa…