Büri

Due to absurdity this journey deserves its own post :)
You know I normally prefer public transportation to tourist shuttles as even though they are usually a lot quicker they are also a lot more expensive and what I have is time what I need to save is money. But as I was traveling with Alena and her time was limited we took the shuttle. As I had already bought my ticket for the boat to get of the island when I came we were on 2 different boats but met on the other side and jumped in the airconditioned mini-van with WIFI which was supposed to bring us to Boquete in 3 1/2 hours. All went well till we suddenly stopped without any obvious reason. Our busdriver also didn't know what was happening so he just passed by the other cars waiting till we made it to the front of the line and saw what was going on: some people were blocking the street with 2 cars and some rocks and a big banner. First we thought this was some kind of joke and it couldn't take more than half an hour to move them. But we had to realize that no one was even trying to move this people. So one lady, who seemed to be their head, kept sitting on an old fridge in the middle of the street and nothing happened. After an hour we got out of the van again and explored the area around. There were some little stores along the street but we kept on going till we got to a Chinese supermarket with chicken feet and beer. Probably the real reason we left the car. The beer. Not the chicken feet.
After another hour Alena started to get really upset. She wanted to get to Boquete and it was hard to accept that we couldn't do anything but wait. We talked to our driver and he tried to explain the situation to us. Apparently there was another road between 2 towns that had been closed ages ago. Now some people wanted to open this road again but the bus companies stopped this as right now the bus from David to Changinola was the only way to get from town to town. So people blocking the street were trying to harm the bus company. Unfortunately the busses were the only ones that weren't really bothered by the blocked street as they just had a bus coming from both sides. They swapped over people and luggage, turned around and made their way back (of course this happens when I'm taking the shuttle). Also it was sunday and no one who could do something was working. So basically the whole blocking didn't really make scene.
He also said that the people blocking the street were indigos paid by the government to do so. But he kind of lost us at that point. Maybe this degree of corruption is to high for us.
At some point Alena got really annoyed and decided to go for a run (after 2 beers). I was amazed by how relaxed I was with the whole situation. I guess this is what traveling Central America for 5 month does to you :)
After Alena was gone for a while people suddenly started to move. We couldn't really figure out what had happened but suddenly they moved the cars and started carrying away the rocks. Our driver didn't wanna let anybody go past us and squeezed back into line. Everybody jumped back in the car. But we were still missing Alena! The cars started moving quite slowly as everybody had to get back in line. But we were like the third car passing the blocking and everybody just wanted to keep moving. But where was Alena. Suddenly one of the guys saw her right in front of us coming down the road. So we opened the door and barely stopped to let her jump in. Once the door was closed our driver started speeding down the road like crazy. He probably tried to make up for the 3 hours we had been standing around not moving at all. Alena opened her last beer and was finally relaxed again. Even though we would make it to Boquete later than planned, we at least had some story to tell!Read more