I Still Like Buses...and Borders

San Jose, CR to David, Pamama

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!

San Juan Del Sur

San Juan Del Sur
7/1/09-7/3/09

Leaving Grananda early in the morning we set off for a mildly confusing search for our bus to San Juan Del Sur. After a few shady characters directing us towards sketchy ally ways we found our way to the Rivas, the gateway to San Juan Del Sur.

San Juan Del Sur is a dusty little backpacker/surf town that sits in a small bay. There is no surf in the bay--but many spots are only a jeep ride away. Brooke and I checked into our hotel and cruised around town to find some food and a proper board rental for the next days beach day.
With the entire towns board rental options consisting of softtops I finally found a shop with something under 8 feet--unfortunately it was a 6' fish. This would have to do. On another note San Juan is home to Encinitas expat Tom Eberly, it was strange to see every kid on an Eberly surfboard, a sight that brought me back to the 80's

Later in the evening we tried out a delicious spot for dindin recommended in our guide book. A strange Indonesian decorated restaurant that served good Italian food and sangria. Super good and satisfying we turned in full.

Capital Cites

6/26 to 6/27/09

Leaving El Sunzal meant catching a bus to San Salvador. Not the prettiest of cities. With the assistance of one of our fellow bus passengers, (a women,usually the only trustworthy people in these cities) led us to the bus station that was to get us to our next capital city. We got to our bus station just on time, purchased our tickets and proceeded to to wait for a bus to Managua, Nicaragua. Our bus was suppose to arrive at 8:30am which would put us in Managua just before dark. Come 11am the bus pulls into the station--shit, this puts us in Managua well after dark. On the way to Managua we passed through Honduras--the medias newest favorite latin american country in turmoil. With their President hiding in Costa Rica and riots in the streets we opted not to do anything but pass though. Arriving in Managua we jumped in a cab and hightailed it straight to our hotel. There were signs in the lobby saying to not walk the streets at night, so we had the front desk call us a pizza--our first US style food since we left.

Managua is a gnarly city, not just in the crime sense but it's past is rather sad. The entire city was destroyed in 1972 by a massive earthquake that killed 10,000 people. It was then rebuilt only to be destroyed again by hurricane Mitch in 1998. In between that there has been a massive civil war.As of now there are no plans to rebuild the city and it remains a flattened mess of ghettos and open air markets. So we got the heck out and cabbed it instead of chicken bus to Granada, Nicaragua.

6/27-6/29/09

Granada, Nicaragua

We arrived in Granada late morning and checked into our hospedaje. A nice place run by a scantily clad Nica women named Valeria. We tossed our bags on the bed and went for a stroll around the city.

Granada is a beautiful

500 year old city set right next to Lago De Nicaragua. The town was never destroyed by earthquakes like Managua so all of the old colonial buildings are still intact. The next few days were spent exploring the region. We went to Masaya--a smoking crater of an active volcano, paddled and motored around Lago De Nicaragua and just enjoyed walking and eating the city. Oh and we also got to visit an island in the lake with monkeys--they jumped on our boat, let us pet them, and then stole our stuff.

Spiders, Thunder and Hornets, Oh My!

6/25/09
One would think since a place was named Playa El Sunzal there would be plenty of beach access right? (Playa means beach for all you mega gringos out there). After our hammock session, Micah and I headed to the beach, or so we thought. We walked for a good mile without seeing any sort of beach access. Mind you the walk was along the main highway so semis and trucks loaded with 20 people as it's cargo were flying by honking their horns. We finally found a restaurant that had beach access, so we had a cuba libre and went to the beach.

The beach was so so, nothing too spectacular. We bronzed for about two minutes before the humidity started to get to us, we were drenched in sweat so jumped into the 85 degree ocean to cool off, which did not work too well.

After our mini beach experience, we trekked back to our little hotel for a dip in the pool which was very nice and refreshing. Our bellies were beginning to rumble so it was time for some dinner. We headed across the street to the dirt floored pupuseria. Pupusas are fat little hand made tortillas stuffed with various types of ingredients. Micah and I opted for the bean and and cheese stuffed pupusas which were ridiculously delicious. After our dinner, which was $1.50 mind you, we headed back to our hotel.

As soon as we stepped foot into our rinky dink room, it began to pour rain. We have never In our lives heard thunder crack through the sky as we did that night. The lighting lit up the street light free dirt roads like it was midday. We sat outside for about 20 minutes and watched the spectacular storm. We were sleepy so we headed back to our room to hit the hay. We noticed an exceptional number of hornets in our room but didn't complain, what do you expect for $15 a night? So we laid on the bed in our travel sheets hoping no hornets would take a liking to us in the middle of the night. Little did we know that was the least of our worries.

Micah woke up screaming due to the giant bugs who thought his hair would make a great place to sleep for the night. We flipped the light on and it was like that scene from PeeWee Herman where he gets dropped off in the desert and then he turns his flashlight on and sees tons of animals. We saw hornets, spiders, mosquitos, flies and I'm pretty sure I saw a pterodactyl. We hid under our sheets for the rest of the night and got the eff out of there at 5:30 the next morning. Since the gates weren't open yet, we had to climb under a fence with our bags through the mud. Adios Playa El Sunzal, El Salvador, Nicaragua here we come!

LA-Guadalajara-DF-Guatemala City-Antigua-El Salvador

6/23-6/24
Right now we are sitting in the doorway of our hotel watching the city fly by. We arrived in Antigua, Guatemala this morning after a harrowing bus ride from Guatemala City though the hills to Antigua. We walked around the beautiful old city--complete with volcanoes erupting all around, 16th century old churches, (all were destroyed in an earthquake in the mid 1700's--some restored, some not), cobblestone streets and tuk-tuks--a three wheel transport similar to some I've seen in pictures from India. Not much to do in the city but walk around and check stuff out.

Food here is incredibly cheap and we ate like kings and queens at a really good restaurant that evening for heca cheap. We had some rum drinks, including the delicious coco y limonada con rum; made with chunks of frozen coconut, fresh lemonade and a healthy Guatemalan portion of rum. With dinner was some Andean music accompanied by a strange ginga girl of 18 on a violin--it sounded really good though.

With not much else to do in Antigua but climb volcanoes, (which were kinda erupting) we decided to move on to El Salvador. We booked a private tourist bus instead of jumping on a chicken bus to make our boarder crossing easier. This however was foiled when we arrived at the border. With only about 8 people in line we figured this would not take much time at all--and with or Guatemalan driver to help us get though the line it was going to be cake. After about a half an hour in line we noticed that each of these eight people had 20 to 30 passports in their hand. Needless to say it took a while....

6/25
At this moment we are in El Sunzal, El Salvador swinging in hammocks above our semi-rundown $15 a night hotel. We are happy.

Gracias por su tiempo

Honeymoom Coming Soon...

With Africa in front--almost winning the hosting region for honeymoon we pulled out last minute and decided to make the relatively quick hop over to Guatamala to start our Centro American holiday.

Departing on the 23rd of June, returning on the 23rd of July we will have one month to make our way from Guatamala to Panama--then from Pamana back to Guatamala. We will be traveling mostly on and a little off the PanAmerican Highway through seven countries consisting of; Guatamala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and finally Belize.

Stay tuned for wicked good updates.

Dirty 30 on Mt. Whitney

I know, I know, we lag big time on posting, it's difficult to get around to it but we'll try and be better, we promise!

So, Micah's 30th birthday was August 22nd and what did he want to do? Oh, just climb the tallest mountain in the 48 contiguous states, that's all. What happened to getting drunk and drowning your sorrows in your old age? So, we found out that so many people want to climb the mountain that you must enter a lottery in February in order to get a pass to climb it. So I think this is my out, right? Wrong. They give out certain number of passes on the day you wish to climb to people who just show up to take the place of the no shows. So . . . that's right, we lucked out and got a pass . . . yipee.

So we camp at the base of the mountain on the first night, car camping, so we were in luxury compared to what was ahead. There was a beautiful river running behind our campsite that was filled with fish, but freezing! And guess what likes to eat fish in the forest? Bears . . . can I get another yipee.

So we explored the river and Micah found a rattlesnake, we didn't see any bears thank goodness. The area is really purty, as you can see. Almost all westerns were filmed in this little desert area right out of meth city, I mean Lone Pine, where we camped.

I didn't sleep very well because I knew what was in store for us the next morning, climbing 14,500 feet with a 39 pound backpack. Again, yipee.

To be continued . . . .