30th September 2009 - 2nd October 2009
During our travels across Costa Rica we stopped over in San Jose for a night at Hostel Bakau (the best hostel ever!) where we met a couple driving a combie van. They were advertising for amigos to join them - we just had to pay for some petrol. It all seemed too good to be true as we had wanted to travel in a van so the next morning we jumped in and drove to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on the Carribean side of Costa Rica.
The couple driving the van were travelling from Canada to South America and as they were budgeting only $10 a day they were already using the credit cards with at least six thousand kms to go. Once they stop and camp somewhere free it would be cheap to live in the camper van but we were on about $45 a day at that point and staying on budget to give you some idea.
At the end of our first day the exhaust fell off and it sounded like a pre-war aircraft so Nikki and I had headaches by the end and it took longer than the bus as they were constantly getting lost. We arrived at the Caribbean coast and staying in the Combi at a camp site nearly cost as much as a room so it was an easy choice.
Puerto Viejo was quite touristy but a lot of fun. We went out on the town one night and also tried to snorkel unsuccessfully the following day.
At the end of day one in the Combi we'd had enough and decided the next day would be the last while we crossed the border into Panama.