Bocas del Toro - welcome to Panama!

Our crossing over the border to Panama from Costa Rica was very painless and quick and in no time at all we were on the scenic boat ride out through the mangroves to Bocas del Toro - a group of mangrove-covered and white-sand beach lined islands on the Caribbean side of Panama.
Much to our amazement we had to traipse around a number of places to find somewhere to stay the night - despite being low season, it appears that the bad weather on the Pacific Coast pushed all the tourists over to the Caribbean side.

Our second day on the Island was not quite the relaxed day that we had planned. On trying to buy our flights out of Panama all our credit cards were rejected so we found ourselves spending most of the day finding a phone that worked, which we eventually did in the Local Fire Station! Then we spent much of the rest of the day calling collect to the banks to figure out what was going on. Turns out that the brilliant Bank of America had canceled our credit card several weeks prior for no obvious reason, and failed to tell us! Got it all sorted in the end, but most of the day wasted...

We had been recommended a snorkeling day trip with Captain Marcel - a bit more expensive than the other other tours, but turned out to be absolutely worth it. We spent the day on a lovely catamaran sail boat and visited a couple of really great snorkeling sights - we saw some of the most interesting coral that we have seen anywhere yet - quite different - brain corrals, long tube-like corrals, shiny round shells. The weather was absolutely perfect, the food was yummy and we met some interesting ex-pats living in Costa Rica.

Puerto Vieja de Talamanca - Caribbean again

We never really meant to come here. The book said it was a party town for surfer dudes, so we thought we'd be too old for the whole scene. So we just intended to stay the night in transit before heading over the border to Panama. So wrong we were - we could have stayed a week. But we didn´t have enough time, so we stayed for 2 nights and had a lovely relaxing time chilling out in a couple of great seafood restaurants and enjoyed the beach.

We have to mention that we stayed here in one of the best hostels we've ever been to (it's called Pagalu Hostel). It was almost as if they got a bunch of travelers together and asked them "what would your perfect hostel be?" and then they actually built it: Purpose-built building- beautiful wood floors, numerous stylish bathrooms, only 4 beds in each dorm, personal reading lights and electrical sockets in bed, huge-backpack-size lockers and shelf, great security, well-stocked kitchen - with free coffee and tea. It's not in the Lonely Planet yet, but certainly will be soon.

The Pacific Coast for the first time in 10 months

Monteverde to Miguel San AntonioWe were set for a long day traveling from the mountains in Monteverde to the pacific coast via San Jose (anywhere in Costa Rica seems you have to go via San Jose) - we would be traveling back along the road that took 3 hours to travel 35kms on the way up. Also unfortunately there were yet more heavy Pacific storms and rain the night before and this had quite an impact on our journey. We first had an inkling that something was not going to plan when our bus attempted a 23-point turn on the narrow mountain road. Then much to our surprise, rather than going back to where we started, we continued down the mountain road backwards !! All became clear 20 minutes later when we came to a queue of trucks backed up to a landslide.

To cut a long story short we ended up traversing by foot through the jungle around the landslide, reconnecting with the road and waiting for a different bus from San Jose to come pick us up - only a 2.5 hour delay. Fortunately the rest of our long journey went smoothly - we jammily made it onto the (apparently 100% booked) bus to Manuel Antonio without a reservation, and arrived about 6pm - plenty of time to find somewhere to sleep and go our for dinner.

Miguel San Antonio and Quepos
We were blessed with beautiful weather for a nice change at Manuel Antonia National Park - it is a beautiful jungle right on the Pacific Coast. Being on the beach looking out over the rocky Pacific coast line made us both ache for our adopted second home in California. The jungle though is teeming with wildlife despite the hordes of tourists who blunder through here - we saw numerous sloths, white-faced monkeys, racoons and other birdlife.






Of course, the bad weather hadn't left us just yet - that night bad Pacific storms again caused severe flooding in the region - luckily we were on the first bus out the next day which was high enough to get through the roads, but we later heard that many villages were evacuated.

Cloud Forests in Monteverde, Costa Rica

When you look at a map of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, Isla de Ometepe and Monteverde appear to be pretty close together - maybe a couple of hundred kilometers, but no big deal at all. So we supposed that it should be no trouble getting from A to B in one day.
Why of course not. Despite being assured by the lady at the ticket office that the bus would drop us off on the InterAmericana freeway and we'd be able to get a 20 or 30 minute taxi ride to Monteverde, of course this turned out to be untrue! In the end we had to take the bus all the way to San Jose - stay overnight, and then take a 5.5 hour journey back, covering most of the same journey as we had the prior day - ahhhhh - so frustrating!!!

Despite all this - Monteverde was absolutely worth the journey - we spent two luxurious days hiking around the trails of both Monteverde reserve and Santa Elena reserve (where we only saw 2 other people the whole day). It was particularly cathartic to be all alone in the peace and quiet of the cloud forest after the stresses of the previous travel days. It was also a lovely change to be on our own hiking, since we found that in most of Central America, there are few clearly marked trails, so we usually found ourselves taking a guide for hiking who would either be too fast or too slow.

Since wildlife is the big thing here - we also visited the Serpentarium (we both have a peculiar fascination with snakes) where we saw some superb large colorful and very poisonous and dangerous snakes, and the Frog Pond (which actually isn't a pond but has lots of wonderful multi-colored frogs and large, ugly toads)

Since Costa Rica is quite a bit more expensive than the rest of C.A. we were pleased to find a great little hospedaje with a private room for only $10 and a really well equipped kitchen and supermarket so we were able to cook up a feast each night drowned down by a cask of cheap (but pretty decent) Chilean red wine.

Isla de Ometepe - more rain!

Isla de Ometepe is a large Island in the middle of a humungous lake most well known for its twin volcanoes. So of course, if there is a volcano, we thought we ought to climb it. Sadly, raging pacific storms played havoc with our plans. The night before our climb, heavy rains caused a 100m landslide/rockfall that made the Island's main road impassable so meant our journey to the start of the hike was a challenge. Then of course, it rained most of the climb. So, after the best part of 3 hours constant uphill slog, we were supposed to arrive at a stunning viewpoint of the active volcano - but no, Covered in cloud!

The rest of our stay on the Island was a bit more cheerful though - we stayed on a quiet beach and enjoyed a respite from the weather for one day so were able to enjoy a relaxing day reading and eating

Granada

After Leon, we were almost a little disappointed by Granada. Granted, it has lots of lovely colonial buildings beautifully restored, but I think he was right when i read another traveler's blog who said that Granada was a sterile, newly painted version of Leon. Granada was also another example of international aid gone wrong again - the fancy hotels are all full of ex-pat aid workers on generous expense budgets, whilst the rest of the gringo tourists stay in more modest accommodations......

That said, it is a lovely place and we enjoyed a nice day wandering around the beautiful cobbled streets looking at the churches and museums.

Our boat trip out to the Isletas was also a real highlight - 360 or so islands just Granada in Lago de Nicaragua - our wonderful (fluent in English) guide took us to visit native villagers where we ate fresh mangoes from their trees and drank from cocounts and tried the local fish.

Leon - old capital of Nicaragua

Leon turned out to be quite an interesting city to visit - it is the old capital of Nicaragua, so has many lovely old churches and the largest cathedral in Central America. One of the reasons we really liked it was relatively few tourists, and it feels fairly like an ordinary town where people go about their daily business. One of the oddities that kept us awake at night was the multitude of churches ringing their bells all day and night long, accompanied by a cacophany of firecrackers - 4am, 5.30am - you pick the hour.
We had a really relaxing time in Leon after the long journey to get here, and time for Caroline to recover from her ear infection. We found a fantastic hostel (Lazybones) set in a lovely courtyard with a swimming pool and free internet.

One of the real highlights of our stay in Leon was our visit to the Fondaccion Ortiz - a really exceptional art gallery (by Central American standards, and even by European standards) with many really good Nicaraguan and other Central American artists set in a series of beautiful buildings around well-kept green courtyards.

The long journey to Nicaragua

Unfortunately the morning we were due to head from the jungle lodge on a 2 day epic bus journey to Nicaragua via the Honduras capital, Tegucigulpa, Caroline had a bad night with an ear infection. So we made a last minute diversion to the hospital in La Ceiba instead. After having had some rather scary discussions with a dutch couple who had given birth in Tegucigulpa, we somewhat feared for the quality of the healthcare system. Thankfully however, compared to our previous hosptital visits whilst traveling in developing countries, this one turned out to be pleasantly surprising! Gary got to see live on TV via optical probe the inner workings of Caroline´s ears and nose - quite the experience. We were out in less than 40 minutes with prescription in hands and only $45 worse off.

We "dashed" across town(picking up and dropping off other passengers as we yelled at the cabbie "mas rapido por favor") to see if we could catch the 10am bus and just made it in time. 3 hours later we arrived in San Pedro Sula, bought another onward ticket to the capital, and another 5 hours later arrived in darkness in what felt like the sketchiest place we´ve been yet....

Thankfully, our guidebook came up trumps for a hotel, which for only $15 was safe and had not only 2 bedside lamps, but also a glass showerscreen - pure luxury in the world of budget travel!

Next morning up at 4am to get to the bus terminal at 4.30am. Changed buses at 7.30am and arrived in Nicaragua´s capital about 1.30pm to then find another bus to Leon. Our Taxi driver however did not appear to want to take us to where we requested and took us instead to a local market and the stand of local "chicken buses" (and of course tried to charge us more). With some reluctance we hopped aboard guarding our belongings and fearing that a 1 hour journey would now probably take 5 hours. We´ve generally avoided the chicken buses where we can (because we can) but it was actually good fun. No-one tried to share our seats, sit on us, mug us or sell us any chickens - they played party music all the way (YMCA and the like), and they kindly told us when to get off, and it was the right place for a change!

So eventually after a marathon 48 hrs traveling we arrived in Leon and found ourselves a great hostel with swimming pool and free internet, appropriately called Lazybones. We found a local hostel serving roast dinners ! and then passed out.

Pico Bonita national park

We were disappointed to have to turn down the opportunity to visit one of central America´s last true wildernesses in La Moskitia, but we decided to visit the Pico Bonita national park close to La ceiba for a taster of the jungle on the Northern Honduran coastline.

We did a day hike followed by a night at the Jungle River Lodge overlooking the river. The hike was great - a couple of refreshing river crossings, lush green jungle, tumbling waterfalls (where we had a very refreshing dip), and yet another magnificent thunder and lightning storm as we played cards by candlelight in the evening. (Thanks to stephanie who taught us a new card game, but which appeared to have no end)

Back to the Caribbean to learn to dive - Utila

After visiting Copan we headed off to the Carribean to learn to dive. The islands off the coast of Honduras are some of the cheapest and clearest places in the world to learn and so we could not miss this opportunity to have a go. We chose Utila Water Sports as our dive school, mainly because they seemed the most patient and professional - and as an added bonus they had fabulous accomodation overlooking the water with their own jetty for catching the sunset.



It was pretty scary learning to dive at first, but amazing once you get comfortable with being underwater. They provided 4 fun dives free after the course which were perfect for practicing and getting more comfortable with each dive.






On the final fun dive, we had an amazing sighting of 15 to 20 pilot whales swimming around the boat - we´ve seen a lot of whales, but this must be one of the best sightings we´ve ever had! Utila is also famous for Whale Sharks - huge beasts around 40ft long, but unfortunately sigthings are increasingly rare and we did not manage to see one on our trip - we were then somewhat bummed to discover that the day after we left the rest of the group saw and swam with one! esta la vida !!

Copan Ruinas and Macaw park

Oh, yet another bus journey to make you cry. Long story, but having already been on the phone with the owner of Adrenalina Tours in Guatemala to complain about other problems, we were anxious about taking a shuttle with them again, and oh godness, we wish we had not! The driver nearly killed us going at breakneck speeds in torrential rain around tight mountain roads - then when we got half way, he told us he wasn´t going any further and that we could get another bus shortly to take us the rest of the way ..... a likely story !!! using our best threatening in Spanish (thank goodness for Spanish school), an hour later he eventually agreed to take us....

Anyway, so we arrived in Copan Ruinas somewhat jaded after the journey, but delighted to find Copan Ruinas to be such a welcoming nice town. We arrived on the Central America Independence day (Sept 15th) and got to experience some very colorful and musical parades.

Feeling a little tired we opted for a lighter activity and headed out to the Macaw sanctuary just outside of town. The Sanctuary has a very colorful and loud mix of macaws, parrots and toucans. Our guide was one of the founding handlers and he was able to give us some great background stories on the birds and best of all let us hold them to take pictures!





Obviously the main draw was to see the actual Mayan ruins at Copan Ruinas and they didn´t disappoint. The best thing about these ruins (aside from very few other toursists) are the magnificent sculptures (mostly of King 18 Rabbit - what a cool name!), and a marvellous museum which thankfully had English translations for a change.

Cowboy country in Honduras

Well horseback riding isn´t the kind of thing we would normally get up to, but.... we had a wicked time!

We joined a tour with Finca el Cisne - a large farm very close to the border with Guatemala growing coffee, cardammon and loads of other fruits and vegetables. We spent the morning riding around the plantations (quite an experience since neither of us have been on a horse for years) with our host Carlos (a bit of a dish of a cowboy according to C). After a delicious lunch of homegrown veg and coffee, we had a look around the coffee plant which was amazingly built in the 1930´s by Carlos´s grandfather and entirely runs on water coming off the mountain behind the farm.

Later in the afternoon we chilled out in some natural hotsprings close to the lodge before retiring for another fabulous fresh homecooked meal and some cards with the other folks on our trip before a solid nights sleep at the lodge.