Larissa's "when she feels like writing stuff" page

Day 4:

Panama- Costa Rica trek

Apparently in Boquete, they ring their church bells at 630am. Ridiculous, but slept in another hour. We packed up our bags and grabbed some breakfast that was served in a cute outdoor seating next to the garden. This breakfast was delicious! Tejano (chicken w/ salsa) con tortilla de mais. Man, the salsas here are amazing! Complete Panamanian breakfast, smile!

And that… that was Panama! Definitely could have used more Panamanian food, experience the culture, play in the beautiful mountains, lay on the beach… but that was it. Will definitely have to come again!

…And we’re off to Costa Rica, oh my!

We return the car at the airport (can’t take a car across the border) and look for a taxi van or shuttle to haul us to La Frontera (the border). There is a taxi driver in a car smaller than ours that is insisting on taking us. We won’t be able to put the car seats in the car safely (face forward), will have to pack our luggage in and squeeze Anson and Sarah in between the car seats. Well? That’s what we did. ~45 min drive, packed like sardines to the border. We wait in line for ~ 1 hr, get our passports reviewed and approved then head over to Costa Rica side, a little confused. We have no guidance on where we were supposed to go, what we were supposed to do. We walk aimlessly in the rain, with the babies, and luggage…find the CR Entry location and get our passports stamped… now for a taxi.

Costa Rica has significant water flow and apparently due to the recent rain, the roads were getting overflown with water. We were told by one of the drivers that there were no buses coming to this part of the town due to the over flown rivers, so we had to take a 4x4 taxi to the next town over. We drove over the flooding, which wasn’t really significant; however, this driver was trying to score a deal. He was a little shady and was trying to get us to take his taxi all the way to Quepos… a $200 taxi ride vs. the $20 we were paying to the bus station and $36 bus ride to Quepos. Of course the $200 wasn’t the preferred option.

We arrive at the bus station with ~45 min to spare. We wait, wait, wait… bus arrives and the line starts to form. Sarah and I are trying to quickly load our luggage in the bus while Anson negotiates a better deal and holds a spot in the line. The bus is pretty much full and well, there is a long line of people, including us, who need to load the bus. We make our way on without a seat. Fortunately, there were a couple nice folks who made room for Sarah and I since we were holding the babies. There were about 10 people standing on the bus as we make our ~3 hr journey to Quepos. The babies were not having the ride, so I swapped spots with Anson and stood up about 1.5 hrs of the way until some folks got off. Let me tell you, holding onto the upper rails of the bus while trekking along on a windy and bumpy Costa Rican road wasn’t the most comfortable. Now, I did get nice views of all the rivers, trees and foliage.

We basically were thrown off the bus on the main street- highway in Quepos. The bus passengers were probably relieved the crying babies and bundle of luggage were off the bus. We waited on the side of the road for a bit, only to learn that we weren’t going to find a taxi on this road. We head down a street a bit and picked up a taxi. Again, another jam packing in a small car, car seats in the trunk, ghetto rigged down, babies in laps packed in the rear seat. We decide on staying at the Best Western and hook up with Sarah’s friend, Melissa. Dinner, drinks, bed.

Day 5:

Quepos

Quepos is not the nicest of Costa Rican towns, but it is next to Manuel Antonio, which is beautiful and has a small panaderia that sells phenonmenal papa rellenas! I had some breakfast then wandered the town for a bit, exchanged some dollars into colones, purchased a few gift and souvenirs. Anson and Sarah had gotten another rental car... this time? a hatchback and a bit smaller even though we had one more person and more luggage. We had to cram ourselves into the car and make another trek to Dominical to look for a hotel to stay at.

Dominical

We got to Dominical, a cute and small surfer town. There were many hostels and small motels on the beach. We checked prices at a few locations and found a small treehouse type of hostel that was right across from the beach and was $25/night. Melissa and I shared one room while Anson, Sarah and the babies shared another one. We unpacked then checked out Dominical beach. We headed down the road a bit to surf for buenas olas and ended up at another cool beach. I wandered, took some pics and picked up some shells with Catalina.

Got back to the hotel, cleaned up then had some dinner.