A last second change of plans had us on the 4:20 bus down to the highway this morning. It took just over two hours to travel the 38km (no wonder it takes so long to get anything done around here) where we were dropped off to wait for our next bus to and across the border. When it hadn't shown up by eight, we managed to flag another that was travelling all the way to Managua; we're sitting on that bus right now. Santa Elena was a much needed break for us. It...

I'm going to make this one brief for two reasons: First we were only in San Jose for an evening, and second we just found out that we're going to be catching yet another 4am bus, so I'd best be getting some rest. I've struggled trying to decide what to say about our time in San Jose. Prior to arriving, we'd had it decidedly described as a "s*%t hole" and were not particularly looking forward to it as such. As the bus entered the city and we noted that not o...

I'm currently sitting on the bus from Puerto Jiminez to San Jose. It's apparently about an eight hour ride, but since we keep stopping to deal with a broken door, it will likely take a little longer than anticipated. I'm learning to accept something they call "tico time". So this seems like a good opportunity to catch up on my last few days. As mentioned previously, we had several different transfers to make in order to get to our destination. Aside from a...

It's ten o'clock Sunday night, the music is blaring into our room from the festival out on the street, and we've just finalized our travel plan for tomorrow. It's amazing the difference technology can make for avoiding that, "oh no, what do you mean there are no rooms left in the city and we've missed the last ferry out" sort of occurance. Hopefully things will go smoothly; we've got two buses, a border-crossing another one or two buses and a ferry to get to ...

It's Friday night and I'm sitting in a little cafeteria in Panama City- waiting. I'm slowly easing back into the backpacker lifestyle. I forgot about these times when you're too exhausted to drag your butt out to a bar for a drink, but you've already given up your hotel room. And so you sit. On this particular occasion we're killing time before heading to the station to catch our midnight bus to David and on to Boquete, so I thought I'd take this opportunit...