Alex – ChrisGreenwood.co.uk

Do we know the way to San Jose?

We had a slow two days in Costa Rica’s capital between finishing our Spanish school and starting our ‘proper’ travelling together. We used the time to catch up on sleep and some admin.

The hostel (Costa Rica Backpackers) was nice, with a big communal area, and a fairly cheap restaurant and bar in house. It was the first place we booked for ourselves since starting this sabbatical, as the Spanish course took all the hard work out of travelling. The bedroom was an OK size, but the biggest plus was there was an actual bedside light, only one, but the first time we’ve had such a luxury since the first week in Panama!

Whitewater Rafting on the Pacuare River

The Travelling Spanish class included a two day rafting trip. We were both really excited for this, having been whitewater rafting a few times before but only for a few hours each time. We left on the Saturday morning from Turrialba, stayed overnight in a camp in the jungle, and continued down the river to Siquirres the next day.

On the first day we packed a small bag which was taken away to arrive by car at the camp that evening. For the day we could only take with us things that could get wet. We were dropped off outside of town and walked down to the river with our guide José-Luis. He was great, so enthusiastic and knowledgeable. He overheard me say I didn’t get to see red frogs in Bocas, two minutes later he found a couple for me by the side of the path!

We had two rafts for the ten of us, and two guides, plus a kayaker who went ahead at each rapid and took photos and videos for us. Our raft was me, Chris, Luisa, Berglin, and Mimi. Luisa and Berglin had never been before, but José-Luis was great and soon got everyone going.

We’ve arrived in Costa Rica! A week in Turrialba

We spent our fourth week of the Spanish school in Turrialba, Costa Rica. This is my first visit to Costa Rica. Chris visited before when he was 20, and has been keen to bring me here ever since. My first impressions in comparison to Panama are that we immediately saw more wealth here, with more solidly built houses with satellite dishes even in the countryside. However, everything here costs a lot more, we stopped at a supermarket and found toothpaste for $8 and even avocados more expensive than in the UK!

The school is nice, well set up with lots of space for classrooms and a good size kitchen. We had a nice room with a view onto the garden and shared bathrooms next door. Only our group of 10 are staying at the hostel plus another couple who are remote working from here for a month!

Boquete

Our second week in Panama was in a town called Boquete. It’s a more relaxed place than Panama City, located in the hills with much cooler weather. In my opinion the perfect climate as it was mid 20s and sunny most of the time!

Our journey there was our first taste of public transport in Panama. We’d expected a six hour bus ride to a city called David, and then a change in David to a local bus for 35 minutes. It was a Sunday and there was some kind of event near the main road about an hour in, we ended up in a traffic jam for two hours. Having left Panama City at 8:30am, we finally arrived at the hostel 11 hours later!! The nice thing was that the bus stopped for a 30 minute break for everyone to take lunch and go to the toilet, a welcome break and not something we’d seen on previous long distance bus trips in South America.

San Blas Islands

As part of our Spanish school we got to spend two nights on the San Blas islands. There are around 365 islands in the San Blas archipelago of which around 50 are inhabited and they are owned by the Kuna people, who also own the forest along the coast here. They are celebrating 100 years of independence from Panama this year. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming.

Isla Franklin where we stayed is tiny, with around 25 tourist cabañas and a few for locals who only stay here when it’s tourist season. It’s by far the smallest island we’ve stayed on taking only a couple of minutes to walk the length of and less than 5 minutes for a complete circuit. Everything is very simple, we stayed in a small cabaña made from coconut palms with a sand floor. There are shared showers and toilets, and the power (two noisy diesel generators) is only on for a few hours in the evening. It’s a mini paradise.

Buenos Aires, Walking, Dancing and Culture

Buenos Aires is somewhere I’d really been looking forward to visiting on this trip. The capital of Argentina, it is a huge, sprawling, vibrant and interesting city. It was also quite warm, high twenties/thirties most days we were there and pretty humid! I’m going to describe our experiences in one blog post, although in reality we visited BA in three separate trips, using it as a base to leave some of our baggage, whilst we explored further afield to Iguazu and Uruguay.

Continue reading “Buenos Aires, Walking, Dancing and Culture”

Thoughts on Uruguay

Uruguay was just a ‘maybe’ on our original rough plan for travelling, but we’re really glad we went. This little country sits between Argentina and Brazil on the Atlantic coast of South America. The main tourist attractions are along the coast, but we also managed to see a small part of the interior of the country. It is an interesting country, with a pretty liberal government and a more European outlook.

Birds taking flight over the sea by Cabo Polonio

Uruguay is short of ‘must do’ attractions but the countryside and coastal scenery are beautiful. We enjoyed a week with a hire car exploring the coast, from the wild and rugged beaches in the north down to the more manicured beach resorts in the south. A real highlight was staying out in the sierra at Caballos de Luz, getting to really enjoy horse-riding and experience life off-grid.

Uruguayan Road Trip

Hiring a car is not something we’d thought we’d be doing when we left the UK, South America not being somewhere known for great roads, and backpackers not tending to hire cars on a budget. However, we’ve really enjoyed our road trips, we found them a not too expensive alternative to public transport, and they were all a great way to see the countries outside of the main tourist hot spots. Our fourth and final road trip, despite a few car problems, was no exception.

Day 1: Montevideo to Punta del Este

We left our flat in Montevideo and stood in the sun at a bus stop, we’d crossed that road quite a few times in the last few days and pretty much always had to wait for buses to pass. This day however there didn’t seem to be any around. One came past but we checked and it didn’t go near the main bus station so we kept waiting. We got chatting to a guy at the stop and he said there was some kind of strike on. We waited a bit more but in the end, after almost an hour, we decided to use Uber and get a taxi all the way to the airport where we were picking up our hire car. Eventually we made it and were sitting in our hire car and ready to go on road trip number four!

Colonia and Montevideo

After Iguazu falls we spent a few days in Buenos Aires before heading off to Uruguay. At this point we had just over two weeks of our trip left, time for a little exploration of Uruguay before heading back to Buenos Aires for our final weekend.

Crumbling colonial architecture in Colonia

We started our Uruguayan travels in the town of Colonia-del-Sacramento, known locally as Colonia. It’s a small town with a beautiful historic centre, a nice place to spend a bit of time relaxing after hectic Buenos Aires.

We arrived by boat from Buenos Aires on the Colonia Express ferry, covering the 27 miles of the Rio Plata between Argentina and Uruguay in about an hour and a half. We arrived at a fairly run down looking port, heading through old shipping containers made into a makeshift walkway and past some sad looking buildings. Then suddenly we came into a new terminal building, very smart but unfinished and not quite connected to the port just yet! From this arrival we weren’t quite sure what to make of Uruguay yet.

Iguazu Falls

It’s now been just over a year since we returned from South America and as the last few posts are nearly ready to go and we’re about to start a new chapter in our lives we thought it was time to get a move on closing out the last one………..

After returning from Antarctica we had a couple of days of transit right up to the north of Argentina. Having spent about two months travelling down Chile and Argentina from San Pedro in Chile to Ushuaia in Argentina and then down to Antarctica, it was surreal to travel so many thousands of kilometres in just two flights. We arrived to a warm and humid day in Puerto Iguazú, the main town for access to the famous Iguazu Falls on the Argentina-Brazil border.

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