Costa Rica has been on Travis’ bucket list of places to travel to for some time now. The allure of incredible weather, surf beaches and rain forests is hard to resist. It didn’t take much to convince me! We’ll spend the next 3 months driving from Oakland, CA to the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, camping and sleeping in our 4Runner Bruno along the way.
Here is roughly what the route will look like:
We bought a 2000 Toyota 4Runner with 4WD for the wild roads of Central America, and then named him Bruno. Bruno needs to be in top-shape for the trip because if we run into a bandido road block in Northern Mexico, Bruno needs to be able to pop into 4WD, run over the bandidos and smash through their road barrier without breaking a sweat.
We left home! Marking the date: March 14, 2015. Bruno puts on his first few hundred miles traveling through the Sonoran Desert in southeast California and into Arizona. Lunch was had on the road, wherever we could find a nice place to stop.
So far, Bruno is doing good. We’re really proud of him. We’ve bounced him over more topes (surprise Mexican speedbumps) than I can count, sometimes going faster than we probably should. Whenever this happens, our entire sleeping platform in the back of Bruno briefly flies into the air with simulated zero-gravity and then crashes back down with a giant thud. Bruno loves it (I think?)
Ever since we left Puerto Vallarta on the west coast, we’ve been struggling to know what time it is where we are. Daylight savings, plus constantly traveling east every couple of days has really messed us up. Sure, we ask Google what time it is whenever we have WiFi, but thankfully, we have nowhere to be at any specified time.
We pretty much hid out in Puebla (just outside Mexico City) during Semana Santa, or Holy Week. Most things in our quiet residential downtown neighborhood (we love airbnb) were closed, but that suited us just fine. We took lots of silent walks, hand in hand, enjoying the cool mountain valley air.
Climbing out of the Oaxaca valley, we head into the Sierra Madre mountains where the “highway” is six hours of constantly winding turns. We were warned that motion sickness is common, so as we took turns driving, the passenger would keep focused on the road ahead to avoid sickness. We survived!
After 30 days in Mexico, we’ve capped off our trip south through the country with a 4-day stay in San Cristóbal De Las Casas. Narrow cobblestone streets, a handful pedestrian only, make for nice strolls through town at any time of day or night. Set up in pine forest mountains, the climate is sunny and warm during the day and cool at night. A welcome respite from the heat and humidity of the coast.
This is a post for other overlanders. We’ve done a lot of border crossing research in order to be the prepared boy and girl scouts that we strive to be. You read enough to be prepared for the worst and then are pleasantly surprised when all goes well. Here’s our experience crossing the Mexico-Guatemala Border at Ciudad Cuauhtémoc-La Mesilla.
Well, it’s now been almost a month and a half since we quit our jobs in San Francisco and started this road trip. We’ve had a wonderful time traveling through Mexico, and now that we’ve crossed the border into Guatemala we wanted to crunch the numbers and tally all of our Mexico expenses.
As noted earlier, we’re aiming to live on 4% of our equity portfolio, which is $40,000/yr. In truth, we would actually be very happy having our annual living expenses be closer to $30,000, but that’s an aggressive target. Let’s see how we’re doing so far.
Some will say that we’ve done Guatemala all wrong. Staying less than 2 weeks, keeping to the major cities and tourist centers in the country’s south west, feasting on pizza and french crepes… You would be right.
Guatemala was the place our health was beat down, and it was also the place we healed and repaired. Our spirits were lifted, waking up to volcanoes out our bedroom window. Meeting friendly locals and people who have relocated from elsewhere on the globe, all eager to show us why they’ve chosen Guatemala as their home.
Well, we didn’t get to visit Guatemala City, but it seemed like a happening place from what little we saw from the freeway. Some familiar shopping: Forever 21, Zara, and Avon ladies on parade… Here are our stats from country #2!
We weren’t sure what to expect from you, El Salvador, but you’ve warmed our hearts. The smallest and most densely populated country in Central America had some stunning vistas, with no one around for miles. We are impressed by the significant amount of geothermal energy powering the country (close to 30%), the lush greenery and friendly faces all around. Your people and your stray dogs welcomed us with open arms.
Back to the familiar US dollar – El Salvador’s official currency since 2001! They also use $1 coins, which is unique since in the US everybody still uses the one dollar bill (for reasons not completely understood). As a side note, it seems odd that El Salvador would adopt the US currency, considering that the US heavily supported the “bad guys” during the Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980’s…
Two crossings in one day that certainly lived up to expectations! Beggar kids following you around, men riding along on Bruno’s footrests and hanging onto the roof rack, just to help you through the crossing and make a buck. We gave one kid a $1 US coin from El Salvador. His eyes lit up huge and he danced around, rubbing it in all the other kid’s faces. What a sweetheart.
First impressions of Nicaragua, driving to León from the border are that it is more arid than the lush El Salvador we left behind. More cattle grazing in wide open spaces. More farming, oxen plowing and trotting their owners in carts down main street. Bicycles. Lots and lots of bicycles as a means of transportation. Kids of various ages are all in school uniforms. From teenagers to cute little ones with reading glasses. It’s quite uplifting to see.
An adventure over water, as Bruno floats across Lago Nicaragua and travels with us to Isla de Ometepe! The island is comprised of two volcanoes connected by a skinny landmass. There is little space around the edges for people to live, let alone all the tourism this island is known for. And the monos! We found Ometepe pleasantly packed full of monos.
Bruno on the mainland with Ometepe in the background.
This post could be titled: “Bruno Goes For A Boat Ride”. It’s the only way to get him over to Isla de Ometepe with its two prominent volcanoes, out in the middle of Lago Nicaragua. Detailed below is all the gory details for overlanders planning to undertake this wonderful adventure.
Here are some of the statistics we threw together for our fourth country of the trip. Are we still on budget? Could we theoretically live in Nicaragua full-time on our aggressive target of less than $30,000/year? Let’s find out!
