Canal and Carnaval in Panama

We turn up early to the bus station in San Jose and get one of the few seats in the waiting room.  The 11pm bus leaves only two minutes late, we are nice and comfy courtesy of Ticabus blankets and pillows and soon snooze off.  We arrive at the border crossing about 3.45am and queue […]

La Fortuna, Arenal, and back to San Jose

We decided to take the adventurous-sounding jeep-boat-jeep transfer to La Fortuna, our next destination, combining a trip through the mountains with a boat journey.  In actuality, it was way less rugged than it sounded: microbus-boat-microbus, in fact, as it’s very popular these days.  The mountain landscape is wonderful, though, resembling Switzerland, and even more so […]

San Jose to the Cloud Forest

We’d heard terrible things about the border crossing between Nicaragua and Costa Rica: hours spent waiting to get into the correct queue, so on and so forth, so we were mentally prepared for the worst.  One of the advantages, though, of travelling with a long-distance operator like Tica Bus is that they ease the crossing: […]

No, I Don't Want A Hammock, Thank You

We’re taking the public bus from Leon to Granada via Managua: we have to change at UCA, the terminal next to the University of Central America.  On the first bus, we chat to a local guy who has a house in Los Angeles, and when we arrive we need to change to the express to […]

Honduras to Nicaragua on the Tica Bus, and Up a Volcano

So, we left Copan Ruinas by the Hedman Alas luxury bus service to San Pedro Sula (SPS), where we will stay overnight and then catch the 5am Tica Bus service to Leon, Nicaragua, a 12-hour journey.  The trip to SPS was fine, though late, and we were met off the bus by our hostel owner, […]