Day 35: Sunday, Dec 12th (Utila - Tegucigalpa)
Well apparently we were staying t the party central of hotels, because there was a bar right next door that was blasting their music till 4 am. So after another night of not sleeping, it was time for Jason and me to say our goodbyes to the Island and more importantly Taylor. After our 6 am wake up call with Tay Tay I think we were all still a little too groggy to feel the sting of what was actually happening. We barely had enough time to catch our ferry and then it was an hour long bob on the ocean to get back to La Ceiba. We caught a cab that took us to the bus station and that was how the day went. About two hours outside of Tegucigalpa we got to take a pit stop, so Jason told me to go out and get some food while he stayed and watched our bags. I came back after buying us some lunch, when I noticed that the door was locked. I tapped on the window to a confused looking Jason and got him to come up to the front of the bus for me. He couldn't open the door, because the driver had locked it, so I slid him his lunch and went and sat and enjoyed some fresh air while he cooked in the steaming hot Honduras bus. 15 minutes later we were reunited when I realized that he had been sitting on the bus by himself the whole time. Crazy gringo. We made it to the cap city and then went straight to the hotel. Can you say luxury. TV, HOT water, air con, just living the high life. We went for dinner at the chinese restaurant next door because we weren't adventurous enough to leave our comfort zone and Jason choose his customary random dish and I tried to order vegetarian chow mein. What ended up coming out for us was a noodle plate with veggies and hot dogs for Jason, and the biggest plate of veggies, mostly broccoli for me. You win some you lose some I guess. But tomorrows another day of what we like to call extreme traveling, so nightie night. -Lisa
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She's eating! |
A good nights sleep and we were up early to catch the bus. Running low on cash we had to only book the first part of our journey (Teg-Managua) and not all the way to San Jose. After booking the bus for today, Lisa waiting with the bags and I ran off to find an ATM. As we sat in the bus station we contemplated extending our bus trip for an extra $20 all the way to SJ... it turned out to bite us in the end. The bus from Managua-SJ was full when we arrived :( We met a finnish girl in the bus station and shared a room with her... by the bus station in Managua is pretty sketchy and we had been in the exact area so we didn't mind helping her out. By missing the connecting bus, we had to settle for the executive bus for $35 which was 'scheduled' for noon the next day or wait an extra day in Managua. Because we didn't have to get up early we went out to explore a local mall, have dinner and see a movie. All of the big block buster movies are in English with spanish subtitles so we luck out that way. But the titles are in Spanish, so we were unsure on what we were going to see. Turns out we'd (I'd) seen the movie and also bought a spanish pirated/filmed in the theater version of the movie but it was still nice. The movie theaters are just as nice or nicer. The locals truly ruin the movie, one couple brought there toddler to an R rated movie, not that she could read most of it, but let her wander around crying because the movie was loud and there was lots of fighting scenes (we watched The Town) another guy sat there and talked on his phone in front of us during the theater. Tsk Tsk!-Jason
Day 37: Tuesday Dec 14th (Managua - San Jose, Costa Rica)
Our Finnish friend left for her bus super early, but she literally did not make any noise or turn on any lights. We didn't get woken up until the confused hotel manager came to our room twice trying to wake me and Jason up because he thought that our bus was an early one too. I managed with my broken Spanish to explain that we didn't need to be at the bus station till 11. We had a good laugh then went back to bed for a few more hours, knowing what our day had in store for us. We got to the station super early thinking we could just drop off our bags and then go out for breakfast, which of course wasn't the case. We waited around till 11:45, dropped our bags off and then had to sit in the room, thinking that our bus was leaving at 12. No, that was the "tourist" bus and ours was coming... almost two hours later. Once we got on the bus we were crammed on with the already 50 passengers who had already been traveling since El Salvador. Lunch was provided: chicken, rice, and zucchini mixture. Jason got to feel a little bit better paying more knowing that he is eating double what everyone else is. Rode the bus in traffic for what felt like forever and finally made it to the border. Brought back memories of over a month ago when we had crossed this border on foot. Decided to try our luck with more DVDs, Hot Tub Time Machine, RED, and expendables. Crossing into Costa Rica was kind of different. They made everyone take their checked bags off the bus and we all stood in a line, open the zipper to our bag and then really just looked for one second and then we had to put our bags back on the bus. Seemed kind of time consuming. Nothing too special happened for the rest of the bus trip, except when we were in Liberia dropping people off we stopped off at Burger King and everyone was given a cheesey burger, and yet again Jason got to have double his helping and get his moneys worth. We didn't get into San Jose until after 10:30, and we weren't feeling too adventurous enough so we just stayed at the Tica Bus hotel. Not exactly in our price range but not really worth risking anything in our last days taking a cab in downtown San Jose.
-Lisa
Day 38: Wednesday Dec 15th (San Jose, Costa Rica)The Tica Bus hotel was nice, but too expensive to stay for a couple more days. We decided to find a nice hostel so we could set up a shuttle as well as book a canopy tour through them. We lucked out and found by far the nicest hostel of our journey. Equipped with a pool/lounge area, bar, full massive communal kitchen, theater room and 6 computers. It was slightly more expensive then the cheapest hostel in town, so it attracted a slightly more mature crowd which was nice. Nearing the end of our journey we wanted to get rested up before we get ready to live in a Van again.
After relocating, we found that we were right downtown near the business district. Nothing was really close, but everything that you could possibly need was within walking distance and it was safe to walk around. We walked around, found a nice vegetarian restaurant for lunch (by luck) which was really good and embarrassingly Lisa pointed out, the first one of our entire trip (Sorry!). After lunch we headed to the artisan market to grab some last minute souvenirs and to give me another chance to haggle over prices before heading back to Wal-Mart shopping. We had been opting out of buying too many things earlier in our journey because we were all pretty maxed out on space. Bad news is, Costa Rica is a lot more expensive then Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. We were so limited on space I had to buy a new bag to put my newly acquired possessions in.-Jason
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| A little trick I learnt from TQ |
Day 39: Thursday Dec 16th (San Jose, Costa Rica)
Today being our last day in Central America, we decided that we didn't really want to spend the day hanging around the hostel or the city so we booked a canopy zip lining tour. The bus picked us up at 8 and took us to tres rios (not to be confused with trois rivieres). We stopped at a restaurant a little up the mountain to wait for the other 2 that were going to be coming with us. We started off by hopping into an old 80's chevy suburban that the driver had to do a rolling start down the hill to get it going. After that they drove us part way up the mountain and we had to do the rest. This was really the first kind of exercise I have done since I was sick and the first 10 minutes really hit me hard. My heart was beating so hard I thought it was going to pop out. After what seemed like an eternity we had walked as far as we needed to. They set us up with our sweet gear that made me feel like Lara Croft and then it was time for the first zip. I didn't get the whole brake thing and went full speed into our guide the first couple times we went down. Just when they brought us to a really long one I was about to give up. I wasn't getting it, but the guide just told me to calm down and enjoy it, but don't lean back so much and I finally had it. The rest of the lines were good. We got to see a lot of different trees and a waterfall. We even did a few where we didn't have to brake at all and then would bounce you around the whole time you were going down. All was going good until then brought us to our surprise, a nice little rappelling free fall. Jason was the brave man and went first. Like the rest of the day he was cool, calm and collected. I was second. Not so cool, calm, or collected. I didn't weigh enough to do a true free fall so there I was hanging in the air up 90 feet and the guy was telling me I had to hand feed the rope myself. I was not too impressed, I was like Taylor's friend from Wendy's who was telling him it wasn't funny anymore. Finally with all our feet back on the ground we had a few more zip lines to do, a really long on and then of course the day ended with another free fall. Shorter but still intimidating for my poor heart. The guides thought they were pretty funny shooting me down a couple seconds then all of sudden stopping me. Jason thought it was pretty hilarious too and said if he had had a video of it the tour would have all been worth while. We got back to the restaurant, had a typical Costa Rican dish then waited for our driver for over half an hour. Once back in San Jose we had a little siesta time and then headed back to the market for last minute things and then back to the veggie restaurant. NOT as good as yesterday. I still like to keep the memory of it good though :)
-Lisa
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| The dreaded free fall platform |
Day 40: Friday Dec 17th (SJO - LAX - Free Andy)
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