tico buses

the buses in costa rica have been impressive. i thought they would be like the rickety chicken buses (old us school buses) i took in nicaragua, but they are more like charter buses. the bus ride i took today from puerto viejo to san jose was crazy. it took forever... first, we were stopped by the tico policia who made us all get off the bus, had to thoroughly search the bus and our belongings and check all passenger id. an hour later, we stop the bus again because traffic isn´t moving because a semi went off the small road and was blocking traffic. we had to wait for it to be towed. finally things are going well for a few hours, until the bus emergency alarm goes off... i don´t know what happened- we either ran out of gas or over-heated. we had to wait for two other buses to take us the rest of the way to san jose. it took us 6 hours!