Trust

Many years ago I needed help with a business. I didn’t know how to scale. I was in the $300/day profit vicinity and wanted to step it up. A friend/acquaintance had the resources I needed. “Tell me exactly what you’re doing and we’ll go in on this together.” So I did. I wrote out the whole plan in detail on a white board.

My friend went on to make over a million dollars (net, not gross) with this information. I got $0.

Oh well.

I trust people. Good or bad, I trust people.

Sometimes this gets me into weird situations. And sure, sometimes I get taken advantage of. (Although that really depends on who you ask. Who determines this whole “taken advantage of” business?)

Without trust I don’t think I’d be able to function.

I was reminded of that today when making my first ever attempts at hitchhiking.

I’m staying at a “hotel” (private individual cabins actually) near Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica. There was supposed to be a bus passing by at 8:30am that would take me to the Arenal National Park. It never showed and by 8:50am I decided I needed to get moving. 2 kilometers later I figured I should hitchhike. It didn’t go so well at first, but it didn’t take more than 5-10 minutes for a father and his young son to stop and give me a lift directly to the park entrance.

That was great. One leg of the trip completed. I hiked around the park for 2 1/2 hours and on the way out it began pouring rain. Oops.

No taxis, no buses. Guess it’s a good time for hitchhiking again.

This time, within 30 seconds (first car that passed me), I got picked up by an older couple from Montreal, Canada. The rain cleared up 5 minutes later and they said they were going to Arenal Observatory Lodge and asked me to join. I did, of course. We hiked for a couple of hours, had a nice meal, and they drove me all the way back to my cabin, which is where I’m writing now, overlooking the volcano.

I probably won’t be doing much more hitchhiking in my lifetime, but I’m glad I did today. What started as “how the hell am I going to get to the park?” turned into a phenomenal day and that would not have been the case if not for trust.

On my porch writing this very post; overlooking Arenal Volcano.