La Fortuna to Panama

Ben writes - Hello from Panama City. It was Panamanian independance day yesterday and somebody obviously forgot to set off all their fireworks because they are going off right now right outside the window AND THEY ARE VERY LOUD. Tigs is in the kitchen cooking our dinner so I have taken the opportunity to crack open a cold one and dispatch you another message from the other side of the world. We travelled north from San Jose after leaving the turtle sanctuary to La Fortuna in the shadows of the impessive Volcan Arenal. It was covered in Cloud when we arrived so we took the time to visit a very luxurious thermal spa. It was amazing - the waters reached 40 degrees C and the gardens were stunning. Cost a bomb though. http://www.tabacon.com/ Next we took a boat over Lago Arenal and a jeep up the unpaved roads to Santa Elena/Monteverde. We had hoped to have a go on the zip lines that are set up in the cloud forest there. Unfortunately the next day we had to come straight back to San Jose without doing any of it because we had been unable to organise our onward travel to Panama via net and phone and were worried that we were cutting it fine to make our flight to Quito on the 30th. We were able to get a bus straight away once we were back in San Jose so off we set for Panama. We got here after an 18 hour overnight bus journey from hell. To winge a little - it really was very uncomfortable. We had no legroom at all! It seemed to go on forever!! The customs official at the border took a liking to our silver compass when he searched our stuff but finally let us go on our way with the compass. Not fun at 3am. The Costa Rica - Panama border crossing was not as unpleasant as the Mexico - Guatemala crossing but the staff were impressively incompetant and it took a massive amount of time. I am now getting used to the latin lack of urgency however and am trying to shrug my shoulders like everybody else seems to. Also my backpack got covered in engine oil. But we did get to see a Peter Pan cartoon dubbed in Spanish. We have been here for a couple of days at the Voyager International hostel: www.geocities.com/voyagerih/english.html and have had a chance to have good look around the town. We went up to the old town yesterday and saw the residence of El Presidente then went up to Miraflores Locks on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal. It really is very impressive and very big. If you like engineering (and who doesn't?) more information is availiable at www.pancanal.com .

I just found out that the fireworks are not anything to do with Panamanian independance and are in fact to celebrate the opening of 'Casino Royale' down the road.

Equador next.