Costa Rica is a beautiful country. The wildlife and the jungles are exactly what we had heard... Pretty darn good. However, in our opinion, we feel like CR is way too touristy for the budget traveler and it is very difficult to get through without shelling out a lot of cash. It can be done, but it is very easy to spend a lot of money... Even when something looks inexpensive in the restaurants it is slapped with 23% service/sales charge making it downright expensive (comparable to US dinners, which after 4 dollar lobster dinners is absurd!). We cooked every meal, [View Full Entry]

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We got into San Juan del Sur on Sunday and stayed sunday night in a nice little hospedaje. We met up with some other travelers we have seen several times and went out to a nice restaurant to treat ourselves before camping. The next day we caught a shuttle to Maderas, which is the beach that everyone goes to surf. San Juan del Sur is a little beach town right on a bay, so there isnt any waves. Once we arrived at Maderas we walked to the Beach just south, Majagual. There is one hostel and its a bit pricy so [View Full Entry]

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We left the beloved Granada and took the two oclock ferry straight to Isla de Ometepe. We met up with another Swedish guy named Joaquin on the ferry. He has been traveling for six months and hes a very cool and interesting guy. The ferry was pretty nice and not too bouncy. We arrived at dark and hiked for an hour to a cheap hostel the first night. We stayed in Hostel Ortiz, which was pretty cool and lax. Hammocks and tables and chairs for just hanging out. There werent very many travelers there but we didnt mind. Its a very [View Full Entry]

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We have been in Granada now for 9 days and have loved it. This city is amazing. Beautiful. Granada, in our opinion, is way better than its 'rivals' Antigua and Leon. We have been taking classes at a school here and living with a family nearby. I think it is one of those 'maturing' times during our lives when we voluntarily elect to study and put ourselves through school... The classes have been good and were very cheap as well. Our family was awesome and they had a 5 year old son that never had much energy... Oh wait. The [View Full Entry]

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So we arrived in Leon, Nicaragua early in the afternoon Saturday. We have been staying at the Big Foot Hostel here and have enjoyed creating amazing meals in the kitchen (not a lie). Special thanks to Aaron and your meat creation you showed me at school, we have been eating that the whole time. Beans, beef, onions, corn, tomato sauce. Delicious. Sunday. The first whole day we have in Nicaragua and we hear of an "Indian Horse Race" and a cock fight. We definately wanted to check something like this out so we went with a few others to our wonderful [View Full Entry]

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We left Utila and caught the 2 p.m. ferry. Oh my we had a long day of travel ahead of us. We caught a bus straight from La Ceiba to Teguc. Little did we know it would be a 7 hour bus ride...... It was pretty scenic on the bus. Rolling hills, cows crossing the road, and a pretty nice sunset from the bus window. We wrote in our journals and drifted in and out of "bus sleep", aka horrible sleep. We arrived into Tegucigalpa around 1130 pm. Crap. We didnt have a lot of money and it was really late [View Full Entry]

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So we just finished our Advanced open water certification. One of our instructors, Ryan, was nice enough to let us stay at his apartment all week while doing it so we didnt have to get a hotel. The whole diving experience was awesome. To wrap it up we swam with dolphins, did a night dive, saw a massive shipwreck at 30m, swam with sea turtles and spotted eagle rays. Thats bout it in a nutshell! [View Full Entry]

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Amazing. This place is sick. Theres only two or three roads that go around the islands but there is tons of things on each of them. We get into town after an hour ferry ride from La Ceiba. Immediately upon arriving, we are swarmed with like fifteen representatives from each dive shop on the island. There are around ten or so dive shops here, maybe a few more. All of them are pretty much the same price. We walked around the island with Jen and Darron, a couple from Oregon we have been traveling with for the past week or so, [View Full Entry]

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We spent 11 hours on buses from Copan and went straight to La Ceiba on the Caribbean coast off of Honduras. We got into La Ceiba and took a cab straight to our hostel. Our hostel is right on the beach. We went to the markets in town during the day. Its huge and kinda sketch but whatever. Its very cheap too. We stayed in La Ceiba a night, just to stock up on groceries for the Islands. We went to the store and when we came back there were wild horses running around right outside of our hostel. Pretty different [View Full Entry]

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Copan is amazing. It is probably one of my favorite places weve been so far. It looks a lot like Antigue, only cleaner. All of the buildings are in great shape and theres several backpacker hangouts that were awesome. We ended up staying in a hostel called La Manzana Verde, the green apple. It was extremely clean, six dollars, and there were tons of kids there. Strangly enough, we were beginning to settle down one night and we ran into a girl who went to the same high school as us! What a small world. We also met up with some [View Full Entry]

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