Backpacks and Burritos : Costa Rica and Panama City May 9

By this stage of the trip we had run out of time, as we had to boost it to Panama in order to get our sail boat from Portobelo (Northern Panama) to Cartagena (Colombia). We therefore only had 3 nights in Costa Rica and 2 nights in Panama City. In Costa Rica we chose to go only to the Adventure capital and make the most of the adrenaline filled activities.

Boy racers exist here too

Monteverde. It was a welcome change of climate as it is a little village in the northern mountains of the country. We experienced rain for the first time in months and actually wore a jumper as it got cold! Highlights were the serpentarium - full of poisonous frogs, turtles, tarantulas, vipers, boa contrictors and an overactive rattle snake. Then that night we splurged on a night tour of the cloud forest. That was well worth it. We saw a sloth with her baby, vipers in the wild, an orange tarantula, headlight beetles, a huge ant mound, duelling scorpions, blind spiders, sleeping toucans , owl moths, bats, stick insects the size of branches (mating actually) and blossoming coffee trees. It was absolutely incredible.

The next day we were real Costa Rican adrenaline junkies. We signed up for ziplining and have lived to tell the tale. That was outrageously awesome, scary and awesome again! We did the longest zipline (superman style no less) in Latin America - 1590m long. Seriously scary when you are 100m above the ground flying through at god knows how fast, loking straight down at the jungle below. What an experience. Movie attached...

Loving it?!

Green tree viper

Finally got to see turtles!

Overactive rattlesnake - thankful for the glass between us!

Night tour

Still laughing before the adventure

Headlight beetle, doing a poo on our guide

Then it was time for a 28hour journey to Panama City. The border crossing was horrible. We arrived at 4.30am at the border only to line up for 2 hours before the border actually opened. And then 5 hours after we arrived, we had made it through the immigration process and were back sleeping like babies on the bus all the way through to Panama City. WE finally arrived at our hostel that we had booked. It was rubbish and miles out of town. A grumpy pair of Julien and Jenny reluctantly paid our cancellation fee and ventured back into the city for a couple of nights of airconditioned bliss.

Panama Canal. WOW!!!!! One serious feat of engineering. The highlight of Panama City without a doubt. 14,000 ships go through there every year. The biggest ones pay taxes and levies up to $400,000 USD. The upgrades are well underway and the new canal will be able to let through boats that carry up to 12,000 containers (currently the max is 4500). The museum was so well organised and very informative. While we were there we saw about 10 boats go through, including a small catamaran who seemed as excited to see us as we were to see them!

Then we spent the rest of the day taxiing about making sure we did and saw everything we wanted to in the city before getting the bus north. (which we are just about to do). Panama City is awesome, has loads of great restaurants, beautiful shore lines, impressive modern buildings, great beer, and lovely people. The old city is very impressive. It reminds me of the other old colonial cities and how they would have been a mere 10 years ago before the governments spent millions upgrading it. This old city is a mix of beautifully restored colonial buildings and run down crumbling ones. A really impressive juxtaposition of two lifestyles and two eras. There is no tourist centre to speak of and we were just mixing with the locals, getting laughed at by them when we inadvertently spill water all over ourselves in a tired attempt at rehydration.

Beautiful and fun! Off we go now to the boat.