Sierpe, Costa Rica

And so the 10 hour journey across the country begins. Unfortunately this is as direct as the route can get because there's a huge national park in the middle of the country that prevents us going straight across. Cue the tiki tour that takes us in basically a semi-circle almost back to San José before going over to the Caribbean Coast. It would actually be faster for us to go through Panama but two border crossings would add to that time and also there's the minor detail that we aren't allowed to take Terry out of Costa Rica. 10 hour journey it is then.

Torrential rain on our last evening in Drake Bay had us all a bit nervous about tackling the river crossings again on the road back out. Our host Lucy recommended us an alternative route that would supposedly shave an hour and half from our total time by taking a new road that doesn't even exist on Google maps. With no signs on the roads, we were instead armed with some fairly vague instructions, "cross the first river and take the second left past the airport, there's a school on the corner."

Bring on the unpaved roads again and here goes.

We crossed the first river and then looked out for any signs of an airport. We knew realistically it was probably just going to be an airstrip of some kind for small planes but saw no such thing. We reached the second road on the left and saw no school either. We looped back and saw a school a bit further down that second road on the left so took the plunge and hoped this was the one we were after. We couldn't really afford to take the wrong roads either as there were no petrol stations for miles and Terry was already on less than half a tank.

The road took us in all sorts of directions around the hills but also gave us amazing views of the mangroves along this part of the coast and through forests again. We have been very lucky to see some amazing scenery here in Costa Rica. Everything is always so lush and green and clean. It's so nice to be somewhere clean again after a few months in some seriously grimy countries where they really just give no thought about throwing their rubbish wherever they please.

15km took us almost an hour on the unpaved roads. It was somewhat soul destroying to see written on one of the first signs we'd seen in a while but eventually we joined up to a better road that got us covering ground more quickly. This route required us to take what Lucy described as a ferry, across one of the inlets by the small town of Sierpe. Mike and I had already pictured that this was going to be more of a barge like the one we had used in Guatemala, but we hadn't expected that it was going to be powered by a small boat attached to the side of it. Classic.

Two workers guided us to drive onto the back of this barge with one other car for the short journey across. It was only 20 metres or so of water that required crossing so it was over within a couple of minutes but at least it provided some entertainment and a change of scenery for a short while before we continued on. Whether this route really saved us any time is yet to be seen but nonetheless it was nice to see a different area.

A road block from a children's sports day in Sierpe had us taking a tiki-tour of the town's few streets before we finally arrived back to proper roads and the highway for the next leg of the journey. Happy to see the back of unpaved roads that's for sure.Read more