June 8-14 - Bocas del Toro, Panama

I took a shuttle out of Puerto Viejo the morning of June 8th to head to Bocas del Toro in Panama. We were dropped off at the border crossing where, in true Central American style, we got our passports stamped in one unofficial looking building, crossed a poorly built bridge on foot to another unofficial looking building to stamp our passports heading into Panama, then sent into a random room to pay some guy in a polo shirt $3 to enter Panama. We then jumped on another shuttle which drove us to the water taxis which then took us on a bumpy boat ride out to the island.

I didn't really know where I wanted to stay so I picked one of the hostels that one of the many men waiting outside the water taxi docks described and headed there. My first night was an early one after getting some food from the super market and having a shower.
The next morning it was pouring rain so I went to a nearby restaurant with another guy staying at the hostel to watch the Euro Cup matches. After that we headed back to the hostel and met up with a group of roudy Irishmen that I had already heard about.
The next couple of days were rainy and grey. Luckily there several spots around town that were showing the games so I hung out with the group from Ireland and watched soccer. We checked out a couple of the clubs at night, but mostly hung out at a restaurant/bar across from the hostel that was on a boat.
On the 12th, despite the rain, two of the guys and myself rented bikes and went down the coast to check out some of the beaches. The waves were huge at one of the them and were practically unswimable, which didn't stop the guys from jumping in...

On my last day I caught the bus up to Bocas del Drago and walked over to star beach named after its abundance of starfish. It was a gorgeous beach, and the starfish were pretty neat too!

June 5-8 - Manzanillo, Costa Rica

Giant spider I almost put my hand on

After a really fun full moon party at Rockin J's, we packed up our stuff and took the morning bus to Manzanillo. The was only one hostel in the town which is really tiny. When we got there, there weren't any other guests staying there. The owners were Americans and were playing country music in the restaurant which made me think of home.
When we got up to our rooms, I went into take a shower and almost put my hand on a massive, quite dangerous looking spider. We had to go down to the lobby and get one of the local hostel workers to come take care of it because non of us wanted to touch it.
After that scare I took a nap and we all went out for dinner. If was really quiet and was really tasty but also fairly expensive.

Sand castle

The next day consisted of sitting on a beach which was right in front of the hostel and building a huge sand castle. It is also what we ended up doing the next day as well since there wasn't a ton of things to do in Manzanillo. We tried the snorkeling around the reef there for about an hour but it was too rough and we couldn't see too much.



I left after three relaxing days there. Unfortunately I had to say goodbye to the girls I was traveling with as they were heading up to San Jose. I caught the early morning bus to Puerto Viejo and caught a shuttle to Panama.

Manzanillo beach

June 3-5 - Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Costa Rica

Mosaics at Rockin J's Hostel

After leaving Nicaragua we took a bus down to Liberia. Since Kat was still feeling sick she decided to see a doctor in Liberia so I said goodbye to Misha and Kat and took a bus to San Jose. I arrived there around 7pm, found a hostel, checked emails and went to bed early. The next morning I was trying to decide whether to stick around San Jose for the day or head over to Caribbean coast when I started talking to a girl staying in the same room as me. She was heading out right then to Puerto Viejo which is where I planned on going, so I packed up my stuff and went with her.
Everyone I talked to that had been to Puerto Viejo recommended a hostel there called Rockin J's. We headed there from the bus stop checked in. The staff were not overly friendly but the hostel had a lot of character. There were mosaics everywhere that we learned later we done by various guests that had stayed at the hostel. We also learned that the rumors about the owner being kinda sleazy were true, although he was harmless.


After throwing our stuff in the room and meeting our other dorm mate from Norway, the three of us threw on our swimsuits and headed for the beach and for some lunch. We took the evening to just relax and catch up on emails and such.

The next day was spent on the beach and biking around town. The coast is beautiful. The water was a little too rough to swim in and there were rocks in the water and beaches, but the sand was nice and there were palm trees everywhere. It was also and hot. That night there was a full moon party at the hostel with all you can drink "jungle juice", togas and a bonfire on the beach.

Despite feeling absolutely horrible the next morning, the three of us packed up our stuff and caught the bus to Manzanillo which is about 30 minutes south of Puerto Viejo. I was a little disappointed about Rockin J's because of the awesome things I had heard about but it was still fun. Just wasn't the greatest hostel that I had ever stayed at.

May 30-June 2 - Ometepe Island, Nicaragua

Volcan Maderas

Ometepe Island is situated in the middle of Lake Nicaragua in the southern part of the country. It was created by two volcanos, Volcan Concepcion which is still active, and Volcan Maderas. Local folklore says that the island was created by a Romeo and Juliet type story of two lovers from different tribes that were forbidden to be together, so they committed suicide and the women fell back into the lake and her breasts became the two volcanoes. Now everytime I look at a map or pictures of the two volcanoes I see a pair of tits...

Volcan Concepcion

We crossed the Nicaraguan border around noon, caught a cab to the ferry and took a it across the lake to the Island. The ferry ride was about 45 minutes long, it was a beautiful clear day, we had an awesome view of Volcan Concepcion and we were the only people on the top deck. It was such a beautiful boat ride and we were all just taking as many pictures as possible.

Once on the island we found a little hotel that Misha had read about online. We rented a room for the three of us, ditched our bags and went out for some food. It wasn't as cheap as we had heard Nicaragua was suppose to be, but we had figured it wouldn't be because it was an island. We also discovered that the power goes out about twice per day there.

Natural Springs

The next day we hired a driver to take us on a tour around the island. We stopped first at a store for some beers to take with us, which we got some funny looks for. Then we stopped at a nature reserve and did a small hike around to see the different animals and plants. We were able to see a pack of howler monkeys, lots of different birds and a ton of tap poles in the nearby lake. After the hike we went to some natural cold water springs and swam for about an hour.  Then we headed to a nearby beach where we had lunch. On the beach we saw the most malnurished dog I have ever seen in my life. You could see the contours of his pelvis and all of his vertebrae. It was really hard for me to see that and makes me want to come down here if I get through school and help animals here. So I gave him most of my lunch and we headed back to town.

Beach by the restaurant

The next day we rented some bikes to tour around the island with. There was very little traffic on the roads so it was excellent for biking. We hit up a nearby beach and an archaeological museum. While I was in school I had considered doing a field school here on Ometepe Island. I had seen many pictures of the stuff they had dug up in the previous years, and it was the same stuff in the museum. I don't know if it was all of the same artifacts from that field school, but it is always interesting to see the things that you've learned about in school in real life.

Unfortunately Kat became really sick at the museum so we caught a taxi ride back to town with our bikes and headed back to the hotel. She felt better in the evening so we went out for dinner to an awesome argentinian restaurant, had some beers and we back to the hotel to sleep. 

The next morning we caught a 9am ferry and bus back to Costa Rica. Ometepe was gorgeous, it had beautiful water to swim in, it was safe, the locals we friendly and the owners of the hotel were really great. We all had an awesome time (apart from Kat getting sick) and it was worth the almost full day trip to get there.  

May 29-30 - San Jose, Costa Rica

In the morning Mack, Kat, Misha and myself caught the bus to San Jose. The bus ride to San Jose was a long miserable one because we were all pretty hungover. Around 5pm we arrived in San Jose and made plans to meet up with Mack again later for dinner since he was living in a nearby city. We found a nearby hostel that Kat had recommended, showered and went out for dinner.
We met up with Mack downtown and he showed us a nice little cafe/restaurant that he liked. We had an awesome meal and got a little tour of downtown San Jose from the walk. After dinner we had to say goodbye to Mack since we were leaving the next morning to Nicaragua and he had to stay in San Jose to work.
We got back to the hostel late that night after getting soaked by the rain and went to bed. We woke up at 4 the next morning to catch an early bus to the boarder. There were a few delays but we ended up getting on the 6:30 bus to the boarder.

Kat, Misha and Mack in San Jose

May 27-29 - La Fortuna, Costa Rica

Pool at Arenal Backpackers Resort

After taking a shuttle, then a boat across a lake, then another shuttle into town, I finally arrived at my hostel in La Fortuna in the pooring rain. I had found the hostel online and it had a really nice pool so I decided to try it out. It also was suppose to have a great view of Arenal Volcano, which unfortunately has been dormant for the last 2 years. After checking in and getting to my room, I met the others in the room. A bunch of people were going out for food and drinks and kindly invited me to join them. Out of the group of 8, 6 of us were from Canada. This is where I met Mack from Calgary, Kat from Winnipeg and Misha from Vancouver whom I ended spending the next week with.

Arenal Volcano

The next day we headed out for breakfast and planned what we were doing that day. Kat and Misha had signed up for a hike and hotsprings tour that afternoon and it sounded fun so I signed up as well. We hung out in the pool until about 3 when we got picked up for the tour. The first part of the tour was about an hour long guided walk through the rainforest. Our tour guide was really funny, but it was pouring rain and we didn't see many animals. It was still really interesting though.
After the hike we went to a fancy hot springs resort. It had about 25 different pools, all different temperatures. There were also some water slides that were dangerously fast and tons of fun. After seeing a few of the pools and slides, we went to the buffet to get some dinner which was included in the tour. There we met up with Mack. We all had about 5 servings of food because it was so good. And free.

Hot Springs

After dinner we hit up a few more of the pools at the top of the hill. They were all a little different, some with waterfalls, some with swim up bars and some with lounge chairs built into the pools. We hung out for a few more hours and then had to catch the shuttle back to the hostel. We spent the rest of the night hanging out, drinking and meeting some of the other guests from the hostel. We also started discussing heading to Ometepe Island in Nicaragua the next morning because Misha heard it was really awesome and wanted to see it.
The next morning we decided to make our way to Nicaragua, so we all packed our stuff and caught the bus to San Jose. La Fortuna was really pretty and the hot springs were really fun, but it was very developed, touristy and expensive. And the volcano which is one of the highlights is no longer active. I still had fun though and met some really cool people so that made it worth the journey over.

May 26-27 - Monteverde, Costa Rica

view from the hostel

Saturday morning I took a shuttle to Monteverde. It was a really pretty drive but by the end the road became really rough. I was dropped off at my hostel around 2 pm and met the two other people staying in my room. They told me about the zip line that they had done that day, and I decided to book it for the next morning. The rest of the day was spent doing laundry and answering emails.
The next morning I got up early to go do the zipline. The group we were with ended up being really big but they sort of split the group up so it wasn't so bad. There were about 10 or 12 different zipllines. The first couple were kinda just warmup runs and weren't scary or fast at all. The 4th one was over a huge valley and had a pretty amazing view. There was also a tarzan swing before the last three big ziplines which was really scary. The last zipline was 2800 meters long and they hooked us up superman style so we got an awesome view of the jungle/land below.
I returned back to my hostel around noon, had lunch and caught a shuttle off to La Fortuna.