Finalamente

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Its Rich calling and oh yes, i have a camera. And i didnt need to sell a kidney to get it, although I could have live here for a month on that money. Ah well, the moral to this story is don´t put delicate electronics in rivers.

Lots of fun has been had of late, and after four weeks of intensive language tuition i have learned one thing above all else. I cant speak Spanish, although I´m getting pretty good at Spanglish. Now when i try to converse with the locals they insult me in Spanish! Hooray!

Update for Friday. In the morning I endured a visit to a Panama hat factory. Here we witnessed the really quite impressive spectacle of people hand making hats, at huge cost in man hours, for people to buy without really thnking about it in Marks And Spencer. The process is too lengthy to go into here, but the weaving alone is incredible; possibly even better than i could do. Following a marvellous ten minutes entertaining myself trying on hats, and a further half hour of watching a class mate try on one for her mother (far less entertaining), we went for what i consider to be the main event.

At last, yes, I have eaten a guinea pig. And mighty tasty it was too. For the record, if you intend to try this yourself, then i recommend getting more than one between seven. Tasty, but ive seen more meat on (censored by Jen). I will endeavour to get a whole one to myself shortly, and get brilliant photos of me being horrible to a fluffy animal that will squeak no more. Further to the food round here, we got fairly tired of such specialities as stomach lining fritters and skin and bogey soup, so we´ve been eating less almuerzos (translation= lunch, but conotation is fixed price menu: cheapy cheapy) and more other stuff. Although it is true that better means more expensive, I am perfectly prepared to pay an extra eight pence to eat something that doesnt look like the chef ran it over on his way to work in the morning. A particular favourite of mine is the local Columbian, where surprisingly good portions of smoked pork chops, fried pork, burritos and other great stuff can be purchased for a paultry $1.80. Fantastico!

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Photos

hats, brilliant
Quite a lot of work goes into this, really

more hats, even better!
I´ve always wanted a really stupid hat, and here there were squadrons of them!

That´ll learn em
well, at least they cant make a daft noise when theyve got a great big pole stuffed in their morph

loads of hats!!!
if one hat´s good, how good is this lot? Ill tell you, its fantastic, but not as great as my new camera

Dame Rich
For the attention of Señor Clark, I say one down, three to go. (got a bet that i couldnt get photographed in womens national dress in every country)the other lovely lady is Audie

Dinner
much better than skin soup, and taken with my fat finger expertly placed over the flash, giving a fetching red hue

Comments

[Stu]

Rich in a dress
Haaaaaaaaaahahahaha! The guinea pig looks disgusting. Top effort.

[Duncan]

Gimme, gimme, gimme!
I'm insanely jealous; I've always wanted to try guinne pig. I don't know wether they do smoked, air-dried or otherwise preserved rodent, but if they do please bring me back one of the peckers.

[Andy]

Your journey to the dark side has begun
Ah Rich, what can i say? i'm particularly fond of what appears to be an enormous salad bowl on you head. how do they get the guinea pig to swallow the stick?

[Ryan]

Eat The Critters
Excellent work dude, 'Fluffy' from next door suddenly looks more... appealing..

[WidnesMike]

Ola
I've finally worked out what this travelblog stuff is. How marvelous! The reports of your travels (written with your normal levels of political correctness and tact) are most amusing. Shame you missed the opportunity to crack the much loved two hats routine (say it fast over and over to see where I'm going with this...)Keep me posted!