Having spent many months more than planned in Central America, we were finally ready to make the leap and commit to driving through South America. Admittedly, we’ve had feelings of doubt and homesickness and the many months of heat and humidity hadn’t helped. We were at a critical decision point, but as you all know from the previous post, we went for it and jumped on the sailboat and kept our compasses pointed south. After all, our initial travel goals…
After our life changing experience with the Ngabe-Bugle, our elevated spirits drove us to keep exploring the wonders of Panama. We knew the next few weeks were going to be mixed with excitement and stress with the border crossing into Colombia looming. There are no roads between Panama and Colombia which leave very few options to get a vehicle south of Panama. We decided to ship in a container with Tim and Andrea to cut the costs in half, so the first…
Panama, the last and final country of Central America and the connecting landmass between the 2 larger Americas. As we approach this modern, yet culturally rich country, we cannot help but realize we are likely right at the mid-point of this journey. Having fallen for Costa Rica, and with our thoughts of the big mountains to our south, we hadn’t yet imagined what Panama had to offer, but we were in for many pleasant surprises.
San Jose was a refreshing break for us up at 3,850ft with a cold night of sleep after many warm days on the beach. Mid-day came and Chris, Sarah’s brother, was due to arrive to spend a quick four days living pura vida with us. His flights were successful, so we swooped him up and made our way back down to the beaches.
We left off in Samara where we stopped for some time to volunteer at Camp Supertramp and explore the laid back beach town.
The time was upon us once again to traverse across another political border, this time into Costa Rica. Leaving Nicaragua behind for now, we eagerly anticipated the country known for ‘pura vida‘ which has a deeper and more profound meaning to the locals, which we quickly began to feel once over the border. Famous for it’s biodiversity, lack of military, happy people and potable water, we were ready to jump right in.
The colonial cities of Granada and Leon were wonderful, but quite hot, so we were excited to get back down to the beaches with the notorious offshore winds created by Lake Nicaragua. Fellow travelers had told us of a great surfing zone known as Popoyo, so we busted a kruise to the waves.
After all of the fun we had in El Salvador, we made the move to continue our adventure southward into Nicaragua. After a morning surf at beautiful Punta Mango, we opted to conquer 2 border crossings in the same day. From the beach in El Salvador, we drove towards Honduras with plans to cross into Nicaragua later in the day. Many over-land travelers do this due to the small sliver of land that makes up southern Honduras. The best offerings are in the north…
From the cool mountain air near the volcanoes, we made our way to Mizata, which is at the northern most point where the surf starts. We were excited to improve our surfing while hopefully exploring some small fishing villages along the coast.
After exploring Salvadorian coffee country with cool and cloudy weather all around us, we gladly ventured off to explore the local hot-springs. With all of the volcanic activity of El Salvador, it made sense there would be thermal waters. We even saw several commercial geothermal heat-capture operations.We found a nice resort-like facility that allowed camping but had no rooms to rent, so after closing hours we had the place to ourselves. With over 11 different pools, nice showers and bathrooms…