Bocas Del Toro Panama

To get from Puerto Viejo to Bocas Del Toro I caught a bus to Sixaola, the cost was $1.75 and it was about an hour ride. Cleared Costa Rica customs and got my stamp out. After that it is a walk across a very scary bridge, again with the height issues if I couldn't have seen through the planks I would have made it across a lot faster. At Panama customs I had to go purchase a bus ticket out of the country, you are not allowed in unless you have a way out, the ticket was $11.00 and is good for 1 year for the bus from Changuinola (the closest town by the Panama border) to San Jose Costa Rica. Lots of folks I met had changed their airline itineraries on the computer before printing them out to Panama City as the place they were flying out of to avoid having to purchase the bus ticket. Sorry I didn't think of it but as I was heading back to San Jose I was going to need the ticket anyway. There is also a $5.00 US charge for US & Canadian passport holders to get into Panama. Seems our governments are not very nice to the people of Panama and charge them a lot of money to enter our countries so it is a retaliation fee.

Unfortunately we made a miscalculation on our departure time from Puerto Viejo, the last ferry to Bocas Del Toro leaves at 5pm and we did not have time to take the bus and none of us wanted to spend the night on the mainland so we had to catch a cab from the boarder to Almirante where the ferry leaves from. There is another route via Changuinola and then a ferry but they are dredging the canals so the service has been temporarily suspended. Too bad cause it sounded really cool, the canals are suppose to be beautiful. Anyway we hooked up with another guy so there was 4 of us in the cab at a cost of $8.00 each. We made the ferry with 5 minutes to spare, the cab driver called ahead and reserved us some spots so we made a beer stop along the way, good thing he made the reservation as it was a full boat. The ferry costs $4.00 and takes about 35 minutes, the ferry is a large speed boat that is covered, a pretty comfy ride and some nice scenery along the way, it is a very beautiful area, everything you would imagine the Caribbean would be.

We checked into the Hieke Hostel which is located on the main street across from the park, cost of a bunk in a dorm room was $10.00 an night and included a kitchen, cook it yourself pancake breakfast, free coffee all day and free wireless Internet. It is a nice place, rooms are clean, plenty of bathrooms, the staff is very helpful and a great vibe. Again ran into folks I had been meeting up with along the road, among them 3 French Canadian guys I ran into initially in Semuc Champey and again in San Pedro and again in San Juan Del Sur. I have no idea what their names are but I'm pretty sure they think I am stalking them and are a little afraid.

There is a lot of things to do in town, restaurants and bars everywhere and a couple of beaches 1 within walking distance that is not so good and one you need to take a bus to, cost of the bus is $2.50 US (Panama currency is US dollars) each way and the beach is okay but not up to Puerto Viejo standards. To get to the best beaches you need to take a boat and that costs $'s, anywhere from $5.00 each way up to $20.00 if you do the whole day tour that includes a visit to a few beaches, some snorkeling and a trip to Zapatillas, the cost does not include the fee to go onto Zapatillas which is an additional $5 to $10 as it is a national park. The fee is based on if the captain of the boat you are on can talk them into a discount.

We did not succeed in evading the rain, which kind of sucked but again we had a few days that the sun came out of hiding for. However not for long enough that any of us wanted to pay $20.00 for something we might be doing in the rain. As luck would have it we met some Canadian guys who have property on one of the islands along with a sail boat and a run about boat. They took a bunch of us from the hostel out for the day and we did a trip to Bastimentos Island to Red Frog Beach. There is a $3.00 charge to go to the beach as it is on private property. Bet you are noticing a trend here, as nice as the place is there are $'s attached to pretty much anything you want to do. After the beach we went back to the Canadians sail boat were we sat around, snorkeled and made pina coladas for the rest of the day.

I went out to a couple of bars one was on an island across the way at a hostel called Aqua, on Wednesdays and Saturdays they have free drinks for women folk, finally something that was free yippee, well almost you have to take a water taxi there at a cost of $1.00 each way. The other bar was just down the street Barco Hundido Bar. One of the cooler ones I have been in, part of it is on a dock and there is a swimming hole with a wrecked ship that runs under the dock. Not sure how wise that is with a bunch of drunk tourists running around, they do have a sign saying swim at your own risk things will cut you so I guess they are off the hook. Was fun watching all the fish swim around, no tourists gave it a go while I was there. I also had a few coupons for free drinks so a happy place for me.

I was now down to 3 days left on my travels and the rain was not letting up so I opted to head back to San Jose for some shopping as I had not been able to pick up anything on my travels due to the whole backpack weight space issue. It was really hard to say a final goodbye to the folks I was traveling with 1 has another 6 days and the other a month so they were off to Panama City. Happy trails amiga's, it was great sharing time with you!

So off I go to solo on the last leg of my Central American journey to San Jose.

Puerto Viejo Costa Rica

Getting from La Fortuna to Puerto Viejo was a rather painless endeavour. The Dutch couple decided to head to Monteverde so we parted company and I headed out on my own, but we are facebook buddies for life LOL. I found a great site for bus schedules for Costa Rica all the info you will need to find your way around.

I caught the 7am bus out of town going to San Carlos for $1.50 US, I had to make a transfer there to the bus for San Jose, the driver was very helpful and yelled at me to get off when he saw the San Jose bus coming up the street from the depot and I made the transfer, cost of the bus was $7.00. I have kind of gotten used to bus employees yelling at me, not sure I'll be able to take transit when I get home without someone to yell and shoo me off the bus, "vamous, vamous".

The bus goes to the Atlantic terminal and I needed to get the bus to Puerto Viejo at the Terminal Caribenos, the terminals are about 10 blocks apart, I could have walked it but we got in at 11:15 and the Puerto Viejo bus was leaving at 12:00 if I missed it I'd have to wait until 2:00 (Note: the last bus leaves for PV at 4:00pm if you miss it you have to spend the night in San Jose) so I opted for a cab. I have decided that I really do hate cab drivers, I asked this one how much to the other terminal and he said he had a meter. Well the meter was rigged cause he charged me $5600 Colon's which works out to $9.85US. As he was holding my backpack hostage in his trunk I had no choice but to pay the creep but lesson learned. I usually don't put my backpack in the trunk for just this reason but I was tired and in a hurry, my bad.

The bus from San Jose to Puerto Viejo takes 4ish hours and cost $8.00 US. You will notice I am using a lot of US pricing, it is because most of the prices are in US $'s but you can pay in either currency.

At this point I have 12 days left before I head out of Central America and a few of my road buddies are also heading home in May so a few of us arranged to meet up from our various points in Puerto Viejo. I was going to stay at Rocking J's hostel however one of the road buddies I was meeting mentioned Hotel Puerto Viejo, I was the first one in the others were not due till the next day and a couple the day after so I checked it out. I ended up booking a room there, it was $8.00US a night for a private room with shared bathroom & kitchen along with free WIFI and was in the middle of town. Rocking J's was $7.00 for a dorm and is a little outside of town. Some other folks that I knew from the road stayed there and said it was great, I did attend a party there and a fabulous time was had by all. For the most part I'm okay with dorm living however every now and then I treat myself to my own room in order to keep my sanity, living & sleeping with 8 strangers every night can get on your nerves after a while. Within minutes of getting in the room I had my shit spread out all over the place, what a great feeling. Mine all mine mwhaha! No having to consider someone else, wake up when I want, sleep when I want, don't have to lock my stuff up, total paradise. The folks that run the place are surfers and the atmosphere is great, very chill.

I was in Puerto Viejo 4 years ago, it has changed a bit, lots more people selling stuff, they put in sort of a mini mall and they have taxi's now. There is still only 1 paved street (not paved well, potholes everywhere) and most of the same restaurants and bars are still there. Puerto Viejo is a surf town and home to one of the best waves in Costa Rica Salsa Brava. I got to see it in full force last time I was here, alas this time I arrived too late in the season and it was a shadow of it's former self so most folks were surfing Playa Cocles. The rainy season seems to have started early this year and there was a killer lightning storm one night, I sat out on the beach under a tree to watch, the whole sky would light up and then the thunder came, it was an awesome sight.

The best way to explore the area is to rent a bicycle for $2.00 for 24 hours pack a lunch, snorkel gear and hit the road. There is a stretch of 15 kilometers of potholed filled road that will take you to one of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean Manzanillo. The road is pretty flat there are a couple of minor hills once you get close to Manzanillo so the ride is pretty easy. I should mention that the bikes are the old fashion kind, no hand breaks, no gears, it takes some getting used to. Mine was a pretty pink and white one (my friends are laughing their asses off with that visual) with more than a little rust.


By day 3 everyone who was suppose to arrive had gotten there and they too where experiencing the joy of the private rooms. All of us are female and we are all traveling alone and have been doing so for 3-7 months so none of us felt obligated to hang out together all of the time, always good when you can find like minded people. Funny because we are all very different partially due to culture (none of us are from the same country or part of the world) and partly because we are different personality types and have different backgrounds. I think it's my favorite part of traveling, getting different perspectives and finding out about how people live in other places. It does make me a little ashamed of myself as well, they all speak at least 2 languages and all I have is bad English, some Spanglish and almost forgotten French from high school. It seems to be a North American thing, in Europe they have to take other languages in school usually 2 of them.

I stayed in Puerto Viejo for 5 days, there were a few nice days weather wise but as previously mentioned the rainy season started early. So with 7 days left and a now seriously damaged liver and a few less brain cells, what to do what to do... Panama was not part of my original plan as I didn't think I would have time but now I do so we all decided to pick up and head down to Bocas Del Toro. One of my friends is flying back to Switzerland out of Panama so it seemed like a good idea as I had not been to Panama before, ah the freedom of travel. So off to Panama we go!

La Fortuna / Arenal Volcano Costa Rica

The trip to get from San Juan Del Sur Nicaragua to La Fortuna / Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica took about 10 hours. I left San Juan Del Sur at 10am on the Chicken bus, you take the bus marked Rivas and get them to let you out at the Pan American Highway (La Virgen) the cost of the bus was $10 NIO's. You then walk across the highway and catch a bus to the boarder, cost of the bus was $20 NIO's. There was a bit of an issue with this bus, the buses are old school buses and the bus was packed which of course doesn't mean that they don't try to cram more people in. I spent the trip standing on the front stair at the front door (with the door open) and my ass hanging out clutched on to the side handle. All was going fairly well until the big bang and the bus started swerving all over the road. Got to say I thought they might end up scraping my ass off the Pan Am HWY. We had blown a tire, kudos to the driver who managed to keep us on the road and not flip us. A 15 minute break for a tire changed and off we went, except the reason the tire blew was because too many people were on the bus so 10 minutes later all you could smell was burning rubber as the wheel well rubbed on tire #2. No problem we pulled over and they took a hammer to it and dented it up more, problem solved.

The boarder between Nicaragua and Costa Rica was brutal, it was so busy it took over an hour to just get the "get out of Nicaragua" stamp on the passport there are no signs telling you what to do and it is a bit confusing. So tips for crossing the boarder.

Don't buy any papers off the guys selling them, you don't need them

There is someone at the entrance gate to the actual boarder from the bus stop with offical ID tag etc, I don't know if you have to pay them to go through, they charged us a 1 but then no one asked to see the paper she gave us so watch the locals and see if they pay it... If not politely decline as it probably isn't offical.

Once you are through the little hole in the fence go straight ahead to the building in front of you (far one not the closest one that would be too easy) Go around back where all of the people are lined up and get in line

There is a 2 dollar charge to get out, You get a stamp

Once you have it head back to where you came from and hang a left towards were all the big trucks are walk past the weigh scales and on the left hand side a guy will check your passport to make sure it has a Nicaragua exit stamp. This is not customs keep going straight then follow along to the right where you will see lots of people on the left side there is a sign for a restaurant, go into that building walk to the end of the hallway and on the left is customs, no charge to enter Costa Rica and very fast, one stamp and you are done

The bus stop for local buses is right across the street from the restaurant when you come out of the building. There is no ATM so you can't get the local currency (Colon's) but they take American money or if you have Cordobas (NIO's) you can change them with a money changer at a not so good rate.

I caught the Upala/San Carlos bus it does not go directly to La Fortuna but it will go to the fork in the road (San Carlos is 1 way, La Fortuna the other) this was a 6 hour ride on some very bumpy roads, the cost was $8.00 US. When they drop you at the corner see which way the bus goes and walk the other way 2 feet to the bus stop, the bus comes by every hour and it is $1.00 (500 Colon's) to go to La Fortuna.

I stayed at a hostel called Gringo Pete's in La Fortuna. Cost for a bunk in a dorm room was $5.00 a night or $2686.00 Colon's, there is a kitchen. I ended up getting a bunk in the shed LOL a separate building in the back yard, it was actually very nice and clean. Pete is a great guy, very helpful when it comes to tour and local info. I took a hiking tour up the Arenal volcano, 2 hours up then back down and they take you to an observation point to watch the lava at night. After that you get a trip to the hot springs, cost for the trip was $21.00 US ($12028.00 Colon's). Food in restaurants can get expensive, the usual cost is about $3000.00 Colon's, beers are $1000.00 Colon's, the national beer is Imperial. We had a BBQ at the hostel one night which was great, everyone brought something including marshmallow's a great little bonding experience.

La Fortuna is a pretty touristy place, there is a souvenir shop every few blocks but it is a cute little place. I found a local bar to hang out in and most nights I was the only visible tourist in the place.

As previously mentioned I lost all of the photos on my camera of this leg of the journey so I have a few I took on the way out of town, the rest I am hoping to get from the nice Dutch couple I traveled with on this part of the journey. Some more folks I have run into a few times in various places, we finally just gave up and did this part of the trip together.

Next stop Puerto Viejo Costa Rica.

Nicaragua Leon Granada

The chicken bus from the Honduras/Nicaragua boarder to Leon was a grand total of $33 Cordoba - NIO ($1.64 US) for a 3 hour ride. We got dropped off on the highway so had to get a cab into town to the hostel at a cost of $20 NIO each for the 3 of us.

Leon Nicaragua

We stayed at Big Foot Hostel in Leon. It is a very nice place, great atmosphere nice common area and they have a pool and pet turtles. Okay more of a wading pond but still nice to dip in after a hot day at the market. Cost for a bunk in a dorm room was $120 NIO. One of us (not me) did the volcano sledding ($25 US and includes a mojito at the end), she said it was okay but not as much speed as she thought she would get going down however lots of folks coming back scraped up from tumbling off their boards so I guess you have to try it and see. Another friend stayed across the street at Via Via which she said was good as well. I personally like them, we went for diner one night and there was a raffle to aide street kids. I bought 3 tickets for $10 NIO and won a big bottle of rum and 2 packs of smokes. Score for me, always nice when you can get all of your bad habits met at one time, well maybe not all but 2 out of 4 ain't bad.


Leon is a nice little place, very colonial lots of old buildings and nice streets, lots of churches, it is a very safe place I went out a few times at night and had no problems. I have been noticing that I have lots of pictures of churches, can't really avoid them here. I like the buildings and so far I haven't burst into flame upon entering them so apparently god is on a coffee break or has something really evil planned for me later. The market in Leon is great, there are food stalls that serve all sorts of meals. My personal favorite was the pancakes, they are rolled up and filled with cheese. Two of those some mystery meat and a coke totaled $30 NIO.

Granada Nicaragua

I took a shuttle bus from Leon to Granada, the difference in cost between it and the chicken bus was only a few dollars and this way I didn't have to change buses in Managua. Cost for the collectivo van was $40 NIO and they dropped us off by the hostel in Granada. Our little group picked up another backpacker from Finland in Leon who I had met previously in San Pedro and Utila and we lost one from Canada who headed back to Guatemala.



We stayed at the Bearded Monkey hostel in Granada a bunk in a dorm was $130 NIO. Great location and the people are awesome, if you are passing by in the next month make friends with Dave the bartender, he is a party all on his own and a great dancer.. Thanks for the tunes, I could have lived without the 2nd bottle of rum :-(

Granada is like a fairy tale city, all pastel colors and very old buildings, it is located on Lake Nicaragua so there is a lot of beach front along the city. While there I did a couple of little excursions. I went to Laguna De Apoyo for the day, a lake in the crater of a volcano, the cost for a taxi for 5 people was $50 NIO each and a $25 NIO entrance fee for the car to get into the park. Great swimming and a very beautiful place. When we left we saw a lot of monkeys playing in the trees we must have pulled over 4 times to try to get pictures but they are quick little things and after a day of sun and lazing in a hammock I was not very fast. Okay I'm not all that quick on my better days but they really were moving.

Excursion number 2 was a boat ride on Lake Nicaragua through the islands just off Granada, they are pretty small. Most of the islands are privately owned and have houses on them and they are some very nice houses with many water toys (jet ski's, boats etc.) however there are a few for sale if you are interested. We also got to visit the island with the monkeys on it. The trip only takes about an hour 1/2 2 of us went and we had the boat to ourselves, at a cost of $300 NIO's it was well worth the money and if we had bargained we probably could have got it down but neither of us wanted to bother.


While in Granada the Semana Santa holiday started (Easter), lots of parades and religious stuff going. I'm not sure what's up with the purple clan members, kinda creepy and strange. The most important part of the holiday for backpackers is it's the week were getting anywhere in Central America gets difficult as buses are full and accommodations are hard to get and pricey. The smartest thing to do is to find a place you don't mind spending 4 days in and riding out the holiday. We decided to go to the Island of Ometepe.

El Salvador - San Salvador - La Libertad - El Tunco

Caught a shuttle out of San Pedro that went through Antigua and dropped me off in Guatemala City were I caught a bus to San Salvador, cost of the whole trip was $300 Q. You can do it by Chicken bus a lot cheaper but I was being lazy. The bus terminal in Guatemala City was in a pretty sketchy neighborhood (the ticket counter was encased in bars) but they were some of the nicest people I've met on the trip. A guy that worked there stored our backpacks in his room for us and the folks at the cafeteria were great too. A friend from San Pedro was coming the same way so we traveled together for this part of the trip. The trip took about 7 hours including the 2 hour layover in Guatemala City. Crossing the boarder into El Salvador was very easy. You go into Guatemala customs to check out of the country and the El Salvador customs is a guy who looks at your passport and waves you through. No stamp which kind of sucked I would have liked to have had one as a souvenir.

We got into San Salvador at about 7pm, it was not at all what I was expecting. Very Americanized, Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, gas stations with real 7-11 like stores. We arrived the day after the elections, the rebels who fought against the government in the civil war won (FMNL). Lots of people/journalists in town to cover the election, kinda of cool to be there when history was being made.

We got bunks in a dorm at Ximena's Guest House which is located in a very nice area of the city, one of the safest places apparently. The cost for a bunk was $7.00 (the official currency of El Salvador is US dollars). It is also only a couple of blocks from the largest mall in Central America, visiting malls was not really in my travel plans but I needed to replace my running shoes which got stolen in Antigua (not by a local, pretty sure it was a tourist). The place is huge, I only saw about 1/2 of it I found the shoe warehouse at that point so got my new sneaks and got out.

We spent 2 nights in San Salvador. The first day we went for a walk, I forgot my camera, I left it sitting on my bed so I will get some picks off my travel buddy and post them in the next day or 2. I am pretty sure we logged about 20km. Started with the Zona Rosa District that has a bunch of Museums, we went to the Museo de Arte MARTE cost to get in is $1.50 (50 cents if you are a student). Great art all of it from El Salvador artists, some pretty angry stuff from the 1980's. We checked out the exterior of the theater which is beside it and then walked down to the Museum of Anthropology but that one was $3.00 to get in so decided to pass on it.

We then headed to the historic district, found a great little local cantina and had a beer then headed down to the cathedral and the National Palace where we found the local market. It is the biggest street market I have ever seen, it takes up about 8 blocks and it is jammed full of vendors and buyers. You can get pretty much anything you would ever need here. Movies are 3 for a $1.00, CD's, cloths, shoes, produce, fruit and all very cheap, a pair of jeans will run you about $6.00. During out 6 hour walking marathon I didn't see any other tourist which was kind of nice for a change. The locals in San Salvador are very nice everyone was smiling and saying hello, we didn't run into any issues in any part of town that we went to.

Day 2 we caught the chicken bus out of downtown El Salvador (60 cents) and headed to La Libertad (1 hour ride) for a chicken bus change then on to El Tunco (25 cents about a 20 minute ride), free if you can get a pick-up truck to stop and take you. We ended up checking into Papaya's which is a hotel/hostel. They didn't have any dorms available ($7.00 a night) but they did have a room with 2 beds and it's own bathroom for $16.00 a night which works out to $8.00 each. The place has free WIFI and a full kitchen including a fridge. El Tunco is a very small surf town, when we got in there were a lot of surfers, a swell had come in and they had all come up from Nicaragua, by day 2 the swell was gone and the hard core surfers were off to Nicaragua for a swell that was coming in there. The majority of tourists here are El Salvadorians, it is so close to the capital that it is very popular with them. There is also a holiday on right now, part of the whole 6 weeks of Easter thing so lots of them have this week off work.

The nightlife here is not an all out party, there are 4 or 5 restaurants/bars, a bonfire on the beach is about as crazy as it gets which after San Pedro is a nice change. Food in restaurants runs about $2 - $3 for breakfast, dinners can cost anywhere from $3.00 for a burger to $9.00 for seafood. I heard a rumor that there is a pupusa stand somewhere in town that you can get a couple of pupusa's and rice for $1.50, I haven't found it yet. The general directions given to me by a surfer are it's a shack over the bridge... Haven't found a bridge yet either but everyone at the hotel is looking for the place so one of us should find it soon.

I took a surf lesson yesterday, I have surfed twice before but I kind of suck at it so thought a lesson wouldn't hurt, and yet it did. It was $15.00 for an hour. My instructor didn't speak English so he had to put up with my Tarzan Spanish which resulted in much communication via hand gestures. I kind of thought he would take me to the nice little wave beach, I was wrong... I got to go out to the big kid waves which involved a great deal of paddling, something my scrawny little arms had issues with. The waves break on the reef, not something I knew so I didn't realize putting your feet down was bad.. Got some cuts on my feet out of the deal and lost some skin on a knee but pretty minor flesh wounds. Got a bit of a fat lip from the board in the face on one run, forgot to put hands in front of face when coming off. All in all it was awesome, got up on all but 1 wave (submarined it) it wasn't pretty and I didn't stay up for the full run on a few but did better than I have in the past. I will be getting in some more surfing while I am here the cost to rent a board for the day is $10.00.

Some of the folks from the hotel in San Pedro showed up here the yesterday. Hung out with them last night along with some Aussie surfers. We got interviewed for a documentary on tourism in El Salvador if I don't end up on the cutting room floor it could be my 15 minutes of fame LOL... And you all thought I'd get it by being on cops, bad girls bad girls whatcha gonna do....

Heading into La Libertad in the next day or so, there are no banks or bank machines in El Tonca or any real grocery stores, just little ones that sell very basic stuff.

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I live up the river on the right