Skal Vol. 2

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Sorry it has taken so long to write again! Since last time, we finally finished our open water dive course (this seemed to be an ongoing joke with the staff at UDC), found our sea legs, took the boat back to La Ceiba without puking, bussed it to San Pedro Sula, bid farewell to Delaney, got food poisoning AGAIN, and made our way through Nicaragua and Costa Rica to Panama.

After a grueling 12 hour bus trip during the day we arrived at our first stop in Nicaragua, Leon. There isn’t all that much to the city, but there are plenty of things to do in the mucho bonito surrounding areas. On our second day, we went volcano boarding in the afternoon. Unfortunately on the way there, another bus coming from the opposite direction broke down and the road wasn’t big enough for us to get though. After many attempts to move the bus and plenty of discussion they decided to pull a locals fence down for $5 so we could drive around it. When we finally made it to ‘Volcano Negro’ we hiked to the top with our super heavy wooden boards, checked out the stunning view, and zoomed down the side (some of us anyway). Being the brave and tough girls that we are, Tanz and I went first and showed the others how it’s done. I think I’ve earned bragging rights by speeding down at 60km/hr and totally axing myself..ohhhhhh right. The day ended with one of the most gorgeous sunsets I have ever seen, and no glitches with the bus ride back to the hostel.

Our next stop was Granada which is the oldest colonial town in Central America. As nice as it was, we figured it was just another colonial town and decided to move on to San Juan del Sur after a night. San Juan is a pretty chilled coastal town and that’s pretty much what we did there. To be honest though, Tanz and I didn’t like Nicaragua as much as we thought we would. We found the locals to be unfriendly and the men really need to be educated on how to treat woman. I also got charged $6 for a shot glass which is more than I have ever paid for a shot glass, and Nicaragua is meant to be the poorest country in Central America! Aside from that, we did manage to find some epic brownies.

Next stop- Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. Costa Rica wasn’t really in our initial travel plans but we figured we may as well check out somewhere cool for a few nights. Of course the best place we were told to visit was the biggest mission to get to. So up we got at 7am, took a taxi to the border, spent two hours at the border, took a bus to Liberia, another bus to Puntas Arenas, a taxi to the ferry, a ferry to some other place, another bus, and arrived 14 hours later in not Santa Teresa, but Montezuma- woops! It was nice enough though, so we spent the night and went to Santa Teresa the next day.

Somehow the 3 nights we had planned to stay here turned into 11 and Santa Teresa has been one of our favorite places so far on the trip. We stayed in this tree house like hostel which was dominated by Swedes and spent our time hanging on the beach, boogie boarding, trying to fish, unsuccessfully attempting to surf and learning about this stuff called snuz. Snuz is a Swedish tobacco that you put under your upper lip and is meant to be a good alternative to smoking. These Swedes brought 124 packets between them for their trip.. holy crap!! I suppose it’s good to be prepared though, because I met some other Swedes last night who ran out of their snuz and were very sad about it. Oh we also saw Casper again; it was nice to see a familiar face!

After our extended stay in Santa Teresa we made our way to Puerto Viejo, which was full of stoned Americans. We left the next day for Bocas del Toro, Panama where we’re been for a couple of nights now.. both relatively loose too. Yesterday we celebrated my birthday at the beach, eating lobster and loosing credit cards. Tandi got me a bottle of Swedish vodka, a step up from the usual, and a three monkeys figurine.. cheers wifey!!

In the next few days we’ll be heading to Colombia, though we found out that no one is sailing from Panama for the next month because apparently it’s too windy.. such a pity! Oh well.

Anyway enough from me, Buenos noches and mucho love xx

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