IN TRISHA WE TRUST

(NK) The time has at last come, we must say goodbye to the ‘most wonderful car in the world.’ No, not Chitty Chitty Bang Bang but our Trisha. A vehicle no less magic and amazing than a car that can fly, this was a car that could negotiate Central American roads.

With Trisha the world really was our oyster. From tackling corrupt police to overtaking around bends going uphill (standard Latino driving) Trisha has done it all without complaining once.

A special thanks to Uncle Paul and Auntie Pia, who wisely convinced us to spend a little more on a car that wasn’t going to give us any trouble. Trisha you really couldn’t have done any more for us.

I could go on with this gushing appreciation for our sturdy Toyota 4 Runner but the frustration of us trying to sell her will no doubt be much more interesting.

Our greedy little eyes had seen the cars in Costa Rica often sell for a much higher price than anywhere else in Central America. The problem with an imported car like ours is the huge import taxes which sort of cancel out any benefits. Not deterred by this small inconvenience we put our best salesman smile on and set about the business of selling a car.

We probably should’ve put an advert on Craigslist or something similar, instead we just asked anyone we came into contact with if they wanted to buy a car. This led to a lot of dead ends. Guys offering $6 or $7 grand would come back with two, saying ‘that’s all I’ve got.’

Either everyone was skint or everyone was trying it on. It was probably a mix of the two. Eventually the family that owned the hostel in La Fortuna mentioned their brother Luis might be interested. After some negotiation he offered $4k. Well under our asking price. We left for our Ayahuasca ceremony but returned to La Fortuna afterwards. We had nowhere else to go and no other serious leads so we decided to push a deal with Luis.

The negotiations began and eventually after a while we settled on $4k and a moped. Although I did like the family dog, Osiito, including him in the deal just wasn’t practical. Neither was a moped, and it just gave us something else to sell.

Luis gave us another option – a Samsung Galaxy phone worth $800 (that we could sell for $500) in Costa Rica, two tours and a free shuttle to Puerto Viejo near the Panama border.

We shook on it, that’s when the fun started. Luis was very elusive for the next couple of days, the tours didn’t materialize and we were left waiting around. Eventually the day came and we went to the bank. For reasons that should be obvious we didn’t fancy carrying $4k in our pocket so wanted to do a bank transfer. His bank couldn’t do international bank transfers. We therefore had to use his Mum’s bank. This involved some dodgy exchange rates and charges but kept our money safe. Once that was done we went to see the lawyer to do the paperwork. Lawyer, which much to Luis’ amusement sounds like ‘liar’ in his Latino accent.

We then sold the phone, which gave us some more cash - and another phone. This was getting more convoluted then we could ever have imagined. Luis had also decided that the tours would one day materialize, just not today. The shuttle to Puerto Viejo was also to be replaced by him in his new car, just not today – and we were driving. Now the money had been transferred he didn’t seem to care about the other parts of the deal.

In England Luis, we call this – Taking the piss.

We took Luis to a nearby park (the jungle reserved for bigger offences) for some stern words.

(FK) Neil liked to use the line – ‘my wife won’t be happy with that’ to help instill a little fear into the macho bravardoism during negotiations, so my opening line to Luis was – ‘Luis, I’m very angry…’ Luis could talk a lot and every point we raised was countered with seven from him, half of which were completely unrelated to the selling of a car. He was killing us with nonsense, a tactic I’m familiar with, living with Neil. Luis’ brother rode up on a bike and cheekily tried to inflame the conversation. These Ticos like a good laugh.

(NK) I cut our losses and drew it to a close; he could forget the tours, as long as a shuttle picked us up the next day. We’d been hanging around in La Fortuna way to long and were both desperate to move on. He agreed, we shook and parted company.

True to his word, the shuttle picked us up at 6.15am and sped us away to the Caribbean with a new smart phone we still haven’t sold.

Surprise surprise, selling a car in Central America is not straightforward. We took a $600 loss on what we originally paid when all was done. Speaking to a couple from the States that night we learned they’d hired a car for a month for $1,000.  $600 for five months, not bad when you look at it from that perspective.

A reminder to us to never take more than you need. We needed enough money for flights out of Panama to Oz, that’s what we got plus a bit more and Trisha went to a good home – we think.

Having a car was the only way and we wouldn’t change it. It gave us the ultimate freedom to go wherever, whenever. No timetable to stick to, no-one to wait for – just go! Perhaps, thinking about it, if we’d made the time, bicycles would have been better or even a car with aquatic capabilities or even a bicycle with aquatic capabilities – hmmm – next time.

Goodbye Trisha, you were only metal and oil, but we loved you!!!!!