Costa Rica and Panama

AHH. Finally we've ended up in south america, and have ended up finding somewhere to access the internet with computers that almost work. I've been given the task of writing about Costa Rica and Panama, whilst Sophie has elected to talk about Venezuela, in which we saw some waterfall.

We left Grenada and grabbed a bus to the border with Costa Rica, and took a coach from there. We organised with a Ticabus employee to be dropped off in Liberia so we could make out way to Fortuna. This was supposed to take about 2 hours or so, but of course, the Ticabus employee never got on the Ticabus, and we never got to Liberia. We ended up spending 9 hours on a freezing air conditioned bus to San Jose, Costa Rica's capital. All the coaches in central and south america like to turn the AC onto max, and we've been caught out several times by not packing jumpers and trousers, especially on this one, when we assumed we'd only be on for 2 hours max.
San Jose is a little bit nicer than a lot of other capital cities in central america but also annoyingly expensive. Thankfully we blended in like locals, what with my fluent spanish and the BRIGHT PINK WRIST BANDS that the hostel made us wear. The first chance we got we headed up north.


Fortuna

This place is fairly small, and doesnt have a great deal to do. But it does have a massive active volcano towering over it, which makes up for it.

This is the only photo in the daytime that we got of the volcano without clouds covering 70% of it. The photo is an odd shape because Sophie was gurning at the bottom of it.

Whilst there, we stayed in "Costa Rica´s 5 star hostel". This just meant that instead of 1 double bed in our room we had two, and instead of something useful like a table, we got a TV with 100 spanish channels and HBO. It had a pool though i guess.


That evening we took a hike through a bit of the jungle to the other side of the volcano, but just like with Tikal, the clouds ruined EVERYTHING. When night fell, we drove back and managed to take these prize-winning photos




After all the excitement of seeing lava flowing out of a volcano (or possibly a small animal with a cigarette lighter having a laugh) we went to the amusingly named Baldi hot springs, which, apart from the disco music (!?) and being charged 66%Vat on a bottle of water, was pretty good. And very, very hot. They had pools of various temperatures and a couple of them had bars attached and such. Its very strange swimming in water the temperature of a hot bath. And very tiring too once you've had a drink.

Monteverde
The next day we got our stuff together and headed over to Monteverde, Costa Rica's other massive tourist trap. We took a "Jeep - Boat - Jeep" package to get there (actually minibus - pleasure boat - minibus) and arrived early enough to go and do this:


Obviously we thought it'd be a great idea to forget the camera, so you get a lovely stock image from their website to see what we got up to. In short: Sophie shat herself at the height of the first (and lowest) cable, but realised it was actually amazing after about 5 seconds, and we both saw a beautiful (albeit fast) view of the jungle canopy, sliding down 15 cables that went above and through the jungle and made us feel like a cross between an ewok and indiana jones.

We had to embark in the morning on a 5 hour journey back to San Jose, which took a little longer thanks to a tire exploding on the motorway. We were quite grateful for a journey that only took a mere 5 hours however, because we knew that once we got to San Jose we'd be faced with one that would take SIXTEEEEEN HOURS. But of course, nothing goes to plan, and the 10pm bus was full, meaning we had to wait until the next day and catch the one at noon. Which meant another night with a fluorescent "rob-me" bracelet surrounded by what might as well have been freshers.

Costa Rica to Panama

Basically, the 16 hour bus ride started like this:

And ended like this:

In which time i managed to read a small Marquez book, watch two crap films (one staring stephen sigal saving a polish orphan) and eat far too much junk food.

Panama

We arrived in Panama City at around 5.00am, which is a beautiful time to arrive in a capital city, having not slept, carrying a backpack and not having a map. We spent some time in a 24 hour cafe we found until the hostel was open, and then dumped our bags and tried to get to a shopping mall so we could just watch a dumb film until we could check in properly at 2pm. We weren't very successful at most of what we tried to do that day, but we did spend some time in wandering around the skyscrapers, looking around the old town, and getting stalked around a panama canal museum by every employee that was working.

The next day we went to the Panama Canal and i managed to forget the camera again and tried to make up for it by buying the two least-shit postcards they had. One boat looks the same as another i guess. These things were pretty massive though, and in a geeky way i kinda liked the whole engineering feat that was accomplished, even if it was for the exciting world of shipping things.

Afterwards we went to this massive shop that sells all things indian and bought too many throws, incense, and soap that'll strip the skin out of your nose from 50 paces.