The Armpit of Central America

It's been a while since my last post and I'm sure you're all dying to know what happened to the snake. It eventually turned up in my brother's room a few days later, when it "attacked and almost killed him," as he put it. That's a pretty bold move for a snake that was too small to eat a newborn chicken. Luckily my host brother survived the vicious attack. More amazing is the fact that, not only did they not kill the snake, but they put it back in the cardboard box for me. I had to let it go when I returned home since I'm unable to feed it, but hopefully I'll be able to find a larger boa sometime soon. I'm sure my family is anxious for a replacement.

The "armpit" that I refer to in the title would be San Jose, Costa Rica. Why was I in San Jose? Well, it turns out that it costs about half the price to fly from Miami to San Jose than to Panama City. However, after visiting San Jose, I'm not sure it's worth the savings. I went to San Jose because my sister came to visit me for the holidays... thanks Sara. Everything about her visit was awesome except for the part in San Jose, that sucked. Being the nice brother that I am, and her not speaking a lick of Spanish, I went to San Jose to pick her up at the airport. My initial perception of the city my have been tainted by the fact that her plane was delayed 6 hours while I waited outside in the cold at the airport... and I was going on 24 hours without sleep... and we almost couldn't find a bus back to Panama. But the city itself was crappy and full of people who would probably kill you if you were foolish enough to go strolling around at night.

Fortunately, things picked up pretty quickly once we finally got out of Costa Rica and back to my home turf. We spent about a day in my site. The family was disappointed that we weren't staying longer. I tried to explain that the reasoning behind the short stay was due to the lack of anything fun to do here and my sister not speaking any Spanish. Our first trip took us to Omar Torrijos National Park. It's located in the mountains of Cocle. I'd been there once before and had a wonderful time so I hoped we'd have similar luck this time. We made it to the park ahead of schedule and even got half price accommodations by staying in the ranger station. The tourist cabins are nice, but the ranger station had an incredible view of the mountains and valley below, plus a hummingbird feeder which was visited regularly by several species throughout the day. The best park of this park is the night hikes. Of course we did have a great time exploring some poorly maintained trails during the day, but we saw much more wildlife during our nocturnal explorations.

---

---