March 13-14th, 2019
Today we start our journey to Panama where we are meeting my friends from WA for the week. We got up early to catch an 8am shuttle from San Pedro, GT to Guatemala City where we fly out of. Being nervous of any road delays, we gave ourselves ample time to get to Guatemala City where we had a 10pm flight. The shuttle ride was about 6 hours and it stopped in Antigua for about an hour. It was a long ride but went totally smooth without any delays. We got to the airport around 2pm and had to wait for our 10pm flight to San Jose, Cosa Rica. Flying in and out of San Jose was by far the cheapest option so we chose to fly there and take another shuttle from San Jose to Bocas del Toro, Panama. Unfortunately, the Guatemala City airport did not have much to offer in terms of things to fill the time.
Having all of our luggage does not make us very mobile in terms of exploring a city so we just landed a table in the airport food court where we had our options of McDonalds, Subway, pizza, or a fried chicken place. We tried most of the options during our 8 hours there. Starting with a mozzarella stick appetizer from Micky D’s, a pizza for lunch and then a Subway sub for dinner. We killed the rest of the day playing around on our phones and playing cards. After a very long day of waiting around it was finally time to get on the plane (which boarded about an hour late). It was a pretty short flight to San Jose, Costa Rica and we got in around 1am. Our shuttle to Bocas del Toro was leaving at 6am the next morning so there was really no point in getting a hotel. After collecting our luggage, we walked around the airport until we found a spot to rest until it was time for our shuttle. Brendan found a pretty good little spot and I got out my sleeping bag and pad and laid on the floor. Taylor stayed up and had a good laugh at two girls who walked by Brendan and decided to snap chat him sleeping with his eye mask on.
Once 4am rolled around we packed up camp and headed to the local Denny’s where we waited for our 6am shuttle. For some reason the Denny’s in Costa Rica was like 5 times the cost of a Denny’s at home so Brendan and Taylor drank coffee and I settled on the worst smoothie I ever had in my life. The shuttle picked us up and we were excited to be that much closer to Bocas. Just another quick 10-hour shuttle ride and we would be there! The shuttle stopped several places where we transferred to get on other shuttles. Then got stuck in a 2-hour road construction delay… It felt like another very long day of traveling. It was exciting to get to the Panama border though. Even though we were in Costa Rica for less than 24 hours, they were still eager to collect our exit fees (about $8 USD each). We got our stamps and walked across another land border.
There was a shuttle waiting for us on the other side which took us to the town of Almirante. In Almirante we got a water taxi to take us the rest of the way to the island of Bocas del Toro. We arrived a little after 6pm and were totally exhausted.
We booked a couple nights at a hostel called Mamallenas until our friends arrived on Saturday. We checked into the hostel and were told there were no showers available because they didn’t have water. After being on the road for 36 hours without any real sleep this news almost caused mini breakdowns. After raising a bit of a fuss, we convinced them to turn on the shower for 5 min and B and Taylor each got a quick rinse. I was too tired to care and crawled into my top bunk and went to sleep looking forward to tomorrow being a new day with a shower. This was our story of three countries in 36 hours!