Here's an article I wrote recently about Aung San Suu Kyi's release and what it means for Burma.  I visited Burma in 2007.

http://www.thailawforum.com/aung-san-suu-kyi-and-burma-democracy.html

So Bocas del Toro does have an airport that supposedly flies to Panama City, but like the ferry, flights weren't running for some unknown reason. The main town on Bocas was pretty chill but not much going on. Unfortunately, you had to take a boat to get to the nice beaches on the neighboring islands and to get one for a reasonable price you had a to have a group. Looks like I got a late start on the day because they all had already left in the morning. I probably should've taken a tour. The island was actually pretty expensive. My dorm room was $10, boats were $20, and food wasn't cheap. Another strange thing was the supermarkets and bodegas were run by Chinese. Who immigrates to Panama? For better opportunity?

The boat I finally got took me to Isla Basiemento but for a cheaper price they dropped me off at the town and not the beach. They said it was a short walk across the island to Wizard Beach but in fact it was half an hour through mud that at times was a foot deep. I lost my flip flop at one point. The beach was pretty empty but nice.

Back at the hostel was kind of boring, partly due to the people there and partly due to not being able to buy alcohol until midnight. At a place like this its all about the people you meet. Finally midnight arrived and we went to Bar Iguana which was dead and then rockin Bar Condito. There we enjoyed horrible raggaeton and spanish music. The DJ did something I hate even more than raggaeton; he shouted over the music every 5 seconds. At one point they played a slow song to dance to: Beauty and the Beast. That's right, the Disney version. Pretty awesome night. At least we were on the water.

The next day it rained a lot but I decided to go diving in the afternoon anyway. $60 for 2 dives; a wreck and at Casa Blanca. Not great diving due to poor visibility. Later I had dinner with my friend from school and two annoying girls from the hostel, Kristin and Meg. Meg kept telling these stupid jokes that weren't even crack a smile funny. I mostly chilled that night with Stuart, an Aussie guy from the hostel. The bar there was packed but I crashed early because I had to be up at 6 am to get to Panama City the next day.

Once I caught the ferry back from the volcano island in the lake, it was only 45 minutes on the chicken bus to the Costa Rican border.  It was totally disorganized but there wasn't a wait., which I heard could be hours.  You can't help but imagine the Central Americans could really help themselves by creating some sort of EU-style Central American Union to better allow the free flow of people and goods.  Instead they fight wars over soccer (Honduras and El Salvador).

Once across the border I hopped a bus to Liberia, Costa Rica's second city.  For some reason the police kept stopping the bus and I had to get off and have my passport checked no less than 5 times.  It felt like a damn police state.  They must've been looking for Nicaraguans.  I also didn't have a seat.  The other thing that struck me was that Costa Rica looked just as poor as Nicaragua even though it was supposed to be much more developed.  Costa Rica is always held up as a success story and it gets way more tourism than its neighbors, but I guess it's still relatively poor.  The bus station in Liberia looked nearly as crappy as the one in Nicaragua.

Now I was on my way to a place called Monte Verde but I was getting some conflicting information about how exactly I was going to be able to get there and my Spanish just wasn't getting it done.  Thankfully I met a couple of Argentines who spoke English.  I had to take a bus and get off at La Irma.  This was literally the side of the road with only a gas station there but they promised me a bus would eventually come that was going to St. Elena, the town next to Monte Verde, and it eventually did.  After 2 hours on a long and windy road I got to St. Elena and stayed at the Pension Santa Elena where I met a German couple Frank and Lana to while away the evening with.

The next day I was on a 6:15 am bus to Monte Verde for a guided tour of the cloud forest.  Central America is full of the mysterious sounding cloud forests, which I never had heard of before Central America.  It's just a forest that's at a high elevation.  I think they made it up to get people to come to Central America.  The Quakers had moved to Costa Rica for some reason, set up shop at Monte Verde,  and then created the country's first ecological preserve.  The park was nice...it was a forest...and it was raining.  Very atmospheric...and wet.  We saw the famous Central American bird, the Quetzal, from afar and the chicken bird, which I think is like a turkey.

In the afternoon I bought some of the famous Costa Rican coffee to bring back with me and then went on a canopy tour with Amanda, a Canadian girl I met.  Basically they installed a zip line that goes through the treetops, from platform to platform.  You go pretty damn fast and you always feel like you're going to crash into the next platform so it's a lot of fun.  The longest one was over a kilometer.  Since this was my only day in Costa Rica, I'd say the Canopy Tour made it worth it.  You could spend a whole month in Costa Rica so I basically decided I only had time for one place that was not too off the beaten path.

In Nicaragua, there is an island.  In a lake.  With two volcanoes.  That was my destination after Grenada and seemed like maybe it could be the island of Doctor Moreau.  I mean, it sounds like someone should really be doing genetic experiments on animals, people, etc there.  I had to take the chicken bus from Grenada part of the way.  No matter how old the chicken bus is, and it's usually pretty old because it's a decommissioned American school bus, they always seem to have good speakers so they can blast horrible music.  I'm pretty sure those speakers cost more than the bus itself.  In any case after 2 hours standing in the back next to a guy who was actually holding a chicken, I arrived at Rivas from where I had to take a short taxi ride to San Jorge and the dock for the ferry to Ometepe.  San Jorge?  Really?  I'd love to know how many names of towns in Latin America are duplicates of San Jorge, San Pedro, San Carlos, or San Whatever.  Asking for directions is fun when they're like "take the bus to San Jorge" and then I reply "but we're in San Jorge".  "No, the next town is also called San Jorge".

The ferry dropped us off at the main town of Merida, which isn't where you'd really want to spend your time on the island.  Unfortunately, the bus situation to where I wanted to go was terrible so I had to take a $30 shared taxi with Will, a philosophy PhD student I had met, and some other guy.  The island was fairly underdeveloped with bad roads but a nice tropical atmosphere.  An hour later, and two guesthouses that we decided we didn't like later, we arrived at our final destination: Hacienda Merida.  This was a pretty chill place.  Lots of hammocks, which for me is key, a dock for swimming, and a buffet dinner for $6, which was delicious.  Not really much to do and the lights are almost all off by 10pm, but it was relaxing.  They even had netbooks lying around for everyone to use (for a fee).

The next morning me, Will, a couple of Welsh girls, and an English guy, Daniel, decided to rent kayaks and go to infamous Monkey Island.  Now this island was just a 100 sq ft patch of bushes and trees a 10 minute kayak ride from the guesthouse and we heard that the two monkey prisoners on the island were actually put there by the owner of Hacienda Merida so he could get people to rent kayaks and go visit them.  Apparently they really want off that island because they were super aggressive if you got close to the island and there's no question they would jump onto, and well I'm not expert on monkeys, but I would suspect they'd hijack it and paddle back to the main island after killing you.  Monkeys can kayak, right?   Later on we were told that the lake had bull sharks in it, which apparently is plausible since a river from the Caribbean feeds into it.  Our first reaction of course was bull sharks?  Bull shit!  hahahaha.

Back at the guesthouse we found another monkey chained up right outside of the guesthouse, which was sad, but it did allow Daniel, Will, and I to go play with it for about an hour.  Let me me tell you, this was a cute, "Outbreak" monkey who enjoyed pulling our hair.  That afternoon we had to go for a longer kayak ride to some marsh up a river that went in between the two islands.  Very peaceful and we got a sunset and a nice view of the two volcanoes.  The view made Will and Daniel decide to climb the active volcano even though it explodes every year.  We attempted to figure out the odds of it exploding while they were up there.  I was happy I decided to go kayaking during my one full day there anyway since the climb was supposed to be a l0 hour slog through the mud.  Early the next morning I caught the speed boat to the ferry dock, instead of the 4am bus option, to catch the 7:30am ferry and onward transport to Costa Rica.

The Bearded Monkey Hostel in Grenada had horrendous facilities but a good atmosphere with a great open air courtyard.  I got my own uncomfortable room but at least it wasn't a dorm.  I bargained them down from $17 to $11 too.  The morning after I arrived I went out to explore the town...and a new country.  I came straight here from Managua, the capital, because like all the Central American cities it was supposed to suck and be dangerous.  Grenada was a beautiful colonial town similar to Antigua in Guatemala except for much less touristy and it was on a huge lake.  Grenada also seemed a lot poorer than Antigua.

I took a walk down to the Plaza de la Independencia and peaked into the Casa de los Tres Mundos and the Convento y Iglesia de San Francisco, but they really had nothing to offer.  I then wandered down Calle La Calzada, which has all the bars and restaurants, towards the lake, where I realized I should've done the tour that takes you to see the thousands of Isletas in the lake but it was too late.  I pretty much saw all there was to see in a couple of hours so I walked through what felt like the "real" Nicaraguan part of town to take my first chicken bus in Central America to the nearby village of Caterina.  This little village had an awesome viewpoint of Laguna de Apoyo and Volcan Mombacho.  Lots of Nicaraguan families came to hang out up there and blast their music on boom boxes.  There was actually a DJ, but why ruin a perfectly enjoyable viewpoint by playing music so loud?

I got the real chicken bus experience on the way back when twice as many people as was reasonable crammed onto the bus and the guy next to me was actually holding a live chicken.  It took two chicken buses to get back to Grenada for some reason.  Back in town I had a pretty mediocre chicken, rice, and beans dish for $2 from what I thought was the most local place I could find.  I decided at this point that I prefer  Mexican food over Central American food and that I should just get Mexican food wherever I can.

 

View Latino Americano Parte 2 in a larger map

I spent a couple hours in Antigua one night trying to figure out what was the cheapest (and fastest) way to get to Nicaragua.  I went around to a bunch of different travel agents and the cheapest I found was $100 for an 18 hour bus.  Seemed expensive but what could I do?  They picked me up at my hostel at 3 am New Years Day.  When we got to the Guatemala bus station around 4 am they gave me the equivalent of $60 and told me to wait in line and buy my bus ticket.  So in other words I paid $40 for a 45 min taxi ride from Antigua to Guatemala.  I wasn't too happy about this but I should've realized I could've just gone to Guatemala City the night before myself and got my own transportation, but it was just impossible to figure out myself in Antigua due to a lack of information.  $40 goes a long way in Central America.

The bus was fairly comfortable and I slept a lot.  We passed through El Salvador and then Honduras and then into Nicaragua stopping for food at a gas station.  Thank god there was an ATM giving out dollars so I could eat.  Passing in and out of two countries wasn't too fun because it meant everyone had to keep getting off the bus and pass through customs.  We didn't arrive into Managua, the capital of Nicaragua until 8 pm.    It was dark but I wanted to get to Grenada that night.  It's funny how I know I'm getting ripped off, I even asked the woman working in the gas station and she confirmed it.  I have him take me to the place in The Book where it says buses are leaving to Grenada but no luck, they're closed.  I start looking for hostels in The Book on our way back into town when the driver makes a phone call and of course, there's a bunch of minibuses going to Grenada from down the street from where the bus let me off.  I'm sure the driver didn't know about them before.  He did get $10 from me.  The bus to Grenada costs $1 for me and $1 for my bag but they drop me off right in front of my hostel.  I just hate arriving in a new country having no clue what was going on especially at night.  I didn't even know what the exchange rate was at the ATM.  That was a long day of traveling....there was much more to come.