Rafting in Costa Rica

This was expensive, but sooooo worth it.

Costa Rica

We arrived on June 25th, after a very long and exhausting trip from Managua.  A 11 hr trip.  It was around 5:00pm when we arrived to Ticabus station. Checked in for the night and went out for dinner. We ate at a small italian place on Paseo Colon, a walking distance place.

Then, we got back to the hotel and went to sleep. Got picked up at 5:45am to go white water rafting.  Greg didn't exactly know what we were doing in Costa Rica, but I announced the news the night before since we needed to pack only one bag, therefore we needed to rearrange our clothes in the bags.

It was a big bus that picked up a lot of people, including a highschool group of kids coming from USA.

Managua

June 24th

The bus left Tegucigalpa at 9:30am, it was a long long ride.  Not much to do, besides watching random song-clips of random movies? musicals? it was weird. A montage of songs from all ages! yes ALL ages.

I fell asleep for a long time while Greg stayed awake...

We arrived in Managua at around 7:15pm, checked in to the hotel (Ticabus hotel) and waited for one of Debbie's friends to come pick us up.  Him and his wife came by and took us to a restaurant that had the best steak ever! it was awesome.  They were super nice, we really enjoyed our night together.

We got back to the hotel at around 10pm, it was a big room with 4 beds and AC (for $40/night). The wireless wasn't working so I decided to go check out what was going on. I went outside and asked this man that was sitting there checking his cellphone.  We stated talking and I mentioned we were on our way to Costa Rica, and that I was from El Salvador.  He mentioned he was a singer and was coming from El Salvador going back home to Costa Rica.  Really nice man, Kelvin Rodriguez.

One of his songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMOBsRe4Pow

Turns out he had gone to talked to Radio Mesias in El Salvador (the radio station my mom listens to at home), and he is doing a cruzada in november in estadio Cuscatlan!  How weird is it I would meet him there? He gave me his CD's.   He was indeed a nice blessed man.

Once again, when you travel, reach out, talk to people, meet, adventure.

Went to bed because the Ticabus hotel guy was getting a bit upset, he turned off the lights and said: you both need to go to bed, it's late and your bus leaves early! I will only knock on your door once, and if you don't get up, the bus will leave without you.  My thought: Yes, mom.

Roatan

Day 5- 9

A long trip from San Salvador to Tegucigalpa. It was a crazy adventure at the beginning. 

We got the bus station to take a 12:00 (noon) bus to Tegu. Well we went on the bus for about 10 min, the AC wasn't working and that was making everyone really mad. They told us that we were going to change buses. So we waited at a gas station for the other bus, which never came.  After 30 min of waiting we went back to the station to get on the other bus (Note that the station was 10 min away). Got on the other bus, this time the AC was working! (Happy face), all aboard and.... The door is not closing. What?! So the driver turns the bus off and starts it back up, wait... It's not starting.... That took 1.5 hours to figure out. So we left El Salvador at 2 pm and got to Tegucigalpa at 9pm.

 The border wasn't so bad, it was a quick stop. My cousin was waiting for us at the ticabus station. She took us home and we stayed at her place that night, woke up early to take a 6am bus to la ceiba. 

Looked for a cab in La Ceiba to take us to the ferry to Roatan. The ride is $10 for a. 20-25 ride. The driver was nice and stopped at BK for us to grab lunch. We also arranged that he would pick us up at the ferry 4 days later.

Checked in for the ferry and waited an hour or so. In the meantime we watched Spain destroyed Tahiti with a 10-0 in Soccer. Painful to watch.

It wasn't so pleasant on the way to Roatan. I got so sick that I used up 3 throw up bags. The waves were so big!  Once we finally made it to land looked for another cab to take us to Posada Arco Iris. He was also a nice driver and also arranged to pick us up on the way back.

We arrived in Roatan on June 20th.  Watched Miami Heat beat Spurs that night, and got dinner at a small place.

Our stay in Roatan was great. We rented snorkel equipment for $5 each/day. We took water taxis back and forth between west end (where we were staying) and west bay (where the really nice beach is). 

We snorkel a lot, so much that we got pruny, Greg saw a sea turtle from up close, we saw barracudas (scary) and tons of coral, very cool looking coral. The beach was nice the sun on our back not so nice. We fell asleep on some beach chairs by the beach So I got this weird sunburn on my back with leaf shaped (being under a tree).

Roatan was nice, we left on June 23rd. Took the ferry back to La Ceiba, where "don Ernesto" was waiting for us, the Cab driver.

Made it back to the "Viena" station, where we took the bus back to Tegucigalpa. That night we ate at chillis, with my cousin and Elise (my cousins roommate). Elise is an old friend from Calvin that I knew back in my freshman year. We lived in the same dorm freshman and sophomore year. Overnight we stayed at my cousins.  Oh one more thing to mention, Greg's ear was plugged! and it stayed plugged for the rest of the trip.

The next morning the bus left Tegucigalpa at 9:30am on June 24th.

El Salvador

Day 3-5

We were in El Salvador from June 17-19. It was great to be home and eat my moms food and see my sister.  Parents are doing well, just always hard to leave them behind.

We took a "microbus" that picked us up in Antigua at our hotel at 8:00am to El Salvador which dropped us off at hotel Decameron.  There my parents were waiting for us.

On the way to El Salvador we met a lady from Finland (I think?!) she was a character. She was on a 2.5 month trip through CA and was stopping in El Salvador for a few days. She had a round nose ring and a few other piercings, red hair and maybe a few tattoos.  She may have been called the girl with the dragon tattoo in a previous life. Seriously.  We talked for sometime, she explained how she does not like the politics or government in the USA, that she has a layover in Panama on her way back home and that she would AT ALL costs fly through somewhere else but USA.  She was quite upset at the fact that once she stopped in USA for a layover and they had to get her fingerprints at customs (normal procedure) and how there is only two political parties vs like 18 that they have in her country.   She was anti-religion, and anti many other things. Oh well, I wasn't ashamed of my "And if out God is for us" badge on my bag.

It is this what drives me more to travel the world, because you meet so many people on the way. It's incredible how everyone has different opinions about things. It's interesting that people care so much about the government listening to their conversations, I mean if you're doing things right, then why would you care?  I appreciate that the government is watching over and taking care of security issues.

While traveling, meet people, reach out. You would be surprised.

We went to el Boqueron (San Salvador's volcano) and my school where I attended 13 years of my life. Saw some of the nouns and professors from school and introduced Greg. We also went to the market in Santa Tecla, I wanted Greg to see this place (inside) because I wanted him to be aware of where people spend their entire lives sometimes! Working there is not an easy thing, working there is crazy hard!

June 17th is Father's Day so we got a nice meal by the beach and at night we celebrated with my cousins and my aunt and uncle. Claudia my cousin brought a cake to celebrate.

It was nice to just sit for sometime, take in the home environment, play with toffie, watch TV and in general relax.  Home is where my heart belongs.  So many good stories, so many good times, it's hard to believe that I've been gone for 7 years now.  I'm getting old....

It was a great but very short trip to El Salvador. Of course the expected happened: my mom packed me a whole bag with food, from jocotes to Diana chips, to little bread snacks and also peperechas!  all of this for the trip to Honduras.

I hope to someday be at least a quarter of caring with my children compared to my mom.

Antigua Guatemala

Day 2.

Woke up early morning, we got picked up at the posada at 6am for a tour to Pacaya Volcano.

It was a good moderate hike, nothing too bad. It was a bit disappointing that we couldn't go all the way up! Since January of this year they don't allow anyone to get closer to the crater.

It was a group of about 15 people with us, some of them had ridden the shuttle with us  from Guatemala City airport to Antigua the night before.

Came back from the volcano and Greg and I went out to get lunch, then walked around the city and up to cerro de la Cruz. Cerro de la cruz has an awesome view.  I had been to Antigua many times before but for some reason I had never walked up there.  Went by the little mercadito of souvenirs, very colorful place. We walked a lot it was a very tiring day but very worth it.

Got dinner at the cebollines restaurant around the corner from our place.

Centro America here we go!

It was June 15th which meant getting up at 3:00 am to catch a flight.

Day 1 did not turn out as expected. Flew out of Houston at 6:30am, that means we left the house by 4. 

The layover in Mexico was supposed to be a 2 hour thing, well it turned into an 8 hour layover. Sad day, we got to Antigua at 9pm instead of 1 pm.  The Mexico city airport was closed for a few hours due to visibility issues so we were re-routed to Acapulco where we sat in the plane for 4 hours.  The Mexico city airport was incredibly packed, not gonna lie I was very disappointed about the whole things since all I wanted was to be in Guatemala and tour the city.

We finally arrived in Guatemala city airport where I had to borrow a phone to call the driver to come pick us up.  He was not very friendly since he said: Los he estado buscando desde temprano y no los he encontrado, tengo mas gente aqui que han estado esperando y ya todos estan enojados" Which wasn't my fault at all since I had called in to say our flight had been delayed and we were coming in at a different time. Also turns out the people in the car didn't even have an idea that we were late! In conclusion: sorry sir, no great service, no tip.

We arrived in Antigua and went out to get some dinner then back to the posada (posada San Vicente) for the night.

A frustrating day.

The layovers...

Greg seems to be tired!

He is actually asleep!

Nos vamos de vacas :) !

Months of planning, Greg and I had been looking for a vacation that wouldn't empty the pockets.  Central America seemed close enough and interesting to us. We started planning back in February and bought the tickets in March.  We both knew it was going to be a crazy trip since sightseeing six countries in 2 weeks is not an easy task.

Greg and I got married on June 30th, 2012! so it would be a year during this trip.  Greg has two weeks off during the summer so we wanted to explore, celebrate, adventure and see new territories.  Also, by the end of the trip, we realize that we would have covered the entire North America and Central America (minus Belize).

We have been together to:
- Alaska (Which I know it's not a country, but worth mentioning it on its own)
- Canada
- USA: TX, CO, TN, MI, IL, UT, FL, AL, GA, LA.
- Mexico: Cabo San Lucas.
- Guatemala
- El Salvador
- Honduras
- Nicaragua
- Costa Rica
- Panama

I planned most of the trip without telling Greg everything about it, more of a surprise trip. Packed everything in a bag each and off we went to Central America. 

As months went by I booked a few things such as: 

- Transportation in Guatemala

- Hotel in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Roatan.

- Bus passes

- Volcano hike in Guatemala

- Overnight white water rafting at the Pacuare river in Costa rica through www.riostropicales.com 

- Of course the flights.