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.