Orange fields

Border crossing by boat

The morning after dad took a bus back to Managua to catch a plane, we went down to the San Carlos docks to catch a ferry up the Rio Frio to Los Chiles, Costa Rica. We caught up with Katherine and her husband (also travelling to Panama by bike) at immigration and asked to be on the next boat out, trying not to make a big deal that the already full boat had to hold six bikes and all their bags and us of course. So after a big ordeal about which ferry we would be on and when they put us all on the first one at 10:30 stashing four bikes in the back and two on the prow. The two on the prow got a really good wash while ours stayed nice and dry. The border crossing went smoothly and we all somehow skipped over the bag search because our bikes were not in the line...

We rode into the town and were welcomed by the grocery store giving away hot plates of food. Afterwards we went for more food as it didn't quite fill our bellies, but were quite shocked at how expensive it was, almost double that of Nicaragua. Before leaving town we filled our water dromedaries (from a tap! Yay free potable water!) and headed to the highway south. We were not sure how far we would get but managed to make it about 20km from the border. Just before the town of Pavonwe stopped at an orange orchard that looked great to camp in. The men working said it was alright to camp there so we were set. The guys even had a hose for a shower which is pretty necessary in the heat. We spent the rest of our time cooking and eating the left over oranges from the harvest. So many oranges! Big semis full of oranges kept passing us by that were headed to Limon on the Caribbean coasr either for shipment or for making delicious juice. We went to bed after cooking dinner under a starry clear sky.

Camping in an orange field