The first half (July)

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.

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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.

Gettin' to El Salvador

El Salvador is a charming little country in Central America.

But by golly, it sometimes is a challenge to get there!
Here’s how the KBs found El Salvador:

We set out from Leon, Nicaragua at 9:30 AM on Friday in a rickety old retired Canadian school bus filled with Nicas and us, the KBs and Andrew of Boston. Lucky for the KBs Andrew’s father is Mexican and Andrew speaks Spanish like a Nica. The first problem - bus left about an hour late. This apparently is fairly common here, but in our case it proved to be the start of the undoing of our escapade.

To get to El Sal, we first had to pass through Honduras. The country which had just recently deposed their president.

Further delays along the road and we arrived at the Honduras border more than two hours late, and by then Honduras had closed her borders. We weren’t the only ones trying to cross the border in to Honduras that day. The recently deposed president was trying it too. He wasn’t going to be let in and we weren’t either. Not just yet at least. We had arrived barely minutes after they closed it to us.

So we sat in that rickety rackety little bus for fourteen long hot sweaty hours, from 3 PM on Friday until 5 AM on Saturday. At 5 AM, without any forewarning or announcement the little bus coughed to life and moved us out of Nicaragua and into no-man’s-land, where it stopped again. There the Honduran guards told us the border would not open until 6 PM that night. With no guarantee we, the KBs and Andrew of Boston, decided to return to Leon. (We learned later they were overly optimistic on the Saturday opening - it remained closed until about 6 PM on Sunday.)

We arrived back in Leon early Saturday afternoon. Got cleaned up, had a good meal, arranged a flight for late Sunday from Managua to Guatamala City (being $200 cheaper per person than going to San Salvador), did our laundry, went to a movie, and got back to the hostel with plenty of blogging time remaining!

Sunday started quietly - the church bells were silent until after 6 AM. After a good breakfast and a slow morning, we packed up and left for the bus station. The bus from Leon to Managua was an easy two hours. We arrived with plenty of time to get to the Managua International. There we met and played with a delightful team of young Nica basketball players. Katt taught them how to moon walk, and they kept us amused for an hour practicing their new skill. Kee wasn’t allowed to bring her remaining jellies into the secure area, so she passed them out to the basketball team and their coaches.

We arrived in Guatamala mid-evening and got quickly checked into a nice clean hostel where we enjoyed a good night’s sleep and pleasant continental breakfast.

After running a few errands, we set off for the bus station in order to complete our epic journey to Ahuachapan, El Sal. Except this bus doesn’t go to Ahuachapan. So we had to cross the city to another depot for the bus we needed. Except when we got there we found this was an express bus and doesn’t stop at smaller towns along the way. We would have had to go three hours beyond our destination and catch another bus back! How many bus depots would we be trying before finding the right one? Sound like a Guatemalan taxi drivers conspiracy? Not any more - this bus would let us off at the border where we could catch a local bus for our destination. Home (almost) at last? Well, not exactly. No one told the bus driver to let us out at the border! Again we were heading three hours beyond our destination. Fate as it sometimes does smiled on us at this point, and the driver dropped us off only two kilometres shy of our destination, which we finally reached eighty-one hours after setting out.

News Article Found..

Kelly, Katt and Keeana were mobbed by their local fans upon arrival at Nicaragua International Airport. It was teenie bopper heaven with a latin american twist. Seems the Three KBs's agent published the press release prematurely and local bloggers got hold of the info. It spread rapidly... very rapidly indeed. Airport staff were overwhealmed, additional staff was called to duty, incoming planes were delayed, even Airport management was forced into crowd control duties.
Before being swept up in the mob, the Three KBs were whisked into the VIP lounge where they were treated like visiting royalty. Filling up with homemade chocolate chip cookies, the lead singer Keeana was heard to mumble, "Dush oosh buh bussusth wroosuptoon afta... BUH BUSSUSTH!"

Then The Three stepped on their private Copa Airliner and flew off into the night to meet their destination. Fans in Ciudad Guatemala await eagerly while strains of their current hit song "Straight-on (Third star on the right and straight on to morning)" were heard in alleys throughout the ciudad.
Watch their blog for activities and upcoming events!

We're really popular!

caving

as soon as we got the eldest KB, we packed him into a bus and headed for la fortuna -- costa rica's home of volcan arenal. on the bus we met two new friends. one was siobhan and the other was michael. michael had some friends who wanted to go to the hostel called gringo pete's in la fortuna, so we tagged along with them. we became a group of 8 people and 8 big backpacks heading for gringo pete's.

gringo pete accommodated all of us, so we had a bunch of new friends. gringo pete had a lot of tours, including a trip to go caving which cost $48USD that looked fun but expensive. well, we took the $17 trip to see the volcano erupt and then soak in its hot spring. we did indeed see red-hot rocks and gravel slide down the side of arenal several times, and the tour even included delicious rum and coke.

as for the caving, we decided we'd try to find those caves on our own. michael decided to join us. we got up bright and early and started planning how to get to the town of vedano, which is where the caves are located. eventually we discovered, at the bus station, that there would be a bus going directly to vedano within 15 minutes. that was fortunate!

when we arrived in vedano, we asked directions to the caves and were given directions to the owner of said caves, just down the street. she offered to give us a ride to the caves and phoned ahead to book us a guide.
we got suited up with rubber boots, helmets, dust masks (because guano can get really smelly), and our headlamps, plus dad's camera that has the waterproof diving case. when we reached the entrance to the cave, our guide, alonzo, said that we could go the difficult way or the easy way. michael, keeana, and i all shouted 'difficult!!' but dad hesitated. he wondered just how difficult it would be. alonzo said it was not that difficult, just some small passages and some climbing. he said if dad wanted to try it we would help him. so dad agreed.



at first in the caves we were introduced to the locals -- little teeny bats that live in family groups and give off an acid that has actually carved holes in the ceiling of the cave. the water was deep enough to slosh over the tops of our boots so we all got soaking wet feet straight away. then we quickly got to the 'difficult part'.


sure enough, we had to wiggle through a small hole, sideways. then we had to climb up a precipice, which was scary. alonzo helped by letting us stand on his knee. of course michael didn't need any help; he scampered up like a monkey. then we went down through a tunnel that took us back to the place where we'd entered.

as we went through the narrow passageways on the way to the next 'room', alonzo found a lovely little stingless scorpion spider. we each took a turn to introduce ourselves.

next we came to a room where the stream from above ground was coming down. it was called the shower, for obvious reasons.

the end of the cave (actually the farthest point tourists are allowed to go because the rest is really slippery) had a lot of calcium deposit that made really beautiful formations, including some brain coral that was fossilised down there. really neat. after admiring that we started to make our way out again.



we were supposed to get back to vedano to catch the 1:00 bus, so we started walking from the farm the caves are on to the town. about 2/3rds of the way there, michael cleverly flagged an empty cow truck that gave us a ride the rest of the way.

by 2:00 we were on the 1:00 bus, but it didn't go back to la fortuna. we got dropped off in tanque, a few kilometres from la fortuna, and enjoyed the view from the tanque bus corner for about two hours until a la fortuna bus finally happened along. by the time we got back to gringo pete's, we were ready for a beer and a shower, but all in all it was a super-fun adventure.

red frogs

On our way to the train station to buy tickets from colon to panama city, we got sidetracked in this massive panamanian mall, where we ate cinnamon buns, saw panama hats for sale, and got eaten by a dinosaur.


after panama city we went to bocas del toro, an island arcipelago off the caribbean cost of panama. in bocas town, we got swarmed by annoying touts immediately and constantly, so we went back to the docks and got a boat to a smaller island, bastimentos, renouned for its red poison dart frogs. we were pointed in the direction of "wizard beach" and decided to go enjoy the last couple of hours of sun of the day, hoping to see some red poison dart frogs too. we walked along the malecon until a sign pointed inland. a small track culminated in a few private pathways to houses, one of which was playing about 25 dBs of bob marley. but no beach. we went back to the malecon, where a little girl on a balcony assured us that that was the way to wizard beach. back at the bob marley house, i spotted a small mud trail going up a hill. it didn't look like the way to a beach, but it was the only way we could go, so we went. at the top of the hill we met a local lady coming back down, who remarked at how muddy it was. we followed the mud trail past a couple of cow fields and into the jungle, where some intrepid travelers going the other direction told us that we had about thirty minutes of deep, flip-flop eating mud ahead of us before we reached the beach.

next day, we started out a bit earlier for wizard beach, knowing how to get there and armed with proper footwear. by this time, most of the mud had dried up. the fire ants were enjoying the drier ground to get off to an early start too, and were very pleased to have some delicious feet to bite.



this time we had our underwater camera along and when we finally reached the beach, we had a fun time taking pictures of ourselves underwater, until we realised that we'd gotten swept out quite far and tried to swim back to shore. the waves were pushing towards shore, but the undertow after each massive wave pulled us back out, and the sea wouldn't let us back to the beach until it had stolen my snorkel set and eaten it.





keeana cleverly found a much muddier path to get back to town so we were pretty mucky by the time we got back. we kept looking for red poison dart frogs, but i guess they don't like the mud.

next day, knowing the way to wizard beach, we decided to try and find red frog beach, which is supposed to be the next one along the coast. we walked along the muddy jungle trail once again, and arrived at wizard beach, and then started looking for the path to red frog beach. we found paths, but they all either tapered out or were washed out. eventually we gave up and went back to town.

losing hope of ever seeing a red poison dart frog, we went back to our room and got cleaned up for supper. on our way out of the hostel, beverly´s hill, keeana spotted one of the four hostel cats stalking something in the bathroom. she looked in and, lo and behold, it was a red poison dart frog! we helped him escape from the bathroom back to the wilds of beverly´s hill garden, whereupon we spotted a second and then a third red poison dart frog. after all that exploring and getting muddy, all those naughty little froggies were right there in our garden!

Here's our very rough itinerary

Week 1 ~ July 1-7 (already done!): PANAMA: Panama City by train to Colon and back, to David, then possibly Boquete, then Bocas del Toro for diving/spelunking.

Week 2 ~ July 8-14: cross border at Sixaloa to COSTA RICA Puerto Viejo de Talamanca to Puerto Limon to Tortuguero by boat to Cariari to San Jose from there to cross border at Penas Blancas to...

Week 3 ~ July 15-21: NICARAGUA (with a very high likelyhood of change): Isla de Ometepe (petroglyphs) to Granada (colonial town) to Managua to Leon (another colonial town) and the border crossing at Guasaule.

Week 4 ~ July 22-28: HONDURAS (Highly likely to change!): capital city Tegucigalpa to Bay Islands (diving) via La Ceiba (ferry) possibly visiting Parque Nacional Capiro - Calentura and Laguna de Guaimoreto for Shipwreck snorkeling, dolphins, manatees, then back to Tegucigalpa to cross to EL SALVADOR.

Week 5 ~ July 29-Aug 4: Guatemala and enter Mexico, possibly with a trip to Belize.

Week 6 ~ Aug 5-11: MEXICO: Tabasco & Chiapas States - San Cristobal de Las Casas, Palenque, Villahermosa, & La Venta. Oaxaca State – Head for the coast & take in Zipolite to Puerto Escondido, and possibly continue along the coast before heading north to... Ciudad Mexico - Museo National de Anthrpologea, Casas Frida Kahlo & Trotski, Plaza Garibaldi

Week 7 ~ Aug 12-18: Still MEXICO: Northern Central Highlands - Teotihuacan, Cantona, Cuetzan, Yohualichan, Morelia, and San Miguel de Allende, where we will visit some special friends. Northeast - Reserva de la Biosfera El Cielo, Monterrey & Cuatrocienegas.

Week 8 ~ Aug 19-25: into USA, to visit friends in Houston, Texas, and see what else we can do before making a beeline to Calgary in time to register little KB in school.

everything that we did so far

First, we got in an airplane and flew over Colombia (been there!)
Then we hung out in Panama City, getting lost and hot, till we found a train station and a mall. We took a bus to Colon, a very nasty place, and then took the train back to PC, which was very fun. Then we took a bus to David (Panama) and stayed for the night, then took another bus, a pick-up taxi, and a boat to Isla Colon, Bocas del Toro town, which is where we are now. We were followed and harassed by several hotel touts and boat touts, so we took another boat to Bastimentos, and got a nice room in a nice hotel with lots of kitty cats. (don´t be jealous, Pixie, we still miss you!)

The most adventurous thing that´s happened to us so far is that in Colon, two different people told us that it was very dangerous, so we hid out in McDonalds for about two hours before our train left for Panama City. Panama City´s nice, and they really do have lots of cheap stuff there, so we bought some of it.

Today we are going to trek through mud across Isla Bastimentos to get to the beach.