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Published: November 15th 2009
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Leaving the project which you think would be really easy, wasn't. We wanted to leave Saturday morning, the painful 4 o'clock bus. But the night before we understood, that besides a truck blocking the road, a bridge collapsed, we were also in Code Yellow because of a hurricane close to Nicaragua and they didn't know yet the course of the hurricane. All this besides the knowledge that if they is rain the bus can't leave because rivers go
over the road. There was no plane and the day after it was Sunday so we didn't have a bus.
The solution: make a reservation for the 7 o'clock boat. To catch this boat we had to boat over the laguna, then we had to walk/ run over a 2 km beach. Run because it was really high tide, so to not get wet totally(it was also raining), we have to make little sprints around vegetation to dodge the incoming waves. Which gave us a lot of giggles with are backpacks. Then we had to cross a small but deep river, luckily without swimming because of a sweet local man with a boat. Our boat arrived but due to the high waves
it couldn't come close and we had to 'walk' towards the boat, bags above our head, conquering incoming waves. We made it, loss: 1 flip flop and; totally soaked. We created a story the day before about the boat ride, followed by dolphins and whales and meeting up cute locals giving us a free ride. Nothing of this, we did get a one free ride though. The rest of the day went smoothly, no waiting nothing, even the border crossing in to
Panama went fast.
Of course not the whole day can be going great, considering the morning was more excitement and laughter than annoyance and fear. Our dark cloud was an old Australian dude.
Besides being seriously unattractive and had a lisp, he was ignorant and rude from the first moment. He treated Irene, being Spanish, as a stupid person because 'she won't be able to understand English as he doesn't speak really slowwww'. I called him out on it and he apologised. He was cocky and again ignorant about travelling, not speaking the language as he also didn't want to learn; his wife is from Taiwan and they didn't speak each others language. He didn't want to hear any of our views, used "as that being said" every 5 sentences, made faces as if we were stupid(e.g.rolling eyes). So I was irritated. Try to make him clear with smooth comments that maybe it's better that we don't interact anymore, at all. But he was living in his own world, and didn't or didn't want to pick any of these signals. Then he made a comment about 'us women' in general, and I lost it. Called him out on it that you can't generalise and he is being really offending. He apologised, but he said 'but' after it. I told him you can't apologise and say 'but' that's a contradiction. Told him literally that it's better to stop the conversation. He didn't want to hear any of it and kept on explaining his side about the women thing. - Thats' it, THAT'S IT!!! I'm speaking your language don't I, so what part don't you understand, turn around- ..this was my last sentence to this...excuse for a man. Irene gave him a little extra when he turned around and trying to speak to her in some kinda made up silent language.
Our first taste of Panama was in
Boquete. This is a cute little town in the mid west of Panama. Elevation is something above 1000m. Here you can do different hikes, visit hot springs, hike up a volcano(Baru), wander through gardens, do some coffee tasting, go rafting. However, slightly because of the weather, making our way to the Caribbean and the prices, we didn't do that much. We went to a cool huge garden and explored it, we tasted coffee and made our
contact with the world as we couldn't do so in the project. We had laughs about the owner of the hostel called Pancho. He looked like he used a bit too much drugs in the past: he eyes stand weird, he moves his body continuously and the best part is when he drew us a map of the surroundings we laughed, so hard. It was a real Picasso and we had no clue how to 'read' it. Just a master piece of art, totally useless.
Bocas del Toro are a group of islands in the Caribbean, really close to the Costa Rican border. These islands are the place to go for surfing, diving and exploring. This place attracts so many people that it is really expensive(Panama-wise). Also few days before we arrived a young girl got attacked by a young shark apparently in 1/1,5 meter deep water, she lost her arm. After arrival I did learn a lot of high lights are no more due to over tourism and overall lack of interest/expertise of taking care of nature. We did go to star beach, this is a nickname for a beach with a lot of starfish, pretty obvious. This
was cool, we cheated a little though(see pictures). The first night we got invited by Alex who works in the hostel for a BBQ. He lives in a cute house on another Island with his dog Ajax😊. It was nice with some guitar play.
The day after we try to go to Playa Bluff, which supposed to be really beautiful. It is. But the bikes ruined the experience; it's a 7 km bike ride, which normally is easy, but the mud created clogging between tire and mudguard, so wheels stopped turning. Every 5 meters or so. Finally, after passing the local dump and had lots of de-mudding stops, we reached the beach. And to finish it of on our way back one of the chains broke. Luckily we caught a ride, stopped before town to clean the bikes in the ocean. Of course not a smart plan; our bikes caught seaweed, pretty sight was that. That night we went over again to the other island (Carenero) for another dinner date. 3 Quebecers and a Californian rented an amazing house for a month and got with that house and amazingly ugly dog and heaps of horrible sand flies.
Our last night
we went out, fooled a local telling him that he's too old and my parents wouldn't approve. I had some laughs with a guy who had rasta down his butt, impressive! Missed saying good bye to Hanna. Next day after everyone around me seemed to have left, I left at 5 with the overnight bus to Panama city. Were I arrived at 4.30 in the morning and went straight to bed in the hostel.
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wieke
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Yo Anouk, kan me helemaal voorstellen hoe je die amerikaan ff de waarheid hebt verteld (ik denk dat iedereen die jou een beetje kent zich dat heel goed kan voorstellen ;)) Klinkt entertaining, jammer dat ik er niet bij was. Maar je reis klinkt inspirerend, ik ga zo ook ff opzoek naar een ticket denk ik :) veel plezier! dikke kus