A country in a day

Crossing an entire country in one day is exhausting, even one as small as costa rica. One of the things I was looking forward to the most in central america were the shorter bus times, but Sarah and I ended up doing a big 15 hour day crossing from the very bottom southeast corner to the very top northwest corner of costa rica. We arrived at 11 in the evening and decided it wouldn't be safe to do the border crossing so late, so we checked into a very basic hostel that felt sort of like a jail. I kept hearing funny noises in the hallway but every time I looked out there was nobody there, so I deemed it haunted and locked us up inside for the night.

Bright and early the next morning Sarah and I headed blindly for the border. Most border crossing are pretty straightforward, but for some reason this one was completely disorganized, mostly because the footpath WAS the road (or was the road the footpath?) and there were huge mac trucks driving in every which direction. There wasn't really any signage indicating which direction to go, and we ended up vaguely meandering towards nicaragua not really knowing what was going on. I did enjoy the nicaraguan immigration officer, though. Even though there was a fat ass line behind us he took the time to look through all my stamps and smile approvingly at each place I'd been to.