July 1-2, 2005

This is the third phase of the Around-the-World driving expedition of the World of Wonders Project.  We hope you join us, Kim & Don, as we drive overland from Costa Rica and Panama, then ship to South America where we will explore Venezuela and Brazil. 

The fun and games of modern-day air travel started as we were standing in line to board our flight.  We heard Don's name called so we got out of line and went over to the check-in/flight desk.  Bad news.  We were told that the Transportation Safety Agency had gone though our boxes of supplies and removed several items that they considered to be dangerous.  A couple of items were questionable, like the tube of silicone, but come on, they confiscated all six bottles of our toilet/black water tank conditioner!  They said they were dangerous.  Luckily for us, we still have a couple of bottles in a box in the Fuso, otherwise things might get a bit stinky!

Arriving late that night we decided to checked into a hotel in San Antonio de Belen for the night.  This was easier than going back to the Fuso in the dark and trying to re-hook all the electrical cables, water, etc. This turned out to be a smart move.  In the morning when we got back to the expedition vehicle, we found that the cover we had put on had formed a pool on the rack over the cab and we had about 5+ gallons of water/primordial soup growing several new plants in the liquid.  Taking one of our cooking pots, Don bailed the water while Kim started unpacking.  

We plan to spend a couple of days in town so we can do some maintenance, run some errands and get settled again in the Fuso before heading towards Panama.  This expedition will be different for us as it is currently the rainy season and today brought our first rain.  Luckily it seems that, for the most part, the rain comes in the afternoon so we might have sunny mornings.

We also noticed that we were being visited by an unusually large number of ants.  We killed a bunch, but failed to find where they were coming from.  In the morning as Kim was cleaning around a window frame, she saw ants coming in from around the frame - and when she removed a screw, they came out the screw hole!  We were able to quickly borrow some bug spray and when we removed the frame from around the window - AH!!  We had our own ant farm.  Somehow the ants had gotten into the window while we were gone and set up housekeeping.  Yes, we had ants, we had larvae, we had pupa and we had the pulp of who knows what!  By the time we finished cleaning up, our sink was full of yuck.

But wait, last night we had an earthquake.  As we were sitting around after dinner, the Fuso suddenly began to sway as if we were in a strong wind, only the wind wasn't blowing.  Then as we talked about this oddity, the truck began shaking more firmly.  It was at this point we realized that we were experiencing an earthquake.  After a minute or so, things settled back down.  It was actually rather mild, but it was very unexpected.  

That was our excitement for the the last couple of days.  In the morning we head north to the Caribbean side of the country as we have been told that we might get to see Loggerhead turtles coming ashore to lay eggs AND we might even see some of the baby turtles hatch and swim away.  We really want to see turtles on this trip so we hope we get lucky.