Thursday, April 8, 2010

From Panama back to LA

Now the time has come for me to leave Panama and Centralamerica for now and go back to USA.
 It´s been an lovely time here and I miss it already. There is so much more to see and do here but I just haven´t got the time to stay any longer. Next time I come here I will stay much longer and travel around through all the CAM countries.

The journey ahead of me was not one I was looking forward to so much. First an nine hour bus ride from David in Panama, crossing the boarder into Costa Rica in Canoas in the south and then all the way up to San José.
Spend one night in a hostel in San José and then make my way to the airport the next morning to get on the flight to Miami and then get a connecting flight to Los Angeles. Love travelling sometimes ;-)


I was totally alone when I got on the bus in David. I thought that this had to be to god to be true but it actually was true. Only 5 more people borded the bus along the way. $15 Sweet Ride!


Arriving at the border between Costa Rica & Panama. When you got here you first have to take out all your bags from the bus, go to the customs and immigrations so they can search your stuff and check your papers. If you clear that you walk over to the Panama side and to the same thing in Panama. A common process which dissolved without any problem at all. And then I had to wait one hour for the bus to leave again, so i chilled with a cup of coffee with some locals.


Hot sunny day at the boardes


Just have to tell you about a guy that I met at the boarder. Hes name was Stephen but was called Coach, because he used to teach wrestling back in the days in the states where he was from.
This guy lived on the boarder. He had one house and one car on each side and he "worked" on the boarder every day. He knew everyone working there on both sides and was friends with everyone. He knew how everything worked and knew the system like the back of his hand. He was there helping tourists get across if the had any problems. He helped me a bit aswell, pointed me in the right direction and just told me what to do. In such cases as myself he did it for free because he didn´t waste valuable time helping me but on occasions, when he ran into people with alot of problem, like if they were bringing strange objects or driving a private car, don´t speak spanish or something like that , he would offer them his services for a sertain amount of money. And he could live on this because he had been doing this for the last 4 years.
So if you ever cross the boardes of Canoas, you will probably run into this guy. Spend a couple of minutes chatting with him, he´s a really interesting guy. Coach of the boarder!


Customs and immigrations on the Costa Rica side


Immigrations


San José 350, love that sign. See you in 8 hours...
The distance isn´t so far but the roads are bad and narrow and up and down along the mountains so it takes alot of time.

So finally I got to San José at 9pm, took a taxi for 25 minutes to a hostel near to the airport, so shitty not even worth writing about. The next morning I took another taxi to the airport. Arrived, paid the $26 depature tax, went through security, which must´ve been my 40 th security check so far. Got on the other side to see that my flight was 3 hours late. And you know what that means, yepp, coffee and LAN.

When the gate finally opened I got on the airport bus that took us to the aircraft. And then is when realized how small this world is. Next to me sat a girl, blond with blue eyes. I thought to myself, she could easily be Swedish. And she held her passport in her hands, it was european and I had to ask her if she was, and I was right. I´d just met Hanna from Falkenberg, Sweden. She was on her way home back to Sweden after travelling around for 3 months. We ended up talking the whole way to Miami, and believe it or not , we actually had a common friend aswell and it was nice to talk swedish for a while, that was a while ago. 
It´s a small world poeple.... ,-)


Me & Hanna from Falkenberg

So she got on her plane to London and I got on mine to Los Angeles. I arrived at 1am the next day and got picked up by my ninja friend Willlo and we went back to his place to get some sleep. 
Tomorrow Venice Beach.

YEAH, RASTA TRAVELS CONTINUES !!!

Big Up to all of you for reading.

Sweet Love // David

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