Goodbye Tortugero!



Last night it rained hard all night. We woke up to loud claps of thunder. It was beautiful. It is the rainy season, but on this trip most of the rain has been in the evening and at night. It hasn’t dampened our experience one bit — pun intended. 

We woke up at about 6:45 to gather our things, have coffee, and get ready to leave. We loaded up for the 75 minute boat ride and departed at about 8:45. 

There was a boat for the luggage and another for the guests, but they were short two seats … so we had to stay. 
Just kidding … we were hoping. 

A group of 6 moved over to the luggage boat and we joined them. They were older folks from Barcelona. We got some restaurant recommendations for the next time we are there. There was also a guide with us, Denis. 



We should mention that there were very few US Americans at our lodge — we didn’t meet any. We did meet Spaniards, Dutch, Danish, Germans, Belgians, Mexicans, Costa Ricans, New Zealanders, Swiss, and French. 



We made it to Caño Blanco, the little port, to transfer to the bus. We had finished most of the 90 minute/first leg bus ride when just 15 minutes from our first stop for lunch the highway came to a halt. There was a crash at the site of road construction that already had one side of the highway closed.   In the scheme of things, it’s not that big of a deal, but we were stuck for almost two hours. We always say, if we’re going to have travel issues, it’s always better to have them at the end of the trip or on the way home. 



After a quick, light lunch we were on our way. Everyone on the bus except us were continuing their vacations from the lunch stop (it’s owned by the tour company) by other transportation. So it was just two tour guides and the two of us on the huge bus to San Jose. The mountains were very misty today, like fog, so we didn’t have as nice views as a few days ago.  There seems to be more uphill going towards San Jose and there are lots of semi-trucks. It’s slow going. It’s about 45 miles but it took two hours. 

We got dropped off right at our hotel, at the same one we stayed when we arrived. We talked a lot with the guide, Daniel, and got some restaurant recommendations for tonight. We had dinner at a pretty nice place … but we recommend sticking with local fair instead of “fine dining” in Central America — except Panamá City, which is international enough it seems to have some good places. 



We did have a sea bass ceviche appetizer which was great!



We fly home tomorrow. 😩

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