Central America
We arrived at the El Amatillo border crossing between Honduras and El Salvador after a 12-14 hour bus ride from Managua that had started at 2AM. Tired but hopeful as the bus pulled up to the immigration counter, we had a little bit more confidence after having successfully entered Honduras and Nicaragua in the day(s) before. Instead of getting off the bus like we'd done at the Nicaragua-Honduras border ...
My brother sent me an email that the border crossings in Central America could be difficult for us with the changing Trump dynamics with Mexico otherwise I wouldn’t have known about the “problems” there. Our lives are intimately following the so-called “immigration issues” in the U.S.We aren’t crusading for change. We aren’t trying to change the world. We just want to cross the border with Naing Naing, ...
Getting a Guatemala visa for Naing Naing, a Myanmar citizen, was straightforward and simple. We applied for the visa at the Guatemala embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. We were able to enter Honduras after flying into Nicaragua and receiving a visa-on-arrival from Nicaragua. Through the CA-4 agreement between Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, Naing Naing was allowed to also enter Honduras via ...
The people on remote islands tend to be a bit closed-minded, like people in small, isolated towns in the Great Plains.
But people in bigger cities bumble. They stare at the their phones as they walk down crowded sidewalks. Why are big city people so tuned out? John has taken to running smack into them head-on just to prove a point.
The language of the country where ...
But people in bigger cities bumble. They stare at the their phones as they walk down crowded sidewalks. Why are big city people so tuned out? John has taken to running smack into them head-on just to prove a point.
The language of the country where ...
Road Trip to Mexico, Central America, and South America: What to Take with You, What to Leave Behind
As an American, we’ve been socialized to believe that we need a lot more stuff than we really do (for travel and for life). It’s part of our culture to place faith in our things to get us through tough situations, but as a general rule, it’s best to travel light. The value of being mobile and carrying very little rates high for us when we’re traveling. It doesn’t matter whether or not you have a cool gadget ...
Atenas, Costa Rica is touted as one of those places in the world with a "perfect climate". It's important, as a traveler, to keep in mind that the word "perfect" is a subjective term. Atenas has mild temperatures, but the humidity is constant, at least during the monsoon season. I never successfully dried a pair of socks after washing them in Atenas. But I also didn't have a clothes dryer. The amenities in ...
Costa Rica is strange in terms of public transportation. The streets aren't named and neither are the bus stops. In fact, the bus stops are nothing but a yellow line on the pavement in some places. The vacation rentals we stayed in had one of two problems: either the furniture was hard and uncomfortable, or it was soft and stinky from the damp, humid air. Another important thing to consider when booking a ...
Related Posts:Costa Rica Tourism: Boat Trip to Tortuguero (video)Costa Rica Tourism: Boat Trip to Tortuguero Part II (video)Tortuguero National Park - Part 1 (How to Get to Tortuguero National Park)Tortuguero National Park- Part II (Being There)Green Sea Turtles at Tortuguero National Park -- By Jennifer Shipp ...
On our way back home from Manuel Antonio National Park, we got stuck in a traffic jam caused by a landslide. So, we wound up in a never-ending tunnel for almost an hour. ...
Tortuguero is a tiny village in Costa Rica located on the Caribbean coast. Although the trip getting there was a little arduous, Tortuguero was a fascinating place that made the journey worth it! The culture in Tortuguero was completely different from the rest of Costa Rica. While we were there we went out in the middle of the night to watch sea turtles nesting on the beach and wandered around the village. ...
This video depicts a bit of the boat ride to the Caribbean town of Tortuguero, Costa Rica. The journey to Tortuguero was somewhat of an ordeal; we first had to rent a car to drive to a small port along a river, and then we had to go on a boat ride through the Costa Rican jungle before we finally arrived at the tiny town. Lydian and John both thought that the boat was going to be less of a river boat and ...
We went to Tortuguero because green sea turtles are currently nesting there, but though the turtles were nifty, they were not the highlight of the trip, at least for me. Rather, I was completely fascinated by the backwards (or perhaps sideways) culture in this place.Basically, I couldn’t imagine living in a place like Tortuguero or for that matter, any of the places along the river leading to ...
It’s been a little bit of time since we went and saw Tortuguero, but the time has given me the opportunity to process the whole thing (It needed processing, trust me). The whole turtle seeing thing felt a little scary to me, to be honest. We were in the middle of no where, and we were being led off in the dark to some unknown place far away from far away from civilization.We started in the town, which ...
Since we’ve been to Costa Rica, we’ve stayed in two different vacation rentals, one in Alajuela, one in Atenas, and a small hotel in Tortugero. I have opinions about all of these places, but I can’t seem to bring myself to rate any of them. I have an ongoing moral dilemma that plays out in my mind about writing reviews about vacation rentals. I know it would be potentially helpful to people to hear our ...
Yesterday, for the first time, I got to see the dog next door that has awakened me every morning and often throughout the night as well as interrupting and disrupting my days ever since we’ve been here in Atenas, Costa Rica. I have envisioned a Chihuahua. An ugly, stupid little dog that’s completely annoying and lacking in personality. I have pictured myself kicking this annoying, stupid personality-less ...
I’m serious. I’ve had it. As I write this I feel like I have various bugs of all different shapes and sizes crawling on me. My mom got bitten by a creepy-crawly yesterday (Ick!). They all hate me, and they all want to kill me, and they refuse to go away. I want to go home to my bug free environment, and that’s just what I’m going to do in seven days.Yesterday night, I came across a bunch of ants that were ...
Fred is our landlord here in Atenas, Costa Rica. I won’t give out his real name because I’m not interested in hurting him, but I have to describe this man, not because he is unique but because he is a character I keep running into in my life.Fred is an expatriate from the United States. He flew airplanes for an airline that went out of business in the 1980’s. He told us his life story as he was driving ...
There are five more days left of our Costa Rican experience and every morning right now I wake up with the same thought: I can’t wait to go home. I have many many other very complicated thoughts and emotions that tangentially relate to this main thought, which has caused me to become…mentally constipated. I honestly don’t know where to start and a big part of me just wants to focus on going home and stop ...