Little Time for Coasting - 2nd Edition

Central America, another continent primed for exploits, exploration and, from myself, belated explanation. We had arrived in a land that has been largely eploited by their prominent Northern neighbour for many years; with the evidence of such as visibly clear as the Caribbean waters that lap against its coast. On the topic of coast, however, our journey would be a whistle-stop blur of bus journeys and hotels in backward towns for much of our time as South America had taken longer than expected. In fact, in spite of the relatively short distance left to cover, there would be little time for coasting.

Panama
The boat arrived in a small Panamanian port, scantily equipped for the tourist trade, and within little time captain Guido had offloaded his freshly developed seamen (which, yes could be misconstrued if your spelling leaves much to be desired) into a dingy bound for his local hostel. The crew spent one last night together quietly before heading off to Panama City the next day. The bus journey, although not a goliath trip of the Argentinian 22 hour standards, was the first of many 5-8 hour journeys to be taken every other day. We arrived in Panama City tired, hungry and smelly. The plan for Panama City was to hang for a few days and meet Luke, an old family friend from childhood, but upon arrival it turned out that Luke would have to be called away on business and that, in mind of our tight schedule, we may have had to stay much longer than expected. This posed a two-pronged problem: Emily was on a very short timescale which meant that staying longer would have meant that she would have to leave me to travel Central America solo, and then there was the fact that Panama City appeared to be dirty, uBer-Americanised (every corner that didn't have a US chain restaurant clung to it would have a poster of it!) and pretty souless. Obviosuly this may have been totally wrong but it was not a city that we felt drawn to stay in. With that in mind we jumped on the first available bus to Bocas Del Toro, in hope of some sun, sea, sand and scuba. This, however, was also not to be, as when arriving at the port and spending a night in a dark, airless, cold war-esque hotel room, the boat to the islands would require wasting a whole day waiting leaving only half a day there. It seemed pointless; so we left.

Costa Rica
After another 6 hours in transit, we arrived in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, a notoriously Americanised 'frat boy town', with reputedly decent waves and long days of sunshine. Upon arriving and tactically locating ourselves a few Km out of town we discoved that although the sunshine and fraternity 'douche-bag' population was plentiful, the waves were not. We spent two days eating tasty Western (culturally, not geographically) food and splashing around in the warm water, before leaving Puerto Viejo, and Costa Rica, with much gusto. After passing through the Capital of San Jose (yes, we did know the way) briefly, we hopped on another bus to Los Chiles, a tiny town bordering on Nicaragua, arriving 14 hours after leaving Puerto Viejo. In truth, the journey had been long and arduous and after dumping our bags in the cockroach and mosquito infested room, it was visible that each of us were spread thinly from the last week of relentless traveling. Racked with fatigue and unavoidable irritability we crashed immediately for the night, before crossing the border the next day into Nicaragua.

After a draining week of travelling through Panaman and Costa Rica, we were in need of a few days rest and very much looking forward to Nicaragua, reputed to be a great place to travel. But first we would have to get away from the hot swampy grip of San Carlos and deal with monetary matters.