Today is family bonding extravaganza extraordinaire, as we’re stuck in a car that’s called 7-person only as some cruel joke. I’m jealous of our luggage for getting to ride on the roof during much of this 12-plus hours that I didn’t sleep through nearly enough of.
Bad turns that were my fault only through lack of participation in navigating made my dad try his skill at off-roading. He’s O.K. at it, but the car isn’t: we crack an axle during a wrong turn through a pineapple plantation. Luckily, it’s drivable enough to get us to a shack of a repair shop and the rental people are cool about covering the cost. We kill 2 hours with a lunch where someone manages to shoot a mouthful of Fanta onto the table and exploring a town with little to offer the traveler to put us back on our bonding way without too much time wasted.
Without too much waste from the repair; about 6 hours have been wasted by following directions from people at the hotel in Manuel Antonio on how to get to the Caribbean town of Cahuita. They cheerfully guided us to a dead end somewhere in the middle of the country, so much so that the mechanic laughs when we ask him which way to Cahuita.
Most of the rest of the time on the road is uneventful, aside from 1 incident that’s sure to inspire the punch line of many of what my mom refers to as “pee-pee poo-poo jokes.” Constituting most of what my brother Scott and his social circle consider comical, anything involving expelling gas is automatically hilarious under this genre. Suffice it to say that an Iseman who shall remain nameless did far more than just expel gas on the side of the road. Verses of song were created in tribute and the rest of the trip that is the day was significantly more enjoyable.