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Published: July 15th 2007
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Hi everyone, firstly thanks very much to everyone who has been sending us messages and posting comments, it has been great to hear from you all! Nice to know what's going on at home too!
Quite a lot has happened since the last time we wrote, which was on our first day in Cahuita on the caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Luckily the day after we wrote the weather did clear up, and we had our first scorching hot day of caribbean sun, yay! We decided to have a bit of a relaxing day on the beach, but unfortunately ended up as the typical brits do.... totally sunburnt! Even being covered head to toe in factor 30 didn't seem to help, and after just two hours we had transformed into nice pink lobsters. Think there may be some pics to demonstrate later...
The place we stayed at in Cahuita was really nice, they were cabinas again - which is better than a hostel, being a private room, but with none of the facilities of a hotel. Most of our time in Cahuita was spent on the beach chilling out, and we spent three nights there. We also rented
some bikes and rode around the area which was fun, but it was mostly a time to destress (James and navigating public transport doesn't go well)
After our time in Cahuita (which is a pretty quiet village) we moved on down the coast to Puerto Viejo, which only took half an hour on the bus. We found a really good place to stay here, called Cabinas Jacaranda. These were cabinas as normal but set in tropical gardens with mosaic paths running through, and everything was decorated with colours and patterns... you can see on the photos. We planned to stay three days in Puerto Viejo, but it ended up being four as I wasn't feeling too well, and not wanting to travel on whilst sick! Puerto Viejo is more of a party town, but as it's low season right now it wasn't hugely busy. Our days were spent on the beach or exploring, and this time it wasn't the sunburn causing us grief, but mosquitos. I think our insect repellent must have been a tasty flavour, as we're now covered head to toe in bites!
After relaxing for all that time it was time to head to Panama,
and attempt our first border crossing! All in all the journey turned out to be pretty easy, we took a bus from Puerto Viejo to the border for an hour and a half, then had to get our exit stamps from an office and walk across a bridge into Panama. The bridge was definitely the worst part, as it consisted of planks of wood set across an old iron bridge, and the way it was spaced out, if you missed a plank, you were in the river. So we teetered across with our backpacks hoping we wouldn't end up floating on them along the border... and eventually made it in one piece. Success!
We then got a taxi to the coast nearby, and then a water taxi which took us out to the Bocas del Toro islands. We had to wait three hours for the water taxi to turn up though, so it was lucky that we had a pack of cards and some canadians to rope into playing with us to keep us entertained! The water taxi - just a boat incase you hadn't guessed, took forty-five minutes to get to the islands, and it was well worth
the wait. Hopefully we'll be able to get the video online which shows a clip of the journey, which went through the all the tropical wetlands and across the caribbean sea.
When we reached the main island, Isla Colon, it was just a case of finding a place to stay which was nice and easy (and cheap!) and then we were free to begin our exploration of Panama!
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James and Nicole
James Morris and Nicole Maslen
Christine Bill and Max
Hello! Lovely to hear from you, we're surprised how many people have been reading this! Hope you're well and not too upset by the rain :) xxx