Keeping in touch with friends and family

Computers are a wonderful tool to have while being on the road. With the new technology, being able to call our friends and
family or sending away photos to magazines, writing stories. We couldn't be without them.

Many people ask me " how do you keep all this gear from getting thrashed?" - simple.... do your best. But it doesn't always work.
As a photographer, I carry one camera body, and 3 lens, one laptop and one external hard drive.

Sometimes, they are not always so nice to have... especially on a motorbike! My macbook pro is now dead, one thing - computers
don't like humidity. Traveling along the coast for a long period of time, salt and humidity accumulated on the motherboard and killed my working tool. But over time, you learn to pack them well.

During the last year on the road, I lost....
1 lens (fell off a 150 foot ice wall while shooting Ice Climbing)
2 external hard drives, ( don't drop them!!!)
1 Nikon D200 camera ( don't like swimming pools!! - don't ask!)
1 macbook pro ( don't like humidity)

We now have a box on the back of Angela's bike where we keep our laptop and lens. Totally waterproof, packed well for vibration and we can lock the box.
So far it's the best way to keep it alive... keep our fingers X.

All the rest of our gear is in dry bags. It's the best, light & completely waterproof.

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.

A whole new Year coming up!

We just got back from spending a wonderful Christmas in Fort Lauderdale with my mom and Jean- Luc.
It was a very special for us to be back in Florida together since Angela and I met there in feb last year. Also I haven't spent
Christmas Holidays with my mom in over 15 years!!! Living in a tourist town like Whistler has always been hard for
me to go home to my family for the holidays. But this time, Costa Rica was only a 2 hour flight away.

Now back in San Jose, we are ready to hit the road into a New Year on the journey. We will be making our way to the
Caribbean Coast into Panama. Our next challenge will be finding the cheapest and safest way to Colombia via the
San Blast Islands.

We hope you all had a wonderful New Year as we did and wish you all a wonderful new year with lots of love, smiles and sunshine.

A&A

Merry Xmas

Hello Everyone...
Thank you for all the wonderful support and comments we´ve had on our blog in last year.
Angela and I have finally left the paridise of Santa Teresa. Thank you once again to Tomas & kristina for making us feel at home.
We will be in Fort Lauderdale Florida visiting my mom for the Holidays. Coming back to San Jose on New Years day. The plan is to hit then road on the 1st of 2009 to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica into Panama. We look forward to a new year with many new adventures into the unknown.

We will soon have new photos and stories... stay tuned!
Merry Xmas and best of 2009 to All!!

Tomas Bellander & Jorgen Kard playing in their Kayaks, Santa Teresa

Not only surfers are catching waves these days...

small waves but lots of sunshine

Angela enjoys the beach while Tomas and I play in the waves.