7/4/09-7/6/09
After a long horrible bus ride from Nicaragua to Costa Rica we pulled into to San Jose at about 4pm. Starving we found a great little Indian food place next door to our hostel/hotel and dug in. After we just went back to the hotel and decompressed from the most claustrophobic bus ride ever. All the seats were broken and the would recline all the way back--almost flat. They call the seats semi-cama which means semi-bed, this would have been cool if they worked. So for 10 hours every time the bus speed up the seats flew back, when it stopped they flew forward--it was rad.So anywho, we went to bed and woke up only to have to get on another bus, this one bound for David, Panama. Yeah! another boarder crossing!
Boarder crossings in C.A. are terrible. This one bordering Costa Rica and Panama is particularly bad.I won't bore you with details but let say they modeled this crossing after a rubix cube. Pay this person $1 walk to a window, pay another person $2.50 walk to the corner, pay the guy in the food stand 75c and so on.... All this with no directions.Actually now that I think about it in hindsight it was kinda fun.
We arrived in David, Panama latter in the day and did the same as the day before--decompressed in the hotel. David is not the coolest city, it's just kind of a crossroads town with nothing much to offer, no matter, we just came here as a stop over on our way to Bocas Del Toro on the Carribean. So we had a day to kill and decided to head out to Boquete, a really beautiful mountain town about a one hour bus ride out of David. Not much to do in Boquete but cruise around. I now see why AARP chose it as one of the top 10 places in the world to RETIRE, not vacation--very quiet and geriatric. There was one awesome highlight in Boquete, an animal sanctuary called Paradise Gardens. It is run by expats from the US and it in inhabited by all native species. Highlights include a Jaguarundi, Toucan, Margay, Capuchins, Tamarins, Anteaters and tons of other cool animals, highly recommended.
Vamos a Bocas Del Toro manana!
