Ready for Panama

Wednesday – 30 September

Hola! It is a busy week here in Monteverde, and a short report. Lot’s of things going on at both Niall’s school and the Institute, plus we are preparing for our first major travel excursion—about 12 days road trip to Panama. We have plotted a rough route, mostly following the minor highways along Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, as the traffic can make the Pan American highway pretty hairy through much of the course we would travel. We’ll probably try some of it on the way back if the less traveled roads are in poor condition, or it seems just as slow anyway. We would like to see some of the scenery on both routes, particularly one streatch on the PanAm, as about 20 miles of the route south of San Jose travels along the ridge of the continental divide, all of it over 10,000 elevation. If the weather is clear, it is supposed to be amazing to see.

The way we will go will take us past Manuel Antonio National Park, where we’ve visited before. We will probably spend a night there before heading farther south to a small town near the border called San Vito. We are going to attempt to cross the bode rata minor border crossing there to avoid the craziness at the main crossing on the PanAmerican. We’ve heard different horror stories about each option, but we’ve decided to take our chances on the minor crossing and were keeping our fingers crossed that we have all our paperwork in order to sufficiently smooth any hassles. The main crossing sounds very much like Nicaragua—lots of people, no clear sense of what to do, our where to get what stamps or approvals are needed, and lots of lines waiting for whatever needs to be done once you do finally figure our some sense of the order. In that there is only a single simple guard booth at San Vito, it just sounds like it can be a hassle if you haven’t gotten all your paperwork taken care of, as we think we have. If all else fails at San Vito, we’ll drive the 20 miles west to the main crossing point and see what happens there;-)

Once in Panama, we are hoping to spend a few days in Panama City, including a trip on the canal if possible. We also want to spend time wandering around on the Azuero peninsula, which is reputed to be much like rural Spain in both culture and appearance, little changed in several hundred years. We may also spend a little time near Volcan Baru, Panama’s only large volcano, and the site of a cloud forest similar to Monteverde’s. There’s also hot springs & such…

So… we’ll be back to report in a couple of weeks! Hasta luego from the Shannons