July, 2014 | When Sparks Fly

Archive for July 2014

Back to Costa Rica

By Witt on July 31, 2014

With our hosts Will and Cate returning from Uruguay, we reluctantly packed up the van for the trip to the house we’ve rented in Costa Rica for August. We’re sad to leave beautiful Boquete and the wonderful house we’ve been staying in, but we’re very excited to have 3 different sets of friends and family from home visiting us in Costa Rica!

Last happy hour in Boquete

Shortly after leaving Boquete the van turned over 100,000 miles. 20,000 of those have come since we started on our trip last June. It’s weird to think that we drove all the way from Denver to extreme northern Canada, then to Panama, and only covered as many miles as some people do driving back and forth to work every day. Having been that person in the past, I’d have to say the past year’s miles have been much more fun!

We planned to drive up the Carribean coast on our way back. The drive along the narrow, winding road across the continental divide was very pretty, with cool cloud forests and lots of fog.

We left the cool of the highlands and arrived on the sweltering Carribean coast. We used a different border crossing this time, and it was probably the easiest border we’ve done in Central America. Knowing that Costa Rica is expensive, we stocked up on booze at the duty free at the border. Gotta love $4 bottles of wine.

This is serious fruit and banana country. We saw plants belonging to Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte, and even had to stop at a banana crossing.

Really, there are bananas in the blue bags. Here are banana trees with the bagged bananas.

We drove a little way into Costa Rica and found a great campground by the beach near Cahuita. The camp host was super friendly and we spent the evening lounging in the hammocks listening to the waves crash.

The beach!

We spent a couple of days in the beautiful Orosi Valley before heading to Alajuela to check into our rental house. We spent time sightseeing and enjoying the cool weather.

Looking down into the Orosi Valley

This is what’s left of the oldest church in Costa Rica.

Our campsite had a pool and a very nice setting.

These vultures arrived early in the morning to dry their wings in the sun

We were visited by a pair of raucous parrots.

We stopped by a botanic garden on our way to Alajuela. It’s famous for it’s orchids.

This entry is filed under Costa Rica, Panama. | 3 Comments

More from Boquete

By Witt on July 24, 2014

We wrapped up our last week in Boquete with more hiking and birds, then packed up the van once again to head back to Costa Rica. Some friends and family will be visiting us there, and we’re very much looking forward to that!

We went on another waterfall hike in the jungle.

More fun than the hike was this tiny little puppy that the caretaker had!

Quinn had a great time on the hike, once we convinced him to go.

Hammock time at the house

Jen went on a birding tour at one of the coffee plantations near town.

And our favorite blue birds are still hanging out around the house!

I put together a video slideshow with more photos. I couldn’t get it to play in Firefox on my mac, but it works fine in Safari, so if it doesn’t work try a different browser. It’s in HD, so be patient and run it in full screen mode!

This entry is filed under Panama. | 3 Comments

Boquete, Panama

By Witt on July 16, 2014

We are still “sitting” at a house here in Panama. It’s been very relaxing, and although the area is gringo heaven (not much need to speak Spanish), there is tons to do, the climate is perfect (we eat most meals outside on the covered patio, even if it’s raining), and it’s super-quiet. Muy tranquilo, as they say.

Photo posts seem popular, so without further ado…

Coffee is huge here. The valleys around town are covered with fincas (ranches). We toured one last week and learned a little about growing coffee.

The grounds (landscaping, not coffee grounds) were beautiful.

Apparently the equivalent of a sommelier in the coffee world is a “cupper.” We learned a little about how they rate coffee.

Smell the coffee!! Apparently one variety from this valley called “Giesha” sold for $350 per pound last year. And did you know that coffee is the world’s most heavily traded commodity after oil? It’s the other stuff that makes the world go round.

What’s gonna happen if I pull this chain?

We had a really fun couple of days with Phil, who visited us here while on a surfing tour of Central America. Phil is the brother of Jen’s grad school buddy Bill.

There’s an interesting geological feature outside of town called “Los Ladrillos.” It’s a popular rock climbing spot.

There’s a local guy who makes carvings on dead trees in various places around town.

We went for a hike to see some waterfalls. This one was right on the road though.

Hiking in the jungle

It took us about 1.5 hours to reach the falls, which weren’t as pretty as the ones by the road. But the hike itself was worthwhile.

Giant Panamanian avocados. One makes more than enough guac for happy hour.

There’s this old castle outside of town. The story goes that a guy was building it for his wife who never got a chance to come down to see it.

Will, who lives in the house we’re staying at, was generous enough to let me use his bike. There are so many beautiful rides around here I probably won’t have a chance to experience them all.

Yesterday I rode to the entrance of the nearby national park.

Every meal from our patio is a birdwatching trip. These yellow guys are regular visitors.

So are these blue ones. See what a knowledgeable birder I am?

Here’s another one of these yellow ones checking out his looks in the van’s windshield.

This entry is filed under Panama. | 7 Comments

First year’s finances

By Witt on July 12, 2014

First a warning to friends and family, who constitute the majority of our readers. You might want to stop now, there won’t be any pretty pictures of birds or cute pictures of Quinn. This is just a breakdown of how much money we spent on what during the past year of our travels.

People planning trips such as this are always trying to get a handle on how much it costs, and I thought another data point might be helpful.

So, for those of you who may be new to our site, a little about us – we are a family of three traveling in a Ford camper van. We’ve been on the road for just over a year. We had a budget in mind when we started, but we weren’t strict in keeping to it. We bought plenty of expensive boxed wine in Canada (yes, even the boxed kind is expensive). And when the opportunity to do something cool presented itself, like taking a scenic flight over Mt Denali, we usually said yes, figuring we may never be back.

The numbers here include pretty much everything we spent over the past year, with the exception of home expenses like our storage locker. We bought travel medical insurance for $2400 and Jen and Quinn had to fly to Philadelphia twice due to an illness in the family. For those types of expenses I put “None” as the country so as not to skew the numbers for the country where we happened to be at the time.

Yes, I know Alaska is not a country. I just thought it might be interesting to separate it from the rest of the US, especially since everything is quite a bit more expensive there.

Here are our expenses by country:

And by category:

We spent about $8,500 for van maintenance and repair. This is way more than most people spend on a trip like this, but everyone should budget something.

Alaska’s daily budget is very high, in part because we paid for both legs of the ferry back to Vancouver Island while there.

A lot of the Transportation category is the two flights back home and the flights, bus, and boat tickets involved in getting from Oaxaca to Belize while the van was in the shop.

The medical category was pretty much entirely reimbursed by our insurance.

If you factor out the van expenses and the trips home, our expenses come out to about $126 per day, which is close to what we had in mind before we left.

If anyone has any questions, please ask them in the comments and I’ll try to clear up anything I can.

This entry is filed under Uncategorized. | 6 Comments

Welcome to Panama!

By Witt on July 6, 2014

Here’s a short video showing the street flooding from our hotel in El Salvador and the celebration after the Costa Ricans won their match against Greece in a penalty shootout.

Our last night on the road en route to our house sitting gig in Panama was spent on Costa Rica’s hot, steamy pacific coast. After setting up camp we spent the afternoon playing in the sand on the beach.

Playing on the beach in Costa Rica

Our campsite amongst the palms

The next morning we set out early, hoping to cross the border into Panama and be in Boquete in time to watch the USA-Belgium soccer match. The Panama border went much like the rest of them and took about two hours. At many of the borders, especially the more chaotic ones, there are “helpers.” These are guys who look for tourists like us and help find all of the various offices, inspectors, and stamps needed to successfully navigate the border formalities.

The helpers range from outright crooks to great guys. Sometimes it’s worth getting one just to keep the others from hassling you. Elias, the helper I got for Panama, was great. He was calm and didn’t try to hurry things along, which can be stressful when you’re trying to make sure you don’t lose track of all of the different bits of paper you’re carrying around.

Bienvenidos a Panama!

Elias helped us navigate the process and saved us lots of time. He knew we needed a particular stamp on a particular form from an un-marked office up some stairs. When we got there no one was in the office, so Elias reached in the window and grabbed the stamp and stamped the paper himself. He said the woman who works in that office leaves the stamp accessible so he can do that. He said she was probably out watching the soccer match.

Border formalities completed, and after driving through the fumigation station, we were on our way. It took us about 2 hours to reach Boquete. As we turned inland and climbed into the hills we were happy to notice things cooling off outside!

Boquete is an expat haven set in a beautiful valley filled with coffee plantations. The valley looks vaguely Swiss as you enter. We found Will and Cate, who are currently renting the house we will be sitting, in a bar watching the football match in town. We joined them and had a late lunch in the bar while cheering on the USA.

Our temporary abode

Will and Cate left for Uruguay, where they are thinking of moving next, two days later. We moved in and made ourselves at home.

Boquete is very much an expat enclave. It was recently rated the #4 place in the world to retire, and is home to many gringos and some super-expensive houses. The difference between Boquete and Panajachel (in Guatemala) is that in Pana you always know you’re in Central America and are sometimes surprised by little reminders of home. Here it feels like you’re living in a small town in the US, and sometimes you get reminded that you’re not. But there’s lots to do in the area and we’re looking forward to a couple of weeks of exploring before it’s time to move on once again!