Hats off to Panama

Well, that trip was surprisingly fine. We left at noon and passed some of the most impressive scenery so far in eastern Costa Rica. It went dark before we hit the border. They have some pretty stupid quirks at that border. As Charles says there are no signs anywhere telling you where you are suposed to go. Not even in Spanish, which we could figure out if they existed. You just exit one country and walk through no mans land asking people where you are supposed to go and eventually (hopefully) you will end up where you should be. I ended up at the window only to be given a stamped card and told to go back to a (previously unnoticed) window to pay my $5 tourist fee. Charles was tickled that he only had to pay $1 because he is on his UK passport. Then return to the first window to get the stamp. Then go back on the bus to get our bags off so we could stand in a room with them and fill out a form before being told to go back to our bus. All the while there was a man from the bus yelling at us to hurry up ... as if it was in our control...

...Then the bus got stopped twice in the next hour for passport inspections... what's that about? In Costa Rica a few days ago we were stopped 3 times in a row on the same bus by police inspecting ID.

I actually managed to get a few hours of sleep on the bus. It was very much like one from home...it had movies (unfortunately dubbed in spanish), aggressive air conditioning (the first time I have used my hoodie since Syracuse and I put my towel over me like a blanket too), cushy seats and a bathroom (I would never use it, but it is nice to know it exists for insurance purposes). We arrived 2am Costa Rica time which was 3 am here. There were a fleet of taxis to meet the bus and they all brought us to the same hotel. It was sort of funny to see the bus disperse at the shopping mall outside town and reconvene 15 minutes later in the hotel lobby. Charles and I slept top to tail in a double bed which wasn´t bad at all really. I got up 9.30 this morning and found a new hotel next door with two beds for $15 less than this one. I don´t even feel like I am down on sleep.

Off to see the engineering marvel