Around the world

After 4 hours bus, we had to take a boat to arrive at Trotuguero. A wonderful journey. The river was meandering and the boat “carving”. We even saw two alligators on the way!!! Rules n°3: even if you are hot, don’t put your hand in the water…
Tortuguero was a quiet fishermen village reconverted in a hostel village for tourist and half of the inhabitants are now guides! One of them had to accompany us at night to watch the turtles nesting. Here was the program: 5 people were patrolling the beach looking for turtles. Once they found one, they called the guides to precise the location. Then we had to run to that point before the turtle was done digging the nest. There was not flash light only red light. They try so to minimize the tourist effect on the process. The first turtle we saw went back to the see because of too many people. After that, luckily, the other big group of 20 persons left and we had the chance to see another turtle coming from the see. While checking the turtle, the guide called the tree of us to come quickly. What a huge surprise. About 60 little turtles were hatching in front of us and going instinctively to the see!! So cute! We couldn’t move, fearing to walk on one of them….What a great night.

Well today we wanted to go to Chirripo… the highest point of Costa Rica… but guess what? well as we get close it’s raining like hell.
but lets go back a bit in the day… 6am the bus leaves, we are supposed to get to our destination, San Isidro, by 11… forget it… the “good-looking” bus turns out to have the worst transmission ever and at 8 o’clock we covered 30km. At 9 still 30Km. At 10 still 30Km and we still have 4 hours of ride…
As I said before knowing how to open a coconut can be really helpful for example when you bus has a bad transmission and won’t move more than -1Km/h and you didn’t have breakfast and you don’t have any food with you because anyway it is a short trip…
Finally we arrive at San Isidro at 3pm, it’s raining and we missed the connecting bus to Chirripo so we decide to go to San Jose and to check out what to do later.

All in all the trip to Corcovado was really cool and we learned two important rules:
– you never ever travel without food even if it is a “short trip”
– know how to open a coconut

Cheers Marco

The day after we go kayaking in the mangroves but we are not as lucky as in Corcovado… we get to see some cool stuff but it is really really hot and the sun strong (ask Sarah’s legs…) and on the way back on the pacific ocean we don’t see any dolphins… buh
the really cool thing is that i learn how to open a coconut… will be useful later on…

5.25 am… damned early but the collectivo leaves at 6… the ride is semi bone-crunching but worthed… we get to Carate where we have to walk for about an hour on the beach to get to the park.. ah yeah and as first thing cross a river witch due to the rainy season is a bit higher than usual…
once in the park we keep on walking on the path and start doing cool encounters: cappuccine monkeys, spider monkeys, coatis, red macaws (ara), morphos (blue huge butterfly) and of course a deeper river to cross… Its a really cool trip and as we start walking back we realize hat it as not been raining yet. A couple of our later as we are on the overcrowded jeep (16 passengers 6 of whom not having had a shower in the last 3 days…) it start raining like hell and we have to close the plastic around he jeep… mmmm smells good!!!
at 7 Pm we’re finally home and enjoy the cold (brr) shower.

After a night in a strange hostel we leave early to Puerto Jimenez, our base for visiting the Corcovado national Park.
The ride is much shorter than we thought… for once cool!
in Puerto we just walk around and make some plans for the following days.

Today we went walking to Guadalupe, a tiny town above 2000m… really cool, we almost stay another night but then we decide to move to Costa Rica. Through winding roads we get to a small border consisting of two houses connected by a dirt road. Really smooth to cross, this the Rio Sereno border.

And Costa Rica here we are.

So, time to leave Bocas (and Panama) and move towards Costa Rica. We cross back to David again and then move on to Cerro Punta. But before we need money, so let’s go to the ATM… ups does not work… next-one neither… S#%&T we don’t have enough to leave nor to stay. so we start seaching for a place that would give us a cash advance on the credit card, none will. Around 12 the ATM works againand we can leave (with hours of delay) so we get to cerro punta around 8 pm… tired we go fo dinner.
so, say there is one kind of meat that you do not eat (not talking about just not really enjoy eating, really you hate since you are a kid) and say that there is one word in Spanish about meat you do not know and say that you ask the waitress what it is and she says beef and say you trust her and you take it… how big is the chance that what you ordered is actually what you hate? really small, no? NO, Murphy’s law always strikes when you don’t expect it… and there I’m with my Mondongo… aka tripe, the ONLY meat I hate.
whatever,at least the bed is comfortable!!!

Learned rules:
- ATM’s do not always work, especially when you really need them.
- Mondongo is a BAD word for me
- Murphy’s law is TRUE

cheers, Marco

After a we-gonna-do-nothing day(no, no! no hangover), let’s enjoy a two tank boat dive. We start by the dolphin watch in the bay, pretty cool. A pitty that we are not allowed to go swimming with them. The dives are ok, nothing special. The visibility is about 5m and the water is very warm, maybe too warm. Inbetween, we have the opportunity to play beachvolley! it has been such a long time. We really appreciate.

Cheers,
sarah

The journey through the mountain to get to the coast is beautiful and i manage not to get motion sick
After a 30′ ride on an highspeed boat welcome to Bocas. That’s it! I have been dreaming of tall, blond and sexy surfers for ages …well, it’s rainy season and there is no waves, thus no surfers! bouhh. . I’m sure everybody knows a place where some baba cool tourists don’t want to leave and they end up making necklace in order to survive. That’s Bocas, a nice cool rasta place to relax. We are quite the only one that want to go diving! As a remainder we are both carrying our own backpack plus a third “trolley” bag that weights tons and contains our diving gears. (we both believe that it is cheaper than renting!). In Panama, the discount for beeing so fool is 5 $. Makes you doubt. Anyway, we spent more than this in Capihrina that night…

No way it is possible, yes it is, 3500 mm is the average annual waterfall in the Boquete region… and we had a good proof today. After waking up at 5.30 to climb the Volcan Baru we decided that the weather was to bad to go for a 10 hour and 2000m hike and went back to bed until 9ish… some (1 or 2 rays) sun was then shining and we decided that a visit to the hot springs of Caldera would be our best bet for the day…
After the usual wait-for-the-bus-again hour we reach the village of Caldera where we start the walk to the hot springs. Some locals tell us that it’s going to take us around 45 min on a slightly muddy path, very correct! at around 14.30 we are enjoying the warm water of the springs under a light rain… so far so good…
mmm it’s raining heavier, oh it’s pouring, damned where does all this water come from??? 20 min after our pool session started we are under a really heavy thunderstorm but who cares, we are in the warm water!
At around 15.45 the rain still didn’t seem to diminish so we decide to hit back to Caldera… wery ineresting… the mud path it’s now a rivers, the flat parts are little lakes and it keeps on raining like crazy.
Around 40 min later we are soaking wet and hitchhiking… luckily a man with a pick up has some space left in the back (with bananas and cooler boxes) for me and Sarah (wich btw gets offered an inside seat but kindly refuses (i think for being kind to me, se’ll tell me later because she didn’t know what to tell to the man ). The ride is really intersting, we’re freezing, it rains like hell and we do not see where we go… fortunately 20 minutes later the car slowes down and we get dropped of at a bus stop.

at home a warm shower awaits us and after 2 friends episodes a good meal and a couplle of beers make us laugh about our little adventure.

morale della favola: in the rainy season it RAINS!!!

cheers Marco

we are now in the highlands of Chiriqui, more precisely in Boquete. Boquete is a small town with an awesome settling, lush forest allround, beautiful mountains and nice peoples, only drawback in the 3 days we spent here it has almost allways been raining… who care, we get to relax a bit!
If tomorrow the weather is better we’ll try to climb the volcan Baru, 3475m and Panama’s highest point… we’ll see!

cheers

So, finally no more work only our passion, traveling!
yesterday (9th Sep 07) we flew from Curacao to Panama where we started our 3 month trip with destination Playa del Carmen, MX.
After unpacking in the hostel we went for food and guess what… we found a swiss restaurant… so not having had any swiss food for the last 4 months we thought that a raclette would be cool… and indeed it was superb!
Today we visited the Panama Canal and saw 2 kick-ass container carrier… HUGE and they pay more than 220’000 US for passing the canal… not bad!
Now i’m in the hostel again using a random unprotected wireless connection to write this… but i think i’ll go to bed now…

c u soon
Marco

here i’m