Back from Panama

Monday, 18 September

Hello again from Costa Rica!
The Shannons have once again returned to Monteverde and something resembling a normal routine after two weeks of traveling through much of the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and western Panama. We had an almost perfect trip, with only one blemish… On our last day, as we returned home-- our car was broken into and my camera and Norma’s wallet stolen. Fortunately, nothing irreplaceable was lost other than about 400 digital photos, so we apologize for the relative scarcity of photos to accompany the following descriptions of our Panama travels. After all the years that Norma and I have been traveling, it’s amazing that this is only the first real theft we’ve ever encountered, so we’re counting our blessings that we got off with only the couple things taken even this time. On the up side (I think ;-)), we've acquired an adorable little dog or more accurately, she's acquired us, who we can now leave in the car as a guard. More details on that later…

To begin, a little background on our trip and then we’ll break things into several entries over the next couple of days just to spread things out. We spent 14 days traveling, so there’s LOTS to tell! Like our trip to Nicaragua a month or so ago, this one was also inspired as a “visa-cation,” or an opportunity to extend our 90 day tourist visas to fit our travel plans back to the US in December. Niall had 6 days off from school as well, so we figured… why not? Time to see some of central America! So, on the 2^nd of September, we all headed out toward Panama along Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast. To start the trip, we spent two nights in Quepos at Manuel Antonio National Park. We’ve been to Manuel Antonio before, but this is the first time we’ve had time to actually wander the park itself, instead of just enjoying the beach setting. This park is one of Costa Rica’s real gems, and while small in area (only several hundred hectares), it remains a wonderful place—steep cliffs, covered in dense rainforest, ending at the edges of beautiful beaches. While again we spent most of our time swimming and body surfing on the beach outside our hotel, we really enjoyed a half day hike through the park. This park fits perfectly with Norma’s idea of adventure “light” -- hiking on trails that are not too steep or rough, well marked, reasonably dry and stable, and not more than a couple kilometers long. It also didn’t hurt that the trail provided some gorgeous views out over the ocean to some small islands, as well as abundant flora & fauna. We even came across a troop of white-faced monkeys that tried to beg for hand-outs. Norma really got them going by crinkling the plastic wrapper on some granola bars, and they practically tried to dig the contents out of another woman’s purse!

We also really enjoyed our hotel in Manuel Antonio. We stayed at a place called the Hotel Karahé (which we highly recommend), which has a restaurant right on the beach, a pool adjacent to the restaurant, and a variety of reasonably priced rooms in cabañas terracing up the hillside with spectacular ocean views. The grounds are beautifully planted in tropical trees and shrubs, and to Niall’s delight, filled with Iguanas and Basilisk lizards. He even had the opportunity to rescue about an 18” Iguana from a cat that tried to catch and eat it. The crazy lizard then refused to leave Niall’s arms for several hours!

On Monday Sept. 4^th, we packed up the car and headed farther south and east into parts of Costa Rica we’ve never visited before. We began by driving along the coast on a VERY rough road to Playa Dominical, before heading inland to San Isidro to continue on the Inter-American Highway. San Isidro is a thriving small city with perhaps the ugliest modernist cathedral on the central square in town we’ve ever seen. It looked like something out of Star Wars, complete with the “battle-scarred” look (it is only 30 or so years old, but it clearly isn’t aging well). The countryside around San Isidro is, however, absolutely beautiful! The city is located at the end of a long inland valley with very high mountains to the North (10-12,000ft) and a smaller but not less rugged coast range to the south. The valley is filled with rolling farmland, much of which is planted in pineapple. Apparently much of the pineapple industry that was once centered in Hawaii has now moved to Central America, where it has become one of Costa Rica’s most important exports. At any rate, it certainly makes for nice roadside scenery. It also didn’t hurt that this section of the Inter-Americana is perhaps the best in Costa Rica—nice and smooth, with wide shoulders, and no potholes.

We headed south and east to our ultimate destination for the day, San Vito, just shy of the Panama border. San Vito is a rather unremarkable community of primarily Italian immigrants who moved to Costa Rica following WWII. Italian is still spoken on the streets, however, that’s about all the European culture that seems to have come along. Not even a single good restaurant in town! In the morning, after spending the night in a nice but non-descript hotel, we visited San Vito’s one real claim to fame- the Wilson Botanical Gardens. The gardens are located on the top of the coast range of mountains at about 3500ft elevation, and this allows them to grow almost anything that lives in a relatively tropical climate. Designed by Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx in the 1960’s, it encompasses 40 acres of fantastic collections of palms, ferns, bromeliads, heliconias, bamboos, etc. Absolutely worth the visit! Even Niall admitted to being impressed by many plants (Like the 60-80' tall bamboo--it’s tough to get an 8 year-old into visiting gardens!).

We finished walking around the garden about 11:00am and then proceeded to the border with Panama, figuring we should have missed any morning rush, and hoping to get through before lunch break. The border is only about 5 miles from San Vito, but surprisingly there is little evidence of an international border anywhere. No signs, no traffic heading to or from, nada. We had been directed to use this crossing for just this reason by friends in Monteverde, who assured us it was just out of the way, and therefore very easy in terms of bureaucracy, waiting, etc. Our guidebooks, however, all warned against this crossing, without ever giving much reasoning. We decided to trust our friends, and while it certainly isn’t easy to find (we had to ask directions about four times in 5 miles), it certainly was small and simple.

On the Costa Rican side is small block building marked by a Costa Rican flag and with one very bored looking person manning the border controls. It is approached by a typical rutted and pot holey gravel road with no signs or directions whatsoever. We stopped at the building and the immigration officer gave our documents a cursory check, and in less than 5 minutes, sent us 100 meters down the road to the Panamanian frontier. The border is marked by a short chain-link fence running parallel to a small, rutted, dirt street in Costa Rican territory, and intersected by several streets emerging from Panamanian territory. In stark contrast, each street coming from Panama is nicely paved with curbs, gutters, and sidewalks. Just into Panama is another small building with a Panamanian flag, and three windows with very courteous immigration officials. We were quickly directed to the grocery store across the street in Costa Rica to purchase timbres (official stamps), which were placed in our passports, signed & sealed, and ultimately acted as our “visas” for the visit. Just around the corner was another small building with another official who prepared a “visa” for our car. Unfortunately, we ran into our only glitch here. She was eating lunch, and refused to deal with us until 1:00pm when she was back on duty. Unfortunately we weren’t aware that Panama is an hour ahead of Costa Rica (which does not use daylight savings time), so we arrived at the border at 12:30 instead or 11:30 like we had thought. Cést la vie. The car immigration person even then was nice and directed us to a great lunch spot that cost all of $4.00 for lunch for three. Panama was looking very good, right from the get-go! While we killed the rest of the lunch hour, we also shopped along the main street heading into Panama, and immediately started buying stuff that always seems expensive in Costa Rica. Norma was clearly in heaven. When we returned to the auto visa person, we got everything stamped and sealed in less than 5 minutes and we were on our way. Almost as easy as driving from the US to Canada or vice-versa! So anyone thinking of driving from Costa Rica to Panama, ignore the guidebooks-- cross at San Vito – Rio Sereno! As long as your documents are in order, everything should go smoothly, easily, and quickly.

More tomorrow on the wonders of Panama…