Central America

The next morning CR and I woke up at 6am to catch the bus to Volcan Mombacho. CR wanted to buy souvenirs but we didn't have the time. We had a disagreement the night before and some bad feelings leaked into the morning. He thought I was being childish and I thought he was being emotionally defensive. We talked about it and those feelings quickly evaporated when we reached Volcan Mombacho.

This place was crazy. We could have take nthe "ecobus" up to the top of the volacano but we decided to hike instead. It was a rigorous hike: 2 hours to hike about 4 miles, climbing about 1000 meters or 3000 feet, with our 30 pound backpacks on. We were dying on the climb up but the hard exercise felt good.

I love cloud forests. Volcan Mombacho felt cool, breezy, misty, mysterious, and reaching the top was a worthy goal to reach for. In contrast, when I think of rain forests, I think of humid, mildewy, sticky, unending. We hopped a gate to a less safe part of the trail and heard what I now think was a howling monkey. It scared us at the time but we pushed on and make to Mirador La Roca, at 1222 meters. What a climb.

We actaully decided to run down the mountain, chasing down the "ecobus". We stopped at a coffee plantation on the volcano and bought souvenir t-shirts. We walked down to the highway and caught a chicken bus to Penas Blancas, the border with Costa Rica.

We walked the border and cleared customs fast. We weren't sure if we were going to push for San Jose that night, or stop somewhere else on the way, so we spent about 20 minutes figuring out where to go.

Little did we know that the last bus to San Jose was leaving. We decided to go to San Jose and asked the ticket guy for a bus to San Jose. He kept saying "soulemente a pied". I was like, "only a foot???" I looked in my dictionary and realized that he meant standing room only. We agreed, but the bus was already 200 feet down the road. The ticket guy shouted out and the bus stopped - we paid the driver and got on th ebus. We stood for about 3 hours, watching beautiful sunsets, and then seats opened up.

We arrived in San Jose probably around 9pm. After some frantic searching for housing, we ended up in Tranquillo Backpackers. Like most hostels, this place was luxurious, expensive, and filled with a certain type of traveller... in my negative moments I felt like they were wannabe Indiana Jones, but in retrospect, they were just finding their own type of adventure and wandering and relaxation.