January 2017: the beginning of a year and the end of a continent

2017! A new year of travelling. After 10 months I have now driving enough kilometres to go around the earth once. In January I’m still in Central America I travelled 1 week with my parents and Jasper in Nicaragua. After that it was two weeks in Costa Rica with Maarten and a final week of relaxing in Panama. I’m getting very close to South America now.

The Good

• The van had zero issues. A whole month without problems. That’s been a long time ago.
• Travelling with visitors and other overlanders. My last day in Costa Rica was the first day in 1.5 months that I was by myself.
• Loads of good hikes and I even started running again.
• After 10 months I finally had my first night of bush camping. I was pretty nervous that evening but decided to stay for another day.

The Bad

• Nothing?!? (No van breakdowns, no terrible border crossings, no bad weather)

The Unforgettable

• The sloths climbing down the trees next to the van on the campsite was pretty cool.
• The “off-roading”* driving the van up and down steep hills and across rivers

*Not technically off road because it was a road, just a really really bad dirt road.

The Stats

• No days: 31 (348 total)
• No. km: 2805 (41660 total)
• Countries: Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama
• No. Border crossings: 2
• No. of places stayed at: 20 (18 campsites, 2 hostels)
• Hikes: 49km height difference 11813m
• Books: 2
• Movies: 0
• New Beers: 7
• Photos: 871
• Weather:
  • Days: warmest 35 coldest 15, average 29
  • Nights: warmest 24, coldest 11, average 21

Daily costs for January

• Campsites: 5 Euro per night (plan was 10)
• Food: 8 Euro per day (plan was 6)
• Fun: 1 Euro per day (plan was 5)

Total: 14 Euro per day (plan was 21)

Food is very expensive in Costa Rica and Panama, almost back to European prices. One of the campsites in Costa Rica wanted to have 17 USD per person per night, luckily we found a restaurant that let us stay for free. Having visitors around did drop my camping and fuel prices, so that’s some good compensation.

Overall driving (10 months):

• Distance: 41660 (plan was 42220)
• Fuel costs: 62 cents/l (plan was 62 cents/l)
• Efficiency: 11.1 km/l (plan was 10.5 km/l)

Other costs:

• I bought bought my flights from Panama to Colombia: 220 EUR

So next monthly post I’ll be in Colombia!