OurBiggerPicture

By the time we got to the Osa Peninsula, jutting off the Pacific Coast just above Panama, we have crisscrossed the entire expanse of this country. We have seen so much beautiful wildlife in the national parks, but driving slow and meandering around, I see this country differently than I did before. Much of what we see out the window is not rainforest and monkeys - its pineapples fields, banana plantations, miles of palm oil plantations, patches of bald mountains…and cows. Thi

Cool mountain air. Cool camping. The coolest bird. The air doesn't feel like air anymore. It feels like a hot, damp, wool sweater we put on every time we do more than sit still. We are so done with the heat and humidity. It makes us lethargic and cranky. Locals we talked to also complain that this is an unusually oppressive October. Awesome. So we opened the map to look for higher ground and cooler temps. Only a couple hours north from here are the mist-covered peaks of the T

John has a friend, Sam, who owns a home down here on the central coast of Costa Rica, close to Uvita. Before we left the States we had lunch with Sam in L.A., and told him it would be great to meet down here if the timing worked. Once we got close to crossing the border, we emailed Sam and told him we would probaby be here in October. Sam said October is the ONE month he never comes to Costa Rica. October is the hottest and most humid month, with the most rain. And here we ar

Costa Rica is said to be a great country for adrenaline junkies. We’ve had a few adrenaline rushes since we got to Costa Rica, and not all of them have been pleasant. The first one was during our border crossing from Nicaragua into Costa Rica. A few days before we crossed, we read about a guy who had overstayed his vehicle permit in Peru by one day - and the border officials impounded his motorcycle. He was in a mess trying to get it back; red tape, fines, lawyers, etc. I sa

The Río San Juan slices through Central America for 120 miles, beginning at Lake Nicaragua, forming a long stretch of the border with Costa Rica and ending at the Caribbean Sea. As early as the 16th century, conquistador Hernán Cortés is said to have written to the King of Spain: "He who possesses the Rio San Juan could be considered the owner of the world." View of the mouth of Rio San Juan at Lake Nicaragua and the town of San Carlos from the prop plane At the height of the

The coast north and south of San Juan del Sur is undeveloped, wild and beautiful. Tiny villages spread out from the beaches, with cattle, pigs and chickens roaming the dirt roads. The town of San Juan del Sur has grown up from a small fishing village to ground zero for Nicaraguan surfing. It is has Victorian clapboard houses, a few decent restaurants and a steady stream of young international visitors. A cruise port is getting built on the edge of the crescent beach here so w

The forecast for the next few days calls for rain, thunderstorms, and high winds. The harbor just north of here is closed through the weekend...and this is a problem. In my continuing quest to see as much wildlife between here and Argentina as possible, we planned to spend a couple extra days in the Cancun area to see the whale sharks. We tried to see them in La Paz, Baja (bad weather) and Placencia, Belize (too early). John and I have been in Mexico for 7 months and we are r

From our little house in Tulum, we moved at a faster pace the next couple of weeks, covering lots of ground. First, we headed for the ruins of Chichen Itza. Another very old pile of rocks but this one has been named one of the New 7 Wonders of the World, so we had to go. This time though, we hired a guide. The conversation of how many ruins to visit on this trip seems to fall into two camps. The, “I don’t want to miss any” and “I’m done after half an hour”. Most of the overl

Belize is our first foreign border crossing. We decided to do our border run into Belize instead of Guatemala because we heard it was an easy crossing. It was. The hardest part was finding our way around the newly constructed roads (with no signs) to get through each step in the process. All in, the crossing it took us about an hour. Which is good news, because 2 weeks later we will do it all over again in the opposite direction. As we cross the border and drive less than a

We came to Puerto Escondido on a bit of a mission. Before we left home a friend of ours in Petaluma, Michael "Bug" Deacon, asked us if we would deliver a book he had written to a friend of his down here. The friend, Dan Clemons, owns a little hotel on Zicatela Beach in Puerto Escondido called Hotel Casa Dan, and he's been down here for 25 years. It is a cute, cheap & chill place. We decided to check in for a few days. It was long and roundabout delivery, but the book made it