I got stamped out of Nicaragua and then tried to get on the boat but it was too full to accommodate my bike so I had to weight for the next boat that was a couple hours later. As I was leaving the shed where they stamp people in and out the boarder agent asked me why I hadn't left on the boat and I told him I would have to weight for the next boat and I wanted to roam around the town until then. He told me it was illegal to let me out of the building and back into Nicaragua once I had been stamped out so he told me not to go anywhere and let me out. When the next boat came it was just like the one before. A small long and narrow tour boat powered by a small outboard motor, but they let me put my bike on the roof.

My introduction to Costa Rica was very interesting because it was a nature tour and a Boarder crossing rolled into the same experience. Because I was the first person there I got the front seat of the boat and got to see all sorts of cool animals. I saw crocodiles swimming in the calm narrow river, I saw turtles all over the place, there were trees with vines growing off of them, I saw storks and parrots and other birds of all colors and sizes. I was really cool.

The first town I saw in Costa Rica was a far cry from the third world dirt road town I left from in Nicaragua. This town even seemed like it was in a first world country from the looks of the well paved roads and freshly painted buildings and cleanly cut healthy grass.

The bike ride to San Jose would have been very nice but I didn't have the patience so I got a bus. The woman I sat next to on the bus was a school teacher and I talked her ear off because I was in the mood to practice my Spanish, but she wasn't very talkative. Costa Rica was a very beautiful country judging from the hilly jungle countryside, the tidy towns we passed through and the winding roads.

I arrived at San Jose at night and got a hotel in the center. The next day I rode my bike around the city and checked out their zoo which was OK. I tried to go to the casino on the top level of the big hotel so I could look out over the city but the doorman wouldn't let me because I had shoes on. The city was smaller than I expected it to be. It didn't even really look like a city because it wasn't very big and there were no skyscrapers. It did have a nice pedestrian mall though. I went to an internet place there and asked for a computer and I heard the guy tell me to wait so I took that to mean that there were no computers available so I went for a walk and came back a half hour later and he tried to charge me because he thought I had been on the computer. I told him that I thought he said the computers were full up so I went for a walk, but he told me I owed him money for the time anyway. I tried to explain the logic to him but he wouldn't have it, so I had to leave and find another internet place which for some strange reason wasn't easy. That night I went to the indoor mall they had there and saw Castaway with Tom Hanks which I liked.

The next morning I rode out of town towards the south. After an hour or so of riding I got to the pass and rode up the jungle mountain which was beautiful because I was in the foggiest jungle I had ever been in. The fog was just coming and going, and when it was at its strongest I could barely see a hundred meters in front of me. I rode to a bird sanctuary near the top of the pass to do a bird tour of the jungle but it was too expensive so I just stayed at the hotel they had there. It was beautiful and peaceful there because it was in the middle of the jungle up on a hill offering a good view, and it was cold, which was cool because this was the first time I had felt cold since I had been out of the U.S.

That night I was talking to some Columbian American guys who lived in Miami and I told them that I planned on going to Columbia, at which they preceded to take it upon themselves to earnestly try to persuade me to not go for about an hour. They told me that their friend had just had just gone there to visit for a couple days and disappeared and was surely murdered, and that if I went I would surely be dead within two days. They told me other stories of people they knew who had been kidnapped and murdered there and frightened me in such a way as though they thought I was crazy enough to go their even though they told me not to, so I figured that I had better not go to Columbia this time.

The next morning I rode a little bit up to the top of the pass and then rode down one of the longest downhill's I had ever ridden to a small town where I had some hamburgers, and then rode up again to the top of another pass where I descended down to a popular surfing beach I think called Dominical. I got a room there and went for a walk down the dirt main road next to the giant beach. I saw a sign for a place that gave massages so I went in and offered a trade for a Thai massage. They were a man and a woman, and I gave the massage to the woman and the man gave me some kind of Reiki treatment. Then we went to watch a soccer game at the bungalow I was staying at.

The next day I rented a surfboard and surfed for the day. The water was nice and warm and it was fun swimming around in the waves, but I didn't catch anything because I didn't have a giant board and the waves broke straight against the beach and weren't all that big. There were a lot of surfers there though.

The next day I road down south towards Panama and got a hotel in a small town of which the name I can't remember. I went to a karaoke bar and sang I'm looking for a white Christmas in the best Frank Sinatra that I could do and the people seemed to think it was amusing. The next day I rode into Panama and got about half way to the city but I got bored and got a bus the rest of the way.