Costa Rica to Panama with Kids: Crossing Sixaola to Bocas del Toro — Carenero, Bastimentos & the Bridge That Changed Us Costa Rica to Bocas del Toro with Kids: How to Cross the Sixaola Bridge, Island-Hop to Paradise, and Come Home Slightly Sunburned and Completely Satisfied In which we navigate a pedestrian border crossing over a river, discover that boat taxis are a perfectly acceptable school bus alternative, snorkel in a national marine park, encounter a snake of non-trivial dimensions, and conclude that Panama is best appreciated with tropical fruit, a cold beer, and sufficiently low expectations about the surrounding rubbish situation. The Bocas del Toro archipelago sits on the Caribbean coast of Panama, just across a small bridge over the Rio Sixaola from Costa Rica. In a straight line it's roughly 40 miles from Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. In actual travel time, given that you cross an international border and then board a boat, it takes around three to four...

4th Time's the Charm: Climbing El Potrero Chico and Road-Tripping to Punta de Mita From a Border Office Standoff in Coahuila to a Music Video Shoot in Nayarit — This Is the Mexico Trip That Finally Worked El Potrero Chico, Nuevo León. Where limestone goes to be extraordinary and families go to discover their limits. There is a specific kind of humility that comes from being turned away at the same international border twice. The first time, the Mexican border officer at Piedras Negras informed us that Base Camp — our converted school bus, our beloved rolling home — was registered as a "bus" and therefore could not receive a Temporary Import Permit (TIP). "No se puede," she said, with the serene finality of someone who has delivered this news before and is entirely comfortable delivering it again. We drove thousands of miles back to Maine to re-register it as an RV. We spent a summer working. We came back. The second time was the...

Denied Entry to Mexico in a School Bus: Two Border Crossings, Zero Stamps, One Hard Lesson A cautionary tale about vehicle weight limits, bureaucratic technicalities, and the humbling perspective that comes from standing at the wrong side of a border. When people asked us about our adventures after we returned to Maine for the summer, they expected the highlights reel. And honestly, we had a spectacular one. We could have talked about Base Camp — the school bus we'd bought from the local district, gutted, and rebuilt into our rolling home after our sailboat Tiny Bubbles II sold. We could have told them about the manatees that joined us while we swam in the crystal springs of Florida, floating alongside us with the serene indifference of creatures who have never once had a schedule to keep. We could have described the world-class bouldering at Hueco Tanks , 32 miles northeast of El Paso — a 4,000-year-old landscape of pocketed syenite rock that climbers fly in from...