Hello loyal readers,
I know we have been silent for a couple of months, but we are back in full force for another adventure. Well… maybe not in full force… because I started the trip off with a massive cold and some bruised stomach muscles. This made the start of this new journey rather unpleasant, but clearly I survived 🙂.
Hello again👋
It’s been 8 months since I last wrote to you. And those months in Bocas passed very quickly.
For me it was back to:
- Jiu Jitsu (training twice a week)🥋,
- doing a week of STEM summer camp with Rosalie🧪 (I already knew half the stuff),
- hanging out with Izzie and Annika (friends from San Blas),
- a deep dive into the wonderful world of DnD✨ (Dungeons and Dragons). Izzie introduced me to this best high fantasy role play game in the world. Since then I’ve browsed through the thick DnD Players Handbook, written several ‘character sheets’, gone on ‘missions’ with some Bocas friends as well as with Izzies online group.
Mom and dad were also busy. The boat repairs on the electronics (since the lightening strike in San Blas) and the engine (since our troubles in Puerto Lindo) continued up to May. We had the lounge cushions reupholstered (they are purple now instead of moldy white with cracks). Dad also did some extra jobs, such as moving the anchor winch to the deck (instead of inside the hatch) and replacing the Gypsy (the revolving part of the anchor winch that grabs the anchor chain to move it up or down). Finally lifting the anchor has become easy!
Mom and I also went down to Panama City 🏙️, during all the banana 🍌 and social security roadblocks to get me a new passport.
We also spent some time on Isla Colon. We were almost 2 months at the house (one week in April and 7weeks in July- August) with mom and dad cleaning and repairing things. It was my job to walk (twice a day) and take care of Emmy🐶. She is a no name breed, a sweet, stinky, sly little doggie woggie that was not allowed to travel to Europe with her owners. (Instead her owners took her little noisy attention seeker friend the Pug, Milo!)
When we finally got back on the boat, we were happy to be reunited with cuddly Capo, but that was very short lived. We only had 2 weeks to get the boat ready and pack out bags for the new adventure.
The plan
Where are we off to this time?
Well, the plan is to take a 3,5 months roadtrip in Brazil 🇧🇷and Argentina🇦🇷. We have booked cheap flight tickets on GOL airways🛩️ to Sao Paolo, leaving end of August and back in mid December.
We have wanted to visit Brazil for a while, but it is a huge country. If we sail around the world we might see some of the coastline, but not the inside, so with this trip we will get to see a bit. And Argentina is too far out, too stormy and difficult to sail to, says mom. Dad has got some distant family members in the Comodore area. He would like to see if he can find any of them.
The idea for this trip is also that I get to experience different ways of traveling, by air, and using local busses. This is supposed to be part of my education. During the week we will all be working and doing school online and every weekend we will take a bus to a new place. Dad looks for a new Air BnB studio or apartment every week.
Travels without Capo😿
We already started thinking about this plan last year, and we really wanted our ex jungle cat Capo to be with us the whole time. He is so much part of the family, so we wanted him to join us on the road trip. After living on the boat with us he became quite domesticated and a cuddle bug.
But we also realised that Capo does not travel well. He hates being in a cat carrier (he broke it and scratched my arm open when we took him to the vet) and gets freaked out by cars and boat engines.
When we started looking up the travel requirements per country, we soon discovered it would never work to take him along on our road trip. He might have to be quarantined and a lot of the places are not petfriendly.
We then had the idea to ask our neighbours the Starks to cat sit him while Jennifer uses our boat as an office like she did before. We were going to test that out while we were at the house.
But it didn’t work at all. Jennifer had been asked to house sit another place and then badly hurt her leg and couldn’t stay on her boat.
Deon did what he could and visited and fed Capo, but still Capo was very lonely and unhappy. He started to pee everywhere to show how unhappy he was, and it felt horrible.
So we had to quickly make new plans. We met this lady who is a pet sitter. Only problem was that she had a dog and when we brought them over to see how Capo would react … he was not happy. And then the lady found a better deal and ditched us. But then we got someone else, a lady named Mariana. Capo loved her. He lay in her lap the first night 😠 (very strange for Capo), and she called him ‘kitler’. So now she is taking care of the boat and my cuddle bug 😭.
Getting ready🧳
Of course there were boat problems in the last week. Our water maker got a leak and needed repairing so we ordered the necessary parts and once the parts arrived we sent off the water maker to Panama City.
On the last Wednesday we invited Mariana over for full instructions on Capo care and boat care.
We had been packing and repacking all week to make sure we didn’t forget anything. Dad told us we can only pack lightly because we are flying with only hand luggage and the airline is very strict. He weighed our backpacks before we left, and for our 3.5 month trip, dad’s backpack weighs 6.5 kg, mom packed 8.5 kg and I will carry 6.3 kg.
And if we didn’t already have enough worries, there had to be holes in the paddle board! These needed fixing so Mariana could use it. We suspect an evil cat has been using the anti-slip as a scratch pad!
And in the last weeks I had sleepovers with my friends. First Izzi and Annika, my DnD BFFs, and then Rosalie who just got back from a long trip to France.
Capo made sure all the packing and repacking was done properly. He helped a great deal by inspecting all the storage spaces, generally snoozing in all the wrong spots and ensuring all items to be packed had hair on it (actually still finding hair on our clothes up to this day 😂).
Not a travel bug🤧🤕
I wasn’t in a perfect condition to travel. Basically, I got sick with snot since the sleepover at Rosalie’s. On top of that, in my last Jiu Jitsu class, I got an accidental elbow punch in the stomach from Izzi.
That’s what friends are for, to give you forget-me-not presents, literally!
Go North then go South?
On Friday 29th of August it was time to leave Bocas. We had to fly the next day from San Jose (Costa Rica) to Sao Paolo (Brazil), so we had to leave early enough to travel by bus to Costa Rica.
We gave Capo breakfast and a quick goodbye hug. He was happily munching away, oblivious to the fact he wouldn’t see us for the next 3months. Snifffff.
In town we got the next Watertaxi🚤. The waves were slightly choppy, making my stomach muscles hurt🤕.
Once we arrived in the Almirante bay we saw that all the Chiquita containers and ships were gone and it looked very empty.
And then we had to walk🚶to the Almirante bus stop which made those muscles hurt even more. Basically everything was sore.
Luckily the bus🚍 to Changuinola was waiting on the main road and it was a smoothish ride rolling up and down over the hills. Good thing, the road was fine and my muscles were bothering me less.
Then in Changuinola we got the next bus to the border. Once we arrived at the border town Guabito we had to go to immigration to have our passports stamped. There were a lot of people waiting to get their stamps too. Even a woman with her dog in a carry on harness🐕🦺. I wonder if the dog got a stamp in his passport.
Once we got our stamps, we exchanged some money in a shop💵. Then we walked over the bridge to cross the border. On the Costa Rica side we got more stamps.
We had to find the bus stop to take the bus to Limon. But when we were getting our tickets dad noticed there was a direct bus from Sixoala to San Jose, so we got that instead. We waited for the bus to arrive at 11h and ate an ice cream🍦. Once we finished our ice cream I was covered in chocolate and we had to find a bathroom. This was at the back of the building in a tool shop, and looked small and stinky with a typical public toilet look.
When we saw the bus pull up and checked our watches we immediately jumped up and made our way to the bus. The bus driver had to explain to us we are in Costa Rica now where it was only 10am.
When it finally was 11 we got on the bus and found out nobody else was coming until a while later. It was a long ride. I saw a lot of crazy things on the bus like a school next to the sheep’s grazing pen with the sheep waiting impatiently in the corner for the school gate to be opened. I also saw a donkey hugging a horse. And in Porto Viejo the sand on the beach was black.
Then I passed out and slept through most of the bus ride. I was coughing and blowing my nose as soon as I woke up.
Mom told me I didn’t miss too much. Apart from agriculture there was not much to see. First there was Banana🍌 land, then Piña🍍 land, then Mais🌽 land, with everything relatively flat until crossing from Limon to San Jose.
The trouble started when we had to cross the mountain 🏔️ . There was a lot of traffic and it started raining. It didn’t help that this main road kept on changing from one strip broadening to 2 lanes, narrowing to one. We lost 2 hours stuck in traffic.
After a really long bus ride we finally arrived in San Jose and dad got us a Uber🚗 to the place where we were staying.
Costa Rip Off💵💰🪙💸
When we finally arrived at our hotel I was feeling worse and immediately climbed into bed 🛏️. Dad went on the hunt for some cold medicine, because flying like this did not sound like fun. When he got it, he mixed it with some tea from downstairs. After that mom and dad looked for food as we hadn’t had a proper meal all day. A restaurant across the road offered take outs so that was the best solution. After that we all went straight to bed.
The next morning we had coffee and tea downstairs. Then we went out to explore and go shopping. We walked around in the old city centre and saw a nice mix of old buildings combined with new ones. We also walked around in the municipal market. I was dressed up warmly as I really wasn’t feeling well, snotty, tired and no energy.
For that reason, mom and dad decided not to stay in the city for too long. We took an Uber🚗 ride to a big mall not far from the airport. The Uber driver was a young guy who spoke English well. He explained that Costa Rica has high taxes💵 on everything and that’s why life is way more expensive than in Panama. When he was a child his family used to take a boat over the river and go and shop in Changuinola (Panama)!
The place we booked in Sao Paolo did not have towels so we went to Decathlon to buy travel towels. Dad wanted to look at shoes as well, but everything was more expensive than Panama. After that we had several hours to spare and we ended up boring ourselves at the mall. Clearly we are not mall people and everything seemed outrageously expensive.
After a while we decided to hang around at the airport before we killed each other out of boredom.
In the air tonight🛫🛩️🌃💺
Dad called up an Uber to take us to the airport. What was San Jose airport like, you might ask? Well, it is the first proper airport I’ve seen and can remember, so it looked big and impressive. The security check and immigration went smoothly but I saw a lot of people taking way more than their fair share of hand luggage. There were lots of little restaurants and snack and souvenir shops. But everything was crazily overpriced. We spent our time walking around and waiting for the airplane to come. While exploring we discovered that each shop had free chocolate and coffee tasters. As we saw more people arriving for our flight we were stunned by the amount and size of bags that they were going to take as “hand luggage”🧳.
Once the plane arrived we tried to board as fast as possible so nobody would take our luggage space.
When we were settled down in the plane we watched as those people struggled to get all their things packed in the overhead compartments 😂.
By that time I was very happy to be able to sit down in my window seat🫠. It was amazing to see all the city lights shrink so quickly. Once I got bored me and mom started watching a series we downloaded earlier. A little later dinner was served. The choice was pasta or meat. We all picked meat. I saw the person in front of me had pasta and it didn’t look very appetizing. Our “meat” meal was some beef pieces with a couple of veggies and a kind of fruit cake for dessert. It wasn’t bad but not very filling. When we finished dinner me and mom continued watching our series. Later I decided to go to bed because I was tired and miserable from being in the air conditioning for so long at the mall. When I woke up in the morning I was surprised by endless landscapes and as we got closer to civilization I saw whole cities🌇 spread out before me. It was amazing!
A while later we arrived in São Paulo where the airport was twice the size of the San Jose one!
Sao Paolo = Sao Frio
As soon as we stepped outside the airport we were blasted with freezing cold air🥶🥶. This was even colder than the usual night bus to Panama (14°C)!!! We immediately realised that we had not packed enough warm clothes. We let out a sigh of relief as we got on the bus and headed towards our first stop. But I’ll tell you all about that in the next Post!
See you all later! 😉
Your reporter;
Gitane.