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Published: March 24th 2006
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Bird watching in Santa Fe
This is the size of bird I can watch easily. Pray tell what kind IS it tho? Lots of chickens running loose in Santa Fe. Is that wy the eggs started tasting..rotten???? I am going home today.
I am in tears at breakfast in this fancy hotel in Panama City-- I don't really know why- exhaustion, probably. I couldn't sleep last night-again- despite the most perfect room of the trip. Our airport shuttle driver--Luigi's wife-- was there at 8 AM for the drive to the airport. Very personable gal who looks 18 years old at the most but is quite a bit older. Gals seem to hold their looks well here!! Long legged gals in tight fitting jeans all over the airport. I was going to take a picture of some of them but was afraid I'd be arrested as some kind of pervert.
The usual security delays but nothing memorable. They merely nodded when I said I had two hip replacements. No special screening.
My seatmate back to Houston was perhaps the best person I could have found to tell me about the "other" Panama--the side we tourists are steered away from. He was returning to the States from 5 months working with the Sisters of Mercy in Colon. He had retired from the Canal Firefighters force years ago, lost a wife to Parkinson's, and now devoted his time and money to
Santa Fe native
Hanging out at the sustainable agriculture farm service work. What a story of conditions on the Caribbean side of Panama that politicians easily ignore since most of their constituents don't want to "waste" money on a seemingly hopeless situation.
He promised me that if I would bring my husband Mont back to Panama he would arrange for us to see the Canal from the working side of a tugboat and then the agricultural area around Santiago from a rancher's viewpoint. If any reader is interested, I can serve as a go between for you with him. I am uncomfortable putting his name up on this website for obvious reasons. He is a private kind of person.
I returned from the temperate weather of Panama-- temps always in the 70-80 degree range-- to a very cold feeling 37 degree Houston. Did you know that we Senior Citizens have a special express passport line at Houston? Hot dog. Gray hair came in handy again.
Now I am going to add a bunch of pictures here at the end of my impression of Panama that didn't fit with the journal I have been writing.....most of them of the animals, of course. I will always remember my trip there.
Boquete native
Is it my imagination or do all the street dogs in Panama look alike?? Actually, they look like the street dogs of Dallas too. both the good and the bad.
Would I advise you to take an Extreme Panama tour? Yes --with reservations. I would have enjoyed it more if I had done this when I was in my 50s when I was still riding horses well, able to hike, climb in and out of boats and sleep in motels. Now I had too much baggage-- I need my own pillow, even!! The motel nightmares are more easily understood now in retrospect when I remember some of the bad experiences I had while travelling for the government....many of which I had shoved out of my head, I thought.
Just another thought on the group. It would be very difficult to imagine being able to please everybody on everything since we were such a diverse bunch. A couple from Washington who had visions of finding investment/retirement property, a couple from Houston who liked bird watching and snorkelling, a teenager from Germany with her own agenda, and a 74 year old independent as hell veterinarian do not have a lot in common.
Would I like to go back to Panama?
Yes. But not with a tour. I need to be more in control of
A kid and his horse in Santa Fe
"But Dad-- he won't go where I want him to gooooooo!!" my travel as I am here at home. I want to know how many miles I will be going the next day and which direction I am travelling. I want to stay with the locals instead of the tourists. I probably could get along better in hostels and move across the country slower. I need to be able to adjust the eating schedule to what I am accustomed. On the other hand, I never could have seen so much of the country in such a short time on my own. I couldn't make the connections, especially the planes to the islands. I don't need to go to San Blas nor Bocas again however but want to see more of Panama City, especially the harpy eagles and the zoo.
Regrets?
That I didn't have a massage in Boquete-- it would have also helped to have some sort of hot tub to relax in about that time. Showers don't always fill the need. Then I regret I didn't get off the horse at the river the day before and just enjoy the scenery. There was nothing for me to prove by sitting on a horse just for the sake of putting
Horseback rest area
We did more sitting around than riding but that was probably for the best. I would have liked to ride out on the top into the deforested range land. in the time.
I also regret I didn't bring my own travel pillow and silk bedsack; I believe that if I could have slept better, I would have enjoyed the trip more. It also was a big handicap that my hearing aids had broken just before the trip. Just because I couldn't distinguish certain words didn't mean I was stupid. Remember that the next time you are around anyone that is having trouble hearing. For example, if "fish" sounds like "peach", it isn't much fun to have someone laugh at the results....noone intentionally breaks a hearing aid. I now have new aids that I wish could have had on the trip. I don't know how much I missed out on. I do know that I felt I was out of the loop on a lot of the instructions.
Panama is a much bigger country than I ever imagined. It has a much more temperate climate than I imagined. There were no bugs, no mosquitoes and no terrorists, bird flu nor anybody worrying about the security level. All in all, it was a much more pleasant environment than I had imagined. But I don't know for how much longer.
However
Cape buffalo and trainer
Apparently the owner of the horses trains animals for specialty acts. The horses we rode supposedly are just for his own personal use but I never understood whether he owned the land or worked for someone else who was the actual owner. Anyway, his venture into tourist service needs considerable fine tuning.Maybe we were more discerning than most.. as I huddled back down in the bed of our camper now parked in Houston, I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.......I want to be home in Wyoming.... But it still is a 1456 mile drive away.
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marjory
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dreams
my sister always reported better dreams than the rest of us -- so her colorful report of "panama" was what i expected -- i would not be at all surprised if she did not add additional remembrances of this trip to "extreme panama" sometime in the future