WanderingWhy…

Today we made our first border crossing. Now there are a few ways to cross the border from Nicaragua into Costa Rica. You can take a TransNica or Tica bus which is like a Greyhound bus. They will stamp your passports for you, walk you through the process, and take you across the border. You can take a regular chicken bus that will take you across, but you do your own passport. Or you can walk. So we decided the most economical way to cross the border was to walk. And here begins the adventure.

I speak a bit of Spanish, enough to get by I would say. But border crossing is a different experience. First of all, there is very little signage. This caused a great deal of pointing and questions. Second, the border posts are actually 1km apart, with what looks like a truck stop in between. So you pay a fee at the exit of Nicaragua. But that is not really the exit. So you walk maybe 5 minutes and you get to the Passport Desk/Customs in Nicaragua. Here you fill out your forms to leave Nicaragua and get your passport exit stamped from Nicaragua. You also fill out your customs form to enter Costa Rica. So this is the exit, right? Wrong again my little gringa!

Remember I told you about the power outages in Nicaragua? Aside from the rolling ones that you know about, there are other times when the electricity just goes out. And it happened just as we got to the front of the line to have our passports stamped. So you wait. And wait. And wait.

Then after the electricity comes back on, you walk 10 minutes to the Costa Rican passport stamp desk. Stamped and ready to go, right? Wrong! We walked across, so now we need to try to get a bus to our next destination. Again after much questioning and pointing we found a bus, and off to La Cruz, Costa Rica we went. THAT was the exit.

Another bus from La Cruz took us to Bahia Salinas, Costa Rica where we spent 5 days at kite boarding school (I was on standby physical therapy duty for Sean). I will let Sean blog about the sport. But I will tell you about the place we stayed: Sueno Azul Hotel. The rooms looked right out over the bay, which led to the Pacific Ocean. I did yoga everyday with the bay as a backdrop. The people there were unbelievably nice, the food was great, and if you ever have a desire to go kite boarding, or just really get off the beaten path in Costa Rica, this is a great place to chill.

One thing that of course you find in any tropical area is bugs. So far we have shared a lot of critters with you. But check out this one!

Yup that is a scorpion. He was at least 6 inches long, and looked more like a lobster on the wall (to me anyway) versus what it actually was. When I saw it, I could not speak, just point. We were eating dinner with a group from the kite board school, and you have never seen a table clear so fast in your life. A very brave soul, and my new yoga buddy Catherine, took this picture. I was too busy standing on a chair screaming (just kidding, but if there were less people in the room for me to be embarrassed in front of, I would have done it). One guy tried to put a pen next to it for perspective, and it tried to grab the pen! I could not make this stuff up if I wanted to! So every night after that I made Sean look under the bed. Just in case.

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