Friday night I surveyed the guests in the posada for interest in hiring the posada's duena, Itza, to drive us around and act as tour guide for the day. Itza had agreed to the arrangement prior to leaving to return to her house for the evening, but I needed to fill her SUV with two other riders besides myself. Both of the men were committed for the next day to the process of applying for residential visas, but the two women, both of them young travellers from Holland, gladly signed up and also enlisted another young woman from a different hostel to join us. Sanne, Adriana, and I sketched out a loose itinerary for our Saturday excursion. However, the following morning Itza called to say that she was sick and couldn't make the commitment, so we made a quick change of plans to get together at 10:00, grab a taxi and head to the hot springs, perhaps including a hike to the waterfalls nearby.
After a quick, tasty, inexpensive breakfast a few blocks away, my return to the hostel afforded me the pleasure of meeting Amelie, a young French woman who was joining us for the day. It rapidly became apparent that perhaps we were joining her. As we walked out into the street, she began hailing cabs, full or not, leaning down to ask in fluent Spanish how much they would charge to go to the hot springs. When she found the best price, $15 for the four of us to go on a 25-minute cab ride that ended on a rutted, bouldered 2 km. stretch, we waited for his return from dropping off his current passengers.
While waiting, I discovered that she had left her home in France at the age of 18 and had been traveling for the last 13 years, working all over the world doing food service. She had recently finished a 3 month stint in Panama at a newly-discovered copper field, working 16-hour days, 7 days/wk, 3 weeks on and 1 week off. She had just quit her job and was exploring before returning to France to live for the first time since leaving home. She had met Sanne in Costa Rica, where they had decided to travel together for awhile. During one of their hikes, Amelie had wandered into a wasp nest, had been bitten 8 times, and suffered such a severe allergic reaction that she nearly died. She credits Sane and their hiking partner at the time with working in tandem to save her life. This having happened only a few days before, she still had the bites to prove it.
Sanne graduated 2 years ago with a degree in Clinical Psychology. Having no luck finding work as a psychologist, she accepted a job in a mental institution as a social worker where she seems to be putting her psychology skillsets to very good use. She has been on vacation for 3 weeks, and has another week in Panama before returning to her hometown of Arnhem. It was mere coincidence that she was in the same hostel as Adriana. They had not met previously, but discovered that their vacations not only overlapped here, Adriana having also just arrived from Costa Rica recently, but also the previous spring when both had traveled to Sumatra and Indonesia, having stayed at many of the same places just a few days apart.
Adriana is a late-20-something travel agent from Rotterdam whose agency specializes in travel to the Middle East. It seemed then only natural that she would go elsewhere for personal travel. She speaks very little Spanish but seemed to have no trouble traveling around by herself through Costa Rica and Panama.
Spending the day with these 3 young, beautiful, foreign adventurers was much more the highlight of the day than the hot springs themselves. After the cab ride and a short walk, we arrived at the hot springs about 11:00 on a warm morning. The normally crystal clear river that we were hoping to cool off in between sessions in the hot pools was a milk chocolate color with dark chocolate sprinkles of burnt wood and other nasty black components of indiscernible origin. Nonetheless, we stayed 2 or 3 hours talking, wandering about, and enjoying the day before beginning the return trip.
Here Amelie proved invaluable once again although the presence of three young women in bikinis always considerably helps your prospects when hitchhiking. They were all adept at discerning which rides were safe, but once we had a ride, Amelie's Spanish fluency also allowed her to direct the conversation in whichever direction she chose, and I marvelled at how easily she deflected hints and entreaties with laughter and honesty. Our final ride of the return series was with a couple of 60-something rafters from Idaho who took us all the way to our hostel even though it was 15 or 20 miles out of their way. Go figure.......hmmmmm.
I parted ways with the women then. They went shopping and cruising; I couldn't wait to get down to the crystal clear water of the river and jump in. Also, I knew that I was really the fourth musketeer, and it was time to cut them loose to enjoy themselves.
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