Back by popular demand

Due to the unprecedented amount of requests to update my travel blog (2), I have decided to introduce a two-part mini series entitled, ¨Jon Warner: still doing only semi-interesting things since 1985.¨ The first part will deal with my life after my TEFL program, and the second one will deal with my week in Baruca.


PART ONE: Traveling Costa Rica and Panama

After the course ended, I decided to take a couple weeks and travel around Costa Rica and Panama with two of my friends from the course, Thomas and Theresa. Thomas is 24 from New York and Theresa is 30 from Australia-both good people. Our first stop was the Osa Peninsula in Southern Costa Rica and Corcovado National Park. Corcovado is supposedly the most bio-diverse place in the world. This little park possesses almost 4 percent of all the wildlife in the entire world. It´s crazy. We made base camp in the largest town on the peninsular, Puerto Jimenez. When I say base camp, I really mean we found a cheap hostel to stay in. Our first full day after arriving in Puerto Jimenez we took a collective taxi to the park entrance. The park entrance is about two hours away and the taxi is more like us sitting in the bed of a truck. Still, the ride was beautiful and actually kind of relaxing. After reaching the end of the road-literally, this was one of the more isolated places I´ve ever been to-we had to hike about 3 km on the beach to actually reach the park entrance. Before entering, we decided to stay at a tent lodge, which is basically what it sounds like-a lodge with tents. It was actually a really cool place, only 20 dollars a night and the tents are very big and spacious with cots. There´s no electricity in the tents but there is in the main lodge. The view of the ocean in front with a virgin jungle in the back was spectacular. After staying a night there we decided to get up early in the morning and do a day hike into the park, as we didn´t have the necessary gear to actually camp. The hike was absolutely stunning. All along the beach with the jungle to our right, we walked in about 7 or 8 km until turning back. We say three kinds of monkeys, snakes, a ton of birds, an anteater, and Thomas saw a Tapir when he was out in front. After the day hike, we took the collective taxi back to Puerto Jimenez. For the next few days we hung out on the beaches and just relaxed.

Our next destination was Panama, and so we took a day to travel to the boarder. Once we actually arrived at the boarder, we had some problems actually getting in. In order to enter Panama, you have to have a ticket, be it a plane or bus ticket, that says you will exit the country at some point. Since I had neither, I was faced with two options: one, buy a ticket, or two, bribe the guard. Now, since I have never bribed anybody in my life, I figured this would be a good opportunity to do so. Plus, it was actually cheaper than buying a ticket. So, after deciding what to do, I slipped a ten spot in my passport, handed it to the guard and said I think everything should be in order. It was awesome, I felt like a bad-ass. Once we reached Panama, we stayed in the absolutely gorgeous town called Volcan. There, we stayed in a hostel run by an adorable 70 something Cuban refugee. This place had one of the most beautiful kitchens I had ever seen and so we did a lot of good cooking. In Volcan, we decided to hike the two national parks close by. The problem with getting to these national parks is that buses only drop you off in the general time-zone of the parks and people in Panama have no understanding of distance and time. Needless to say, we were given bad information and a couple of times dropped off about 5 or 6 km away from the entrances. As fate would have it, each time we said aloud we need to hitch a ride, a truck would pull up, the driver would signal us to hop in, and off we would go. It was amazing. The drivers would not accept any money either. The parks themselves were stunning. Pristine cloud/rain forests where you would actually be enveloped by the clouds as you hiked. Amazing. I´ll try to post some pictures later if I feel like it.

After a few days of hiking the parks around Volcan, we decided to hike from Volcan to another town, Boquete, across some mountains. This trail was a trail in name only, as it actually was a river. It was a wet trip, yet a beautiful one. And, once again, we were given bad information about distances. After the trail, people told us it´s about a 2 km walk on the road from the trail end to Boquete. It was more like 12 km. Luckily, once again, we hitched a ride with some very nice people. I used up a lot of good karma on this trip. Boquete was a very lovey city with a very cosmopolitan feel. A ton of coffee shops with delicious coffee and strawberry shakes, since they grow a lot of strawberries there. We spent some very relaxing days in Boquete.

After Boquete, we headed back into Costa Rica where I split ways with my friends on my way to San Jose. There I stayed for a week with my old host family from a couple of years ago and it was really nice to see them again. I really didn´t do much in San Jose, as I was pretty tired from my travels. I did make tamales there, and they were delicious. A very time consuming process I must say. Saw some movies, went out with my host brother, and just slept a lot. All in all a very nice week. On the 20th I went back home to the states for Christmas which was amazing. I wont bore anybody with those details as I saw a good many of you.

Well that wraps up part one. Stay tuned in the next couple of days for part two.