Booking of a uncommon tour I had see a small paragraph on a backpacker website about an indigenous Wounaan community, close to Panama City, that encourages tours within their village. Our friends were actually staying at that particular backpacker hostel and so we made enquiries about the tour and were able to organise our time in the village for today. Apparently, no one from the hostel had been out to the community in a while and so the receptionist wasn't really sure on what was involved. She confirmed our tour with a member of the community and let us know that [View Full Entry]

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Our first introduction to Panama City was at the Albrook Terminal, the main bus station for the city. A huge shopping mall is adjacent and so the city appeared to be quite modern with new facilities, even though the chicken buses were visible everywhere. The city is quite modern to an extent, but we were quickly introduced to the poorer side of the city once we entered Casco Viejo, an old town that was built after the Old Panama town was Panama La Vieja, but before the modern city took off and moved over to where the centre of the city [View Full Entry]

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Farewell to the ecolodge It was raining very heavy for the first time in the morning during our stay at Lapa Rios and neither Dan nor I wanted to get out of our massive soft bed, as the sound of the rain was soothing as the rain drops cooled the air. But we needed to get up to finish packing, eat breakfast and take our ride back into Puerto Jimenez in time to board the ferry to Golfito, a small town on the other side of the Golfo Dulce, the water mass that separates the Osa Peninsula from the mainland. We [View Full Entry]

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Stress and Vanity The disliked dress, a bad dress modification, the red-orange hair situation and then the case of an unuseable hair iron all built up to an unhappy bride-to-be the night before. The first 3 issues had been mentally dealt with or fixed to some degree, but the pending situation of a bad hair day took the cake for me. Dan did well to ride the emotional rollercoaster and going to sleep was the only way for me to deal with the situation at 10:30 in the evening. Vanity is every bride's curse and as much as I thought that [View Full Entry]

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Scoping out a good wedding location Dan and I woke early to head down to the beach to find appropriate places to hold our wedding ceremony. We weren't exactly sure on how to get to Pan Dulce beach, as we had only looked at the map once on the previous day and had forgotten to bring it with us on this morning. It generally takes 15 minutes to walk there, but we had made it a good 30 minutes of walking back and forth before finally finding it down the road that we first decided against. It was the first time [View Full Entry]

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My scariest flight ever We made it to the small airport on time for check-in and managed to find ourselves seats in the 2nd row of the small twin engine plane that was to fly us to Puerto Jimenez. Luckily the plane was not full, as the dress took up 2 seats in the first row directly in front of us. It is the smallest plane that I have ever been on and Dan hadn't help calm my nerves by stating that it is best that we die if the plane crashes, as we wouldn't want to survive a crash all [View Full Entry]

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Cooking indoors over an open fire is one of the issues that the people of Santa Maria de Jesus face in there daily lives. As it does many people in similar circumstances across the world. It is this issue that I went to this town in Guatemala to learn more about and to assist in fixing it for four families whilst I was there. After a week of one-on-one Spanish lessons in Antigua, I was ready to get my hands dirty with a bit of manual labour, something that I have missed after a number of years working and studying indoors [View Full Entry]

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Morning routine Our mornings started by meeting everyone at the coffee shop in Antigua, where all the volunteers got together before heading off to either Itzapa or Santa Maria de Jesus for the day. Our shuttle bus usually arrived around 8am to drive the teachers and stove builders to Santa Maria de Jesus, which is located on the side of Volcano Agua. Once we arrive at the viallge, and we all clamber out of the mini van, different children each day welcomed us with hugs and big smiles. During the weeks that Dan was building stoves, he would meet up with [View Full Entry]

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Day of the grandparents There were less people to squish into the van to Santa Maria de Jesus this morning, due to some of the volunteers taking a 3-day weekend in San Salvador and another having completed her time on the project. The comfort of space just added to how well the day was to become. Today at the school is 'el dia de abulitos' (the day of the grandparents) which is always combined with the day of the birthdays for the children. Once a month at the Santa Maria de Jesus project, the grandparents of the children that attend the [View Full Entry]

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It took about 1.5 hours to drive to the Pacaya National Park from Antigua, with the time passing quickly with us viewing the landscape, chatting to fellow GVI organisation volunteers about what we are to expect in our coming weeks and chatting to the other Northern Americans that had joined the tour. A boy, named Jorge, jumped onto the ladder afixed to the side of the Dodge van that we were travelling in, whom we met later as a helper for our journey. Jorge was hired by our guide to show us exatly where the latest flow is. The guide said [View Full Entry]

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