We´re finally back in the mountains, our native habitat. Let the South America section of our adventure begin! We bid Adios to Central America and hopped over Colombia for safety sake with a quick return to Costa Rica. We enjoyed a fantastic four-hour layover in the fancy San Jose airport, complete with Karin´s Cafe Britt coffee and candy samples and unwrapped reading material so we could finally peruse (Panamanians like to cover their books and magazines in air-tight plastic so curious little travelers can´t snoop through or tatter their prized pages). We stepped out of the airport in Ecu [View Full Entry]

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Believe it or not, we are just about beached out. So we said ¨Adios¨ to one of the best Caribbean beaches we´ve ever seen and road down to Panama City. Panama City is as metropolitan as Central America gets, which means there are skyscrapers, casinos, nightclubs, malls, movie theatres, and huge grocery stores full of goodies. There is also big-city transportation, which means better chicken buses decked out with not only amazingly detailed paint jobs, but also flashing black lights and bumping sound systems. Rock on. Trevor also spotted nitrous BMX bikes - the same stuff used in rocket moto [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Tortuguero, we hopped a bus down to Puerto Viejo and spent a couple days here dodging drug dealers and other equally repulsive lowlifes such as bad smelling hippies hawking necklaces. We got out of there pretty quickly. We crossed the border into Panama across a rickity old train bridge (pictured) which was fun. It reminded me of the illegal bridge crossing that must be done after rafting the upper Animas, but Ten High was not involved. Panama has been great! Nice people, cheap food, the best beer so far (Panama cerveza its called), and incredible islands. We took [View Full Entry]

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When we last left our Costa Rican adventure, our goal was to venture to Tortuguero to see a tortuga feliz (happy sea turtle). Instead, we witnessed much more. Parque Nacional Tortuguero protects the nesting beach for green, leatherback and hawksbill turtles. It´s the most important green turtle hatchery in not only the Caribbean, but the entire Western Hemisphere - and and we were just in time for the end of nesting season. Tortuguero is only accessible by boat so Trev and I left the big city to take two buses and a two-hour boat ride through canals that snake through what [View Full Entry]

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You've all heard Costa Rica is a little slice of heaven. We're here to tell you that it's all true. When we first breezed across the border, we beach-hopped along the Nicoya Peninsula with stops at Playa Coco and Playa Sámara. In Sámara, we stayed just 10 steps from the beach with a yard full of palm trees and a cute and nosy little neighbor, a chihuaua named Sancho. We took our first surfing lesson and actually did catch a few sweet waves, dudes. We practiced for only two hours and it was us against the ocean... The ocean won - [View Full Entry]

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Nica, Nica, Nicanotgonnastaytoolong. Well, let me start off by saying that I wholeheartedly realize that we most likely did not give this country as much of a chance as we should have. We arrived in Managua to a super sketchy one block walk with a bunch of dudes running after us from the bus stop to our hotel. The "receptionist" quickly unlocked about 4 metal gates and let us in. She told us that we could walk a half block to get some food (which strangely enough was an Irish pub where I had a delicious Guiness), but that we could [View Full Entry]

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Lately Trevor and I head to the ocean instead of to our cubicles each morning. What a difference a matter of months makes... We dive twice a day off the coast of Roatan in the Bay Islands of Honduras, and since this is the world's second-largest barrier reef, there are over 44 dive sites within minutes from us. Our master diver is a 38-year-old ex-marine from the islands/Milwaukee named Alenger (aka our good friend Al) who guides us through underwater ship wrecks and spots sealife galour. During our 10 dives, we saw sea turtles, stingrays, green-eyed eels, baracudas, jelly fish, lobsters, [View Full Entry]

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We tore ourselves away from our familia and Rosalia's delicious meals to see Antigua on our way to Honduras. This city is supposed to be one of Guatemala's highlights. It's beautiful with bright buildings, jade museums, and a thousand hip, hip, hip shops, restaurants and bars. It's as cosmopolitan as Central America gets. However, it´s also packed with tourists and high prices. And not even the "Irish pub" has more than the usual Gallo beer. The Gallo people seriously monopolize the beer supply and the few canned Guinnesses are pricey since they're shipped from Panama. We did stumble upon [View Full Entry]

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We have had a really interesting two weeks here and I would like to reflect on this time with you all, so sit tight and here we go: Family: Our family was the greatest. We had so much fun with them and laughed through every meal. They even gave us a wedding present of a mayan cloth for the kitchen. We (mostly Liz) learned how to make tortillas, tamalitos, cakes, and salsas from Rosalia and in return we gave her the precious gift of how to make a hot dog and rice krispy treats. We were really excited to learn how [View Full Entry]

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It took two days, three bus rides, and three boat rides to get to San Pedro la Laguna in Guatemala. Each boat ride was a little like Mr. Toad´s Wild Ride on water - a splashing good time with our personal flotation devices securely fastened. Now we´re in a gorgeous, Spanish-speaking Lake Tahoe surrounded by mountains and volcanos, and it feels good to mingle with these friendly Guatemaltecas again. Upon our return, Trev and I lived it up with some lake swimming and volcano viewing from a tree house-like hotel room with the first hot water in two weeks and Home [View Full Entry]

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