Dueling Backpacks

Day 57 (August 24, 2018) – Villa de Leyva, Colombia Colombia is full of surprises. We travelled from Bogot á to Villa de Leyva, about 3-4 hours northeast by bus. We chose to stop there to help break up the long trip to El Cocuy National Park, but Villa de Leyva was also supposed to be a very picturesque colonial town worth a visit.

Day 54 (August 21, 2018) – Bogot á , Colombia We spent nearly two weeks in Bogot á and could have easily spent more time there. It was the perfect city at the perfect time in our trip. We had been running around Costa Rica the past few weeks and Bogota felt like a modern oasis. Very comfortable, very easy to get around, and we had a great apartment where we could rest and relax. Admittedly, the cold weather did make us a bit lazy, but we were happy to be in a place where we didn’t need to run around and see all the sights in just a few days. Rather than list all the things we saw, here are three short stories from our time there.

Day 46 (August 13, 2018) – Bogot á , Colombia Bogot á is the reason why we continue to travel to new places. Every once in a while, we come across a place that completely surprises us. Bogot á is a city that I admit to not giving much prior thought. I knew it was the capital of Colombia and that most flights into the country will land you there.

Our two-and-a-half-week trip to Costa Rica was packed with beaches, hiking, and many long bus rides. Fortunately, the beaches and hiking were easily accessible and the buses were very inexpensive.

Day 41 (August 8, 2018) – Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica As with all our trips in Costa Rica, this one also started out with a very long bus ride. We began in Liberia, stopped in Punta Arenas to change buses, then went to Quepos where we got on a third bus for a short ride to the town of Manuel Antonio. After walking down the wrong street, knocking on the wrong door, getting distracted by a troop of monkeys, then making a partially-successful phone call in Spanish, we finally found our Airbnb.

Day 37 (August 4, 2018) – Liberia, Costa Rica After spending the week at the beach in Tamarindo, we took a bus back to Liberia for the weekend to visit Rinc ó n de la Vieja National Park. This was after much indecision on our part… did we really want to give up a relaxing beach day to go exhaust ourselves hiking around a volcano? We made a wise choice to skip the beach and it was well worth the extra effort.

Day 35 (August 2, 2018) – Tamarindo, Costa Rica My alarm went off at three in the morning. On purpose. The beginning of a long travel day, we started off catching the 4:20 AM bus from Monteverde to La Irma, which is basically just a gas station, where we caught the next bus to Liberia, where we caught the bus after that to Tamarindo. The last bus was my least favorite, being a local bus that pulled off the main highway to stop in every one of the little towns between Liberia and Tamarindo, but we made it into Tamarindo at around 10 AM. The whole trip was downhill from the mountains and to the ocean where it was dramatically hotter and more humid than where we had come from.

Fifty dollars a day. That’s what our research told us a trip around the world should cost. Many people have done it for less and, of course, it’s not hard to spend more. Over a year that comes to roughly $18,000. That’s less than I spent on my car and is supposed to cover the entirety of one’s travel and living expenses for a year. I feel a bit strange talking about our finances knowing that others are reading this, but I know we’ll be curious in the future to look back and see what this trip cost us, so we’ve been keeping track of all our expenses. Tacos for two in Antigua.

Day 30 (July 28, 2018) – Santa Elena, Costa Rica What a difference from Guatemala. After a long day of flying on Avianca from Flores to Guatemala City, Guatemala City to San Salvador, and San Salvador to San Jose, I felt like we arrived in a very different place from where we started the day. Costa Rica feels very modern and affluent compared to Guatemala. The streets are well paved, the cars look to be in better shape, and the houses look like they’ve all just been painted. Even waiting to pick up our bags at the airport, there are families and kids running around everywhere, almost like we were in Orlando.  The ATMs will even give you US dollars if you want them.  It immediately felt more touristy and also more familiar, more similar to home, than Guatemala. 

Days 25 (July 23, 2018) - Tikal, Guatemala Temple I at Tikal Tikal is one of the largest sites of Mayan ruins in Central America. Tikal reached its peak somewhere around 200-900 AD, and within a few hundred years afterwards it was completely abandoned. Archaeologists are not sure why, but it was likely a combination of drought and wars. The Tikal site is huge, and only a fraction of the structures have been excavated. Left for only a short time, the jungle/forest takes over the structures. In fact, when we were walking around Tikal, we walked right past some structures without even noticing them (until a subsequent walk through), since they had been overgrown with trees and plants and covered with dirt. They looked just like hills.