Island Life

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Well the last two weeks have passed quickly as we make our way further and further south. Before dropping Tiff off at the airport we spent some time on the pacific side of Costa Rica where we experienced a big tropical storm. We were confined to our beach cabana for most of three nights and two days as driving rains and hurricane force winds battered the coast. We passed the time by playing cards and reading, until the power went out at least then it was realy dark. We emerged unscathed but the community centre down the road did'nt do as well, the wind tore it's roof off!

So after that me and Dane bussed it over to the carribean side to get away from the rain and ended up staying in the worst town I have been to in central america as far as crime and seediness, maybe in the world. If anyone is ever down here the name is PUERTO VIEJO and it's a very touristy place but with a serious drug problem and people regularly get robbed. The police refuse to do anything about it, me and Dane witnessed a bit of frontier justice as the pursuit of a thief by two men ended litteraly on the front step of our cabana where they caught him. Safe to say he won't be doing that again any time soon. Enough about that place though, was good to get out of there after a few days, most other places are alot more civalized and maybe the police are corrupt but at least they don't put up with any funny stuff. We crossed into Panama and the archipelago of Bocas del Toro, extremely nice place. Good cheap diving too, so Dane did his three day course.

There is a very cool bar slash restaraunt place there(okay it's more of a bar) that we went to a couple times, it's built over the ocean with a large hole in the floor looking down at a sunken boat. The first time we went there Dane had his keys out and was twirling them on his finger and they flew off and up and straight into the ocean where they sank down beside the boat. I tried to convince him we could get a snorkel the next day and retrieve them but he wouldn't have it and dove in after them. He couldn't find them and after a few minutes of scolding and making fun of his futile efforts I dove in and swam to the bottom and felt around for a while, stirring up a bunch of silt and not a chance of seeing anything. I did find a pair of sunglasses though that were pretty nice and had barnacles growing off the lenses and frames! When dane went to rent a snorkel the next day the guy at the shop said not to bother because it was impossible to find stuff down there, he had dropped a pair of sunglasses in a few years back and spent hours looking for them... Hahaha.

The islands here are top notch, white sand beaches, good waves, friendly locals. The locals are mostly Afro Caribbean immigrants from Jamaica and speak alot of english. The food is different, lot more flavour than other parts. We're going to stay here for another day or two then we have to start organising a boat to sail us down to Colombia as there is no road to get there.

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