If the TV show "24" covered this day of my life, Kiefer Sutherland would probably be out of a job.

To get from San Salvador to San José, we took a coach bus. Easy enough...in theory.

We arrived at the bus depot at like 3 in the morning...I think? Regardless, it was dark, after midnight, and the streets were deserted. Our bus departed and we slept. We got to the El Salvadorian-Nicaraguan border a little bit before noon, if I recall correctly.

This is where things started to get very strange.

We had to engage in what our sound guy Dave referred to as an “exercise resplendent in its mediocrity.” All of the passengers had to vacate the bus, take off all of their luggage, and place their luggage in a large pile. The Nicaraguan border officials, all of whom were carrying heavy artillery, then did the following: shouted things in Spanish, made us stand around without a clue as to what was going on, made us think our luggage was all going to be opened and searched (and this is definitely an ordeal as we have so much technical equipment with us), made us give them their passports—and then before we knew it, all was fine and we were allowed to reload our baggage and continue on our way.

If I had only known then that the day’s strange happenings were only beginning…

We drove through Nicaragua, and arrived at the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border. They checked our passports, we got off the bus, sat around for about an hour, got back on the bus, crossed the border, and engaged in another one of these “exercises.” This time it was more serious, though. They had all sorts of questions for us, and our translator was getting flustered as he was trying to translate for us, so we really had no idea what was going on. These border officials had heavy artillery as well, and were much more intimidating than at the previous border. They actually did search a few pieces of our luggage, and then before we knew it, we were all back on the bus traveling through the remote countryside of Costa Rica, en route to San José.

It’s around 9 p.m., and we’re about 3 hours outside of the city, enjoying Whitney Houston’s classic “The Bodyguard,” which is playing on the TVs in the bus. At a very climactic moment toward the end of the movie, almost as if on cue, there’s a ridiculously loud noise and the bus shakes and screeches to a halt. The power is lost, and we learn that we have just driven over a tree trunk that had fallen in the middle of the highway.

But this is, by definition, an “emergency.” So the stewardess tells us we’re not allowed to leave the bus or open the windows. [As a sidenote, I believe the toilet on the bus was also backed up and/or not functioning properly.] We opened the escape doors on the roof for ventilation, and there was much shouting and arguing with the woman—she wouldn’t let anyone off the bus because of “snakes and animals” in the jungle. Fair enough, I suppose.

The bus starts back up, we drive about 10 more minutes into the nearest town and stop at a small roadside restaurant, where we wait for 3 hours for the new bus which is being driven to us from San José.

Here’s how we pass the time:

Delicious, refreshing beverages.

This was in response to my prompt: "Show me how you feel right now." Apparently, Charlie wasn't on the same bus as the rest of us.

This game is called "shake your head violently back and forth while I take a picture."

Hidayat is really, really good at this game.

Optical illusions are fun, too!

BUT THEN IT GETS WORSE! Our new, smaller bus, which also didn’t have a bathroom, arrives around midnight. The restaurant had closed by now and some of us needed to use the bathroom. We check with our stewardess about using the bathroom really quickly on the broken bus, and she tells us, “If you go use the bathroom, we’ll leave without you. You’ve had 3 hours to use the bathroom already.”

WHAT?! Absurd. So, I just decided to "hold it" (is that too much information?), and I think the others that wanted to go just went really quickly on the side of the road.

We finally arrived in San José around 4 a.m...which means the trip took us 24 hours.

I do not miss that bus.