It has been a little while since the last installment of our adventure, but what that means is there has been bulk adventuring and many stories I now need to recall, so as our blog momento makes some sense in years to come!

I left off in Leon, Nicaragua where we headed out on the town for our last night, and then was up and at it bright and early as our little crew jumped in our shuttle and headed for Granada, Nicaragua.

Well, so we thought... Our shuttle driver on the other hand had either not understood a word of my request or just felt we would enjoy a different destination.

This shuttle was an interesting one, and really all that needs to be told is that his head gasket cracked half way to no where, he drove on to an unknown destination with car spewing smoke, and when he realised we wanted "Granada" was more than upset he had to turn back as we had passed where we actually wanted to be a good 40 minutes before hand!

Once in Granada our little crew settled in at the Oasis Hostel - best hostel so far, and the fact we didn't catch any terminal disease from swimming in the pool there says alot...

We stayed 4 days in Granada and filled in our time with bits and pieces, but seemed to drink a considerable amount of rum in this location. Matt advised that doing so is what the locals would want - so it was "una mas cuba libre por favor" - a sentence we all perfected!

We visited the famous (I had never heard of it before) cigar making home of Nicaragua's finest family. The boys thought this was awesome, and rolled their very own cigars, which Matt intends on smoking when we start a family - we were promised they keep for a long time so no rush for me!!

We also witnessed the very poor display of Granada's Annual Running with the Bulls... Again the boys thought this was great, whereas myself and the girls were pretty upset - it seemed to be a lot of young men and a scared old bull!! But they did it and we can say we saw it...

After 4 days it was time for our little crew to finally part ways. Matt and I continued on with the two Aussie brothers, Pat and Damo on route to Panama, and the others stayed in Nicaragua to continue their journey!

The next day or so is a bit of a blur, we crossed the boarder into Costa Rica where we spent one night in the capital San Jose, and then the next day crossed the boarder into Panama.

I imagine I am going to say this a number of times, but this boarder crossing was nothing short of scary. Panama definitely likes you to know you have arrived and cutting a 45 minute ordeal short, let's just say they wanted a lot more cash than we "legally" had to pay, or the other option was the "little girl comes with all the passports alone into our office and we will work something out" - that little girl was me and as you can imagine Matt and the boys would never ever see me in danger, so we paid the cash and although pissed off made our way into their country.

We were at the top of the country and went straight to a backpacker fav, a party island called, Bocas del Toro. Bocas was great fun, over priced but great fun never the less! It reminded me a lot of Caye Caulker in Belize - a very rusta feel to it and no one was in a hurry to do much. We had lots of fun here, caught water taxis to bars that float on the pretty Carribean water, played at Red Frog beach and after 3 days we kept moving to the bottom of the country and to the big smoke of Panama City.

We caught the overnight bus to Panama City and although we arrived at 5am with no where to sleep, we did get to watch the sunrise over the prettiest city we have seen so far.

We stayed at Lunas Castle which was an amazing old mansion transformed into a backpacker hostel - it was an interesting mix of people, and out the front window you had a view to the city and were across the road from one of Panama's most wealthy investors, however out the back window was the slum and some of the poorest residents in Panama - a vast contrast and good reminder of how the world works!

We visited the Panama Canal, which was great to see and witnessed a vessel coming through, and how the locks worked to get the water levels right - me being me got bored of the vessels and was more interested in asking business questions - how many vessels, at what cost, how is the cost split, who owns what, do you need an Account Manager?!?

We were ready to keep moving and all wanted to get South America now, so this leads us to finding our Captain and the vessel that would get us from Panama to Colombia... The next chapter is one hell of a story!

Peace xxx