Pura Vida
Hello! Yesterday was our half way mark! very excited about it all, to celebrate the momentous occassion Ben has given me my first proper bodyboarding lesson which was really fun once I got over the salt water in my eyes thing. We are currently in Tamarindo in the north of Costa Rica, after San Jose we went to Santa Teresa but to be honest it wasn’t my cup of tea so after 2 nights we decided to head off early and we definitely made the right decision. Tamarindo is becoming quite the tourist trap with posh hotels and expensive restaurants but its not quite there yet with building going on all the time. But you can understand why, there is good surf off the reef, a beautiful long beach with surf suitable for the beginners, and some nice still reasonably priced restaurants around to celebrate in! The heat is very strong during the day, we are down to 2 meals a day with just lots of water to keep us going. Tomorrow we are going to head to a place called Liberia to find a bus to go into Nicaragua going from the border to a place called Popoyo which has good surf and a hostel with a swimming pool and Air Con!!! Am very excited about sleeping in the cool. Hope everyone at home is well and enjoying things as much as we are. Love Charlie xxx
The best shower ever!
Hi all
We have just arrived in the beautiful Country of Costa Rica after 5 days in Panama, the first things we did when arriving at our hostel were buy and cook food containing fresh vegetables and also have a very welcomed hot shower each!
We left Panama City a day early having only stayed a night due to the heat and atmosphere we decided it would be much nicer to head to Boca del Toro on the Caribbean cost, so we took our usual over night bus and arrived in Bocas del Toro at around 6am the next day, we jumped on a water taxi and then we were at our destination Aqua Lounge hostel and bar, on the website it had looked amazing and although quiet it was living up to expectation, we went to the beach (Ben had a surf), had some breakfast, and a much needed shower before strolling around and generally relaxing and enjoying ourselves.
The problems started a bit later on when feeling hot and sweaty from the very strong heat I decided to take a quick show only thing is it turns out the showers don’t work most of the time infact we didn’t get another shower. By the next day we were starting to feel the desperation of clean bodies so bought a gallon bottle of drinking water and washed our hair etc with that.
It wasn’t the best 3 days of the trip but…Costa Rica is beautiful, we were dropped of in the dodgy part of town and managed to get stalked by a beggar until we got in a taxi but since arriving at the hostel we are both very happy people.
Crossing over the border was really interesting once you have been stamped by Panama officials you have to walk over a disused train track bridge (driven over by your coach) which is a slight health and safety risk (its falling apart) and then get stamped by Costa Rican officials which request proof of return to Panama or proof you will be leaving costa rica in the near future!
Anyway safe and sound in San Jose, going to look around tomorrow and then off to the beautiful place called Santa Teresa and what looks like the nicest hostel yet!
Miss you all
Charlie xxx
A police escort!
Its only been a few days since my last entry but the story of getting from Lima to Panama is rather traumatic for me so I thought I would share!
We left the hostel at 8pm on the 14th in a private taxi to the airport, when booking it we thought it would just be the normal beaten up taxi but as it turns out the hostel have a friend who they use for airport pick-ups/drop-offs. He is a policeman! We got a police escort to the airport talk about making sure you leave. Anyway it turned out well because no id needed to get in he just waved to security and dropped us off :)
The first pain happened when we checked in, we had our tickets and had checked our bags when the check-in man turned around and asked if we wanted to pay our tax?!?!?! apparently you have to pay $31 each to leave the Country, luckily Ben and I managed to produce the money together but the swearing from me that followed could not have been too fun for Ben :)
We boarded our flight to NY and all went well except that I couldn’t sleep, we finally got to NY 1/2 an hour late and were ushered to customs, just a note to comment if travelling through JFK on a connection don’t expect it to be a smooth process, customs took forever, we heard ‘final boarding call for Pascoe and Snooks’ at which point we had only just checked in our bags and got through security! We ran to the plane and got on but then it was suggested we might not get our bags in Panama!
Tired and hungry by this point I was very glad to land in Miami were we got off and managed to find something to each even though it was seriously overpriced, (American Airlines don’t give you food).
When we finally arrived in Panama tired and grumpy we went to find a taxi, turns out they are really expensive in Panama so it ended up costing us over $20 in a shared taxi?!
We got to our hostel and checked in decided to get some food and then sleep, we walked to the square and found this really nice local restaurant, it was a bit more than we have been paying but we had a nice local style dinner and then came back and went to bed.
I supposed we had to have at least 1 bad experience as everything else has been really amazing! But its all good fun, heading to Bocas Del Toro tomorrow which has a water trampoline so I am very excited about that one!
Love to you all
Charlie
We climbed that (via bgarthp)
