Email: Greetings from Panama City
Lauren and I are in Panama City on a five day trip to celebrate our December birthdays and completion of her finals.
Lauren and I are in Panama City on a five day trip to celebrate our December birthdays and completion of her finals.
When last we wrote we were in Panama City making do with the extreme weather and the havoc it was reaping on our plans.
Since we last wrote, we left the hacienda north of Quito on Wednesday and made our way to Cotopaxi National Park about 50 miles south of Quito. We hired a driver to take us between the two destinations, which included a stop at the equator itself, about 15 miles north of Quito.
As I write this, Sandy and I are making our return trip upstream on the Rio Napo (Napo River) from the Sacha Lodge back to Coca, Ecuador – a distance of approximately 50 miles. We stayed at Sacha for the last four days.
We have been in Entebbe, Uganda for the past two days to acclimate to Africa and explore the area around Lake Victoria prior to beginning our National Park / Gorilla safari on Saturday.
We left Windhoek at 7:30am and arrived in Maun at about 3pm. As we approached Maun (about 50km away), we passed a village called Toteng. We didn’t see any cars, bikes or stores. In fact, the only reason I noticed it was that the speed limit was reduced from 120km to 80km.
We had some delays in reaching Costa Rica, but once we arrived there we enjoyed our time at Drake Bay, on the Pacific Ocean coast. We spent time relaxing in our cabin on the beach as well as taking a day trip to Cano Island, where we hiked and snorkeled.
The highlight of the second part of our Costa Rica trip was a day trip to Corcovado National Park, which provided some great hiking and nature viewing opportunities amidst the rain forest and ocean beaches.
After arriving in Japan, we spent the first three days in Tokyo. We visited several of the city sights, including the zoo, Ginza and Shinjuku. We also took a day trip to Nikko, which was a two hour train ride each way.
We arrived in Tokyo at approximately 2:45 pm on Sunday. We changed some money, activated our train pass and took the one hour ride into the city. We are staying at one of the three youth hostels in central Tokyo.