Costa Rica and Panama

Costa Rica
Our first stop in Costa Rica was Playa del Coco, a small town on the northwest coast. We were visiting Kai's friend from Sydney and her boyfriend. We spent the days at the beach and the nights at the local pubs. Our last night there, we had a huge bbq with a nice salad, loads of grilled veggies, and chicken. It was great to be able to have nice food again. I'm beginning to get very sick of beans&rice and veggie pasta (which is basically all I eat these days). :) It was so nice of them to let us stay over...We had so much fun!

Made the very long journey to the other side of the country to Tortuguero. We went that night to see the turtles laying eggs on the beach. We saw 3 turtles: one coming out of the water, one laying her eggs and then covering them with sand, and another getting back into the water when she was finished. It was really amazing to be able to watch the whole thing!

The next day we took a boat down the river and then traveled to Puerto Viejo, a small beach town. One day we hired bicycles and rode 12 km along the coast passing other cute little towns along the way. Costa Rica was playing Mexico in a World Cup qualifier, so we went to a place that had a big screen TV outside to watch it. The locals were upset at the result, but everyone had a great night anyways. The next morning we visited Cahuita. We went snorkeling. We saw a stingray and some fish, but the visibility was very poor so we didn't see too much. Then we walked through the national forest and saw vine snakes, howler monkeys, white-faced monkeys, and a huge iguana. We also saw 2 toed and 3 toed sloths. I had never seen one before....They look so weird! We watched one change branches, and it took him ages to make a simple movement!

Panama
Crossed the border on an old bridge and made our way to Bocas del Toro. It's a beautiful group of islands! However, I was a bit concerned at seeing people's bathrooms built over the water along the coasts of the islands. I decided then that there was no way I was swimming in the rivers! We stayed on Isla Colon. The first day we hired bicycles again and rode up to a really beautiful beach about 8km away. The bikes were old and not very good for anything other than a flat, paved road, and the conditions of the "roads" were awful so it wasn't too enjoyable of a ride. But the beach was amazing! The next day we went to Boca del Drago, at the very north part of the island. We saw tons of huge starfish! The beaches were full of them. We snorkeled around a bit to see even more. Very beautiful! We went with a guy we met at the hostel, Sebastian. He found a coconut and managed to break it open so we could eat and drink it. The following day, we took a boat over to the other island, Isla Bastimentos. We went to Red Frog Beach, where of course we saw the tiny red frogs.

Went to David...not too exciting, but we stayed there because we wanted to do a nice day hike nearby, from Cerro Punta to Boquete. We got up early and were all excited about the adventure only to find out when we got there that the trail was closed. We were disappointed, but decided to take a bus to Boquete since it had to be nicer than David. Boquete is very small, but cute. It's in the mountains, so it was a bit chilly. Went to the gardens to see some pretty flowers and walked around the town. Not too much to do, though, so we headed back to David to catch the overnight bus to Panama City.

The bus was freezing cold! We arrived at 5am exhausted. Luckily we could get into our room right away so we got to sleep a few more hours. We went to Casco Viejo in the morning and then to the Panama Canal, the Miraflores locks. We got to see 3 huge ships going through the locks that afternoon. It was really cool! The next day, we went to the Panama Viejo ruins. It's a small site of ruins, but it was nice. Starting to run out of things to do in Panama City...Spent a day at Isla Taboga. We wanted to hike up to a nice viewpoint, but we got scared of the snakes. We ended up spending the whole day just at the beach. Very excited because we finally got our boat organised, and we're leaving tomorrow for 3 days in the San Blas Islands on our way to South America!

New photos are here:
http://dulceandkai.blogspot.com/