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La Aventura Panamericana - Day 30 blog
By
Mar 5, 2007, 13:18
Day 30 report; Wednesday 8 December.
By Toine, Maria and Victor de Hullu, Car no 3
Today we drive from San José to El Bambito.
After a short night of rest we got up at 04.15. We had breakfast at 05.00 and left the hotel at 05.45. We drove through a dark and quiet San José. We filled our car up with diesel and drove out of the city into the mountains. We went up to 3300 m high. Unfortunately there was rain, fog and clouds. So the view was limited. There was a lot of traffic which was difficult if you wanted to overtake another car on the twisty mountain roads. Later on it became sunny and the view was fantastic. Stunning views and tropical vegetation.
After a while we came in pineapple country: vast areas of pineapples. Also a lot of sugar cane and that means not only sugar for the coffee or thee but also rum. We drove along a big river. We stopped at the botanical gardens, where you could see a lot of different plants and trees. From that point until border-crossing we had a difficult road because we had 100 m of tarmac, than 100 m of gravel, than 100 m of tarmac etc. In the mountains we saw a beautiful big bright yellow tree. At the border crossing we had the usual paperwork, stamps and sticky moneychangers (the men who said you were his friend). We entered Panama and this was our last border crossing with the car. After the border there was a narrow road into the tropical rain forest.
We had our lunch in 60;El Mirador61;, a fantastic restaurant along the route. It was fully loaded with people and we were able to get the last places available. That is the last of the 5 chairs. A full menu was about $ 1.75, each! After that we had a nice drive through the countryside with a lot of banana-trees, coffee-plants and meadows until we reached the El Bambito hotel. Just before we reached the hotel there was a nice village, schoolchildren in uniform: looked all well organised. El Bambito was a nice hotel with a good dinner. Tomorrow we have to get up early because it is the last day of our travel.
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