Panama... here we come!

After several cups of coffee in Dominical, I wanted to catch a few waves, but the over crowed beach and high price of $25 for renting a surfboard wasn't in our budget. So we hit the road to Panama... 150 kms to the border.
It was a smooth quick crossing since we were rinding on Angela's bike with Panama plates. - ( long story short... back in November, we rode my bike to Panama to get my visa stamp and buy Angela's bike that we found on the internet, it was less paperwork to buy in Panama then Costa Rica, we had to leave my bike in Panama since my permit was expired and we also left most of our gear so we could travel both on her bike back to Costa Rica.)
We arrived in David in mid day, not too sure if we would push the next 180 kms stretch to Santiago - ( where we had left my bike) We decided to ride up to Boquete, a touristy village 39 kms east of David in the mountains. As we pulled into town, we looked at each other - black clouds were rolling over our heads - last thing we wanted was to ride in heavy rain... we had already seen in November what rain can be like in Panama, so we headed back down the hill to David and pushed on to Santiago where we could camp for free ( Thanks to Scott & Ariadne, Angela's previous bike owners.) I was also anxious to get back in the saddle of my DR and let Angela ride her bike with the freedom being alone in the saddle.
It felt good to sleep in our Yellow condo ( our tent) once again. The next morning, we headed back to the Pacific coast in search of more surf.
115 kms of country windy roads took us to a dead end in Santa Catalina. We found our base camp at *Surfer's Paradise*. A hostel with an amazing view of the Pacific Ocean. We set up our condo with a million dollar view, relaxed from the last 500 + kms push from San Jose. This was the perfect spot.
We met Brad & Kelly who were traveling in their VW van with their 2 guard dogs from Mexico. We exchanged some travel stories over a few beers and made plans to meet the next morning. Brad had an extra surfboard I could use, so I didn't pass the opportunity to catch a few last waves before making our way to the Big Panama City.
Thanks to Brad, I had a couple hours of awesome surfing.

Lost in San Jose...

We left San Jose thinking it would be easy to get on the Panamericana to Dominical ( a surf beach on the Pacific). It didn't take long before we got lost!
The road signs around San Jose are horrible and most roads have NO signs. After a few detours in traffic jams and frustration, we finally found our way out of the city on the Panamericana HWY 1.
San Jose isn't a very warm city since its elevation is over 1600 meters. It's a bit of a shock when your coming from the ocean, from shorts and flip flops to wearing jeans and long sleeve. We knew we had to wear warm clothes while riding but didn't know we would freeze our ass at * Cerro de la Muerte * - a 3400m mountain pass. Riding threw the misty high mountain hwy we needed to stop and put on our gore- tex. We were just happy that rain didn't come down since we were already frozen to the bones.
Finally the road took us down to lower elevation, we were once again boiling in the sun. 30 more kms of tropical winding roads we arrived in Dominical. - 6 hours later and only 250kms!
The celebration of the new year was still happening as the beach was completely packed. We sat and watched our last sunset in Costa Rica.
Tomorrow we would hit the road to Panama, our last destination before we try to figure out our way to South America.