June 30 - July 1: Keeana and I stayed in Hostel Titisee in Quito, and bought official tour t-shirts at Uncle Ho’s. We met up with some friends for a last drink at Finn’s.
July 1 - 2: We flew to Panama City and checked into Hotel Caracas in Casco Viejo. We discovered, through trying to extract money from several uncooperative ATMs, that the Royal Bank had thoughtfully protected us from Central American fraud artists by inactivating our card. Several phone calls to mom and dad and a visit to Western Union later, we were set for our next 13 days of travel. We bought train tickets from Colon to P.C. and played in the Albrook Mall.
July 3: We played in Albrook Mall some more (it’s beside the terminal terrestre) and then took a bus to Colon. We walked around Colon looking for the train station and various residents told us we shouldn’t be walking around, because it’s peligroso, so we hid out in the local McDonald’s for two hours, then went to the train station and took the train back to P.C. all along the canal.
July 4 - 7: We hopped on another colourful Panamanian bus and headed for Bocas Del Toro for some beach fun. First to Almirante, then a pick-up taxi to the dock, and a bus to Bocas Town, then after being accosted by touts for several minutes, we decided to head for the less touristy island of Bastimentos. We checked into Beverly’s Hill Guest House and then tried to make the muddy trek to Wizard Beach but it was late and really mucky, so we had dinner at Red Rooster. Next day we went out to Wizard Beach, when it was less muddy, which required of walking through the jungle to the other side of the island. At the beach, the sea stole my snorkel and mask and Keeana and I nearly got swept out to sea. Next day we tried to find Red Frog Beach but ended up enjoying the red frogs in our hostel’s garden.
July 8 - 10: Heading back to Almirante, and to the border of Costa Rica. We met some Italians at the border crossing and shared a taxi with them to Porto Viejo, passing through fields of Dole and Chiquita Bananas on the way. We checked into Hotel Los Suenos and met some Swedes and drank some beer. Next day we walked up and down Playa Negra. We made good use of Suenos’s kitchen and the nearby supermarket and made friends with dogs and kitties.
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July 11 - 13: On our way to San Jose to check into Kabata Hostel and wait for Dad! We shopped at the supermarket and a collectible toy store that had an entire set of original Star Wars figurines for $330, what a deal. We wandered the central part of San Jose and took a bus to San Pedro to see a movie at the mall and we made friends with Mauricio, Katia, Jimena, Gata, Ellie, and Kibo. Finally we got a lift to the airport where we found Daddy and took him back to Kabata
July 14 - 16: Next day we packed Dad into a bus, upon which we met new friends Michael Schlink and Siobhan, then with some others we made a grand exodus to Gringo Pete’s, the purple guesthouse 100 m south of the school in La Fortuna. We took an evening journey out to Volcan Arenal to see lava rocks roll down its side and then to enjoy a soak in the hot springs (a fast-moving hot stream coming off the mountain) where Keeana nearly got swept away. Next day Michael accompanied us on an intrepid journey to Venado Caves..
July 17 - 19: We took a bus into Nicaragua and found a ferry to Isla Ometepe on Lake Nicaragua. We met a travel agent on the ferry and then checked into Hospedaje Ali. We went to a museum and saw some funerary urns. Next day dad and I went for a hike on Volcan Concepcion where we saw howler monkeys and spider monkeys, lots of bugs and butterflies and lizards, and excellent views of Ometepe and nearly got attacked by a white bull. That evening Dad and I went to see the bull riding and enjoyed the festival of Santa Ana, including plantain chips, cabbage, and chicken-on-a-stick for dinner. Before we left the island next day, we all went on a tour of the petroglyphs and a small lake called Charco Verde
July 19 - 20: We caught a ratty old chicken bus for Granada, which got us there fairly late. Most hostels were booked but we luckily found Hosteleria Valeria, which was perfect. Granada is really pretty and we walked around for hours, taking pictures and climbing clock towers. We found an abandoned building next to a run-down park that we wanted to buy for our hostel. When we went to buy some food, Keeana found a poor little abandoned kitty that she wanted to rescue, so she stood outside the supermarket asking everyone if they could take it home until one of the guards agreed to add the kitten to his family. Another of Keeana’s good kitty-deeds.
July 21: We went early in the morning to Volcan Mombacho, booking the dorm at their rangers’ station so we could explore the area on a night tour. We went for a hike and got rained on, but managed to see some beautiful views and wildlife, including a great big toad. After eating, we went on a night walk and the guide helped us to find red eye frogs and funny little salamanders, and of course we found zillions of delightful bugs. We slept at the lodge and next morning were on our way to Leon.
July 22: We took a pick-up bus to Iglesia San Juan and after walking around in a big circle, found our destination, El Alberge (which just means ‘the hostel’ so perplexed bystanders couldn’t help us silly gringos figure out where it was). Keeana met the local hostel cats, Blacks and Clown. We also managed to meet some humans, including a gentleman named Benk who had been robbed of his documents and was stranded in El Alberge until a replacement credit card and new passport came to him. We did some laundry and dad immortalised us on the wall. A tiny kitten wandered into El Alberge and Keeana made him feel at home and named him Elmer. Jose, the proprietor, wanted to keep him, but jealous Clown chased the poor little fellow away. As well as exploring Leon, we all spent a lot of time petting kitties, making use of the hostel’s free wireless, and preparing / eating supermarket-bought food until we decided it was a good time to make our way to Salvador via Honduras.
July 24 - 25: Along with a US American called Andrew, we boarded a chicken bus headed directly for San Salvador. Unfortunately, the former Honduran president decided it was a good time to try to re-enter Honduras himself, so we arrived at the Honduras border to find it closed. The bus staff thought it would probably open early next morning, so along with a bunch of persistent local travelers, we slept at the border, some in and some on the bus, until slightly before the sun peeped out. The bus took us to the Salida for Nicaragua, where we paid our exit fee and stamped out, then another 30 metres onto a bridge where we were told by machine-gun toting border guards that the border would reopen at 6 pm. Andrew had a flight to catch and Keeana was getting mighty smelly, so we negotiated our way out of the $7.00 Nigaraguan re-entry fee and found another chicken bus to take us back to El Alberge. We booked flights to Guatemala City and $1000, a couple days behind schedule, and a movie and snow cone and basketball team later, we were on our way.
July 26 - 28: We landed late in Guatemala City and checked into a hostel in Zone 10. Next morning we went to the local hospital where dad got prescribed medicine for his guano-related elbow infection, and then found ourselves a bus to Ahuachapan, El Salvador. Unfortunately, none of the bus offices we visited in the expensive Guatemalan taxis had busses to Ahuachapan, and though they passed right through there on their way to San Salvador, they couldn’t stop to let us out. One bus company said we could get out at the border, but when we reached the border we didn’t get stamped in to Salvador and nobody remembered that we were supposed to be let off there, so they did open the doors briefly on the highway just short of Ahuachapan and let us out at our destination after all. Ahuachapan is famous for the geothermal activity including Los Ausoles, where with the guidance of the owner’s 8-year-old son, we enjoyed some geothermals right close up.
July 28: We took a bus to Tacuba, near the north entrance of Parque Nacional El Imposible. When we got off the bus, the driver told us there was a hostel just up the hill, so we went up there to find the wonderful Hostal Mama y Papa. Mama y Papa welcomed us in and gave us a room for three with the bathroom adjoining with the dorm room on the other side. Mama y Papa‘s was really cozy, with other travelers, their son Manolo who arranged to take us to the park, and a cat, ducks, dog, and tortoise. Next day we went on a trek in El Imposible, seeing black eagles, blue morphos, and green lizards. After eating lunch, we hiked in the rain downhill through corn fields, then had a dip in the basin of a waterfall. Finally we ended the journey with a long uphill climb to the road, and a 40 minute drive back to town in the back of Papa’s pick-up with John, a waterfall-diving Irishman in the pummelling rain. A couple of times we stopped so the men could push a smaller pickup out of the mud, and we arrived back cold and saturated. It was Manolo’s birthday, and when we asked Mama for some spaghetti for supper, she said to wait because Manolo had gone to pick up some papusas and beer to share. The papusas were fried circle breads with various delicious fillings. I ate a cheese one, a pumpkin one, and a green leafy one. We partied to Manolo’s “MTV Best of the 80s” DVDs till the wee hours.
July 30: It was time to return to Guatemala; we had a date with Jim and Lorena in Antigua that night. An all-day marathon 4-bus journey got us to our destination, but the computer battery didn’t have enough juice to get in touch with Jim so we had to follow my ESP to find him. He was checked into Ummagumma hostel but had gone out to eat, so after wandering the lovely streets of Antigua for a little while, we found a nice place to eat with a good view of passers by and just before we ordered, lo and behold I spotted a familiar stride and found Jim and Lorena. They joined us for dinner and as we ate we found some of our friends from Tacuba: John, Haiku, and Tony. Later we joined them for drinks and had fun taking Martin’s money shots of each other. We spent the next couple of days enjoying everything about Antigua except for its stubborn, uncooperative cash machines.
