Page 1 of 12

Click on the first photo to start the slide show

Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica - December 2006

We had to leave Panama for 3 days to renew our tourist visa so we decided that Costa Rica was the closest spot. We have talked about traveling Central and South America like backpackers so we chose this trip to try it out. We took all local transportation, buses and ferries. It cost us a total of $14 dollars and 6 hours to get to Puerto Jimenz. What an awesome trip.	We were checked out of Panama and checked into Costa Rica in about 20 minutes. It took another 45 minutes to change money at the bank. Costa Rica uses the Calone - it was about 515 Calones to the dollar.	The border is full of trucks and busses and tourists all milling about. It was hard to find our next bus from the Frontera (border) to Golfito but we asked around and found it soon.
This guy was on the bus to Golfito but it seemed like he was a thousand miles away. The bus ride was just over an hour and cost $1.50 for each of us.	This is the local ferry from Golfito to Puerto Jimenez. It took about an hour and a half and rained most of the time but it was filled with backpackers and locals - just what we came to see.	A little tired but mostly because we left at 5:00 am - at it was a little hot by the time we hit the 11:30 ferry. The cost was $1.00 each.
We took this boat on the way back - it is the fast boat and costs $2.00 each but it only takes 20 minutes.			This was the view from our hotel room at Cabinas de Puerto Jimenez. While we had agreed to travel like backpackers we are still spoiled Norte Americanos and we wanted Air Conditioning and a nice room. This room was $55.00 a night but we could have found another A/C room for $30 or a backpackers room for $7.00.