I'm in Panama! I left Cahuita early on the bus to Sixoala, the border town with Panama. The bus largely doubled up as a local school bus with many local kids getting on and off on their way from jungle hut homes strung out across the border-bound highway to schools in the indigenous city of Bribri. The road was spectacular, swerving through the beautiful, forest (and banana plantation...) draped foothills of the Talamanca Mountains all the way to the border. T...

The biblical thunderstorms returned to flood Tortuguero this morning as I left along with a group of Frenchies on a shuttle boat south to the port of Moin - infamous as the site of a turtle conservationist's murder 5 years ago and the main port of entry for Costa Rica's cocaine. But once the thunderstorm calmed down, the journey to Moin was phenomenal. The canals are beautiful, lined with thick tropical rainforest right to the edges of the park, and beyond by i...

Tortuguero...went sour... Alfonso (apparently his name) apparently came looking for me at the hostel. Offering to sell me weed. Right. He then appeared at the turtle tour operator I booked with asking why I was avoiding him. Err... I'm not gonna lie. I've walked around Medellin and La Paz at 3 o'clock in the morning and felt perfectly safe, but here in this Costa Rican tourist town full of European families I've felt the most unsafe I've ever felt in all of La...

Wow! The Tortuguero National Park is a 300 square kilometre park protecting Northeastern Costa Rica's remaining rainforests, as well as the turtle nesting sites of its beaches. This morning I got up at 5:30am to do a canoe tour of the network of canals that ply the jungles of Tortuguero, allowing visitors to get up close to the animals without making noise to scare them away. Whatsmore, getting up so early means its cool but still light so the animals are out ...

Today my Central American backpacking adventure truly began. I woke early, got my rather nice included breakfast of pancakes and fruit and quickly hailed a taxi outside the hostel taking me to the TransCaribe bus terminal.In Costa Rica, just like Peru, the cities have no central bus terminals, rather the bus companies are scattered around the place. The TransCaribe, as the name suggests, serves the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica.The journey to Tortuguero has been ...