After being so lucky with meeting such great people for the last two weddings we left Nicaragua on a real high. We had already arranged a date for our Costa Rica wedding and that was our next stop. We left Nicaragua early the day after the wedding and hotfooted it to the border. we were dreading it as we had heard bad reports of the crossing. We had been warned of a km of ‘no-mans land’ inbetween Nicaragua and Costa Rica and lengthy waits. We sucked it up and set off as early was we could. We arrived and all seemed to be going well, Alex got us out of Nicaragua with ease and then we drove the the Cosat Rica side. Alex went off to do his thing and after half an hour I started to worry a little. Before long a couple came up to the van and said ‘hi are you Lisa? Your husband just got us into the country for free and said we could catch a ride with you’. Lyndsey and Matt jumped in and we sat chatting for a good hour while Alex was marched all around the place trying to get Peggy into Costa Rica. The officials were playing him a yarn about having to pay for plates and the dates on our vehicle documents and whatever they could to get some money out of him. A long slog and $50 lighter he reappeared at the van.
We chatted all the way to Liberia where we stopped for some lunch and parted ways with Matt and Lyndsey who were heading into the clouds in Monteverde, they went to look for a bus and were offered a lift from a friendly local so we took down the liscence plate details and waved them off!
As it started to get late we consulted the map and decided to head to Puntarenas for the night, as we arrived just as the sun set, the signs for the last night of carnival were all over the streets. We tried to find somewhere to stay with no luck and decided we should rough it…but outside the police station as it did NOT feel like a safe place at all! The police station was in the middle of the carnival street so we headed deeper into the residencial area and tried again for somewhere behind closed gates to park. The luck wasnt with us that night and we found a quiet street and parked up. We ate Pizza for dinner at a cute little Italian restaurant. We shared a garlic bread with cheese and mushrooms (my favourite back home) and it was nearly as god as the local take away in Withernsea of all places! We went back to the van and tried to sleep. After a few hours Alex gave up and left me in bed while he drove us somewhere safe and quiet. We spent the night in the best ever equipped 24 hour gas station. It was a truck stop and had toilets and showers and was nice and safe with all the truckers parked around us. We woke up and showered and then glinting in the sunlight, we saw the gas tank! The fuel station sold LPG gas! We jumped for joy and filled our gas tank and headed straight to the supermarket where we brought vegetables and salad and cooked our own lunch! It sounds silly to say that eating out for 3 meals a day is awful but it is because you just cant always find what you fancy. We happily hit the road to Quepos after our vegetable intake and stumbled upon El Avion the location of the wedding by chance! We stopped for a drink at the amazing location with stunning views over the bay. We rang around the wedding team and arranged to meet them that night and went to find some accomodation. We found a hostel that let us stay on their carpark and use their facilities which included a pool! We relaxed in the baking hot sunshine for the afternoon until it was time to go and meet the wedding team! We were so excited to meet everyone and we had been so lucky to have had TWO photographers offer to shoot the wedding! We jumped on the bus from our campsite to El Avion and met with Christina and her friend that was visiting from Texas, Kevin and Isabella. We ate squid and shared nachos, drank beer and talked weddings. Isabella is a wedding planner for the hotel Costa Verde and they have the a perfect view from one of their pools for watching the sun set so we arranged to head there to watch the sun pop below the horizon after the wedding which was to be held inside the crashed Fairchild C-123 which was part of one of the biggest scandals of the mid 80’s. (Read the story behind the plane on the El Avion link, it is really interesting!) Kevin and Christina discussed lighting and the plan for shooting the wedding and we decided on visiting the bat cave after the sun had gone down to get some night time shots. Kevin is a lighting whiz and Christinas speciality is night time photography so two very different photographers we were very luck to have them along!
We left on the last bus very excited for the wedding the next day. Once more we had been lucky to meet a group of people who were as excited as we were about our trip and whom we instantly got along with. I suppose they have to be a little bit as crazy as we are to want to be involved…right?!

Find out what happens next on our travelling wedding adventure!