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Published: April 14th 2010
Hi all,
This is going to be our first entry about
Panama, but before w;e; get there, just a few more words about Costa Rica.
Though Costa Rica is a modern country, it has had the poorest bus service we have seen until now in our trip. We already told you that they have not heard about the concept of bus terminal. We can now officially add, that most of the buses are old and in poor shape and NONE of them has air-conditioning, although it is VERY hot in Costa Rica.
As we were about to leave
San Jose to Panama, we thought this must be a different type of bus - the price was stated in dollars, the ride is expected to be 7 hours and it is after-all an “international ride” - but none of these excuses was important enough for the Ticos (that is how Costa Ricans are called). The bus looked slightly better than the rest, but it was as hot as hell, its chairs were straight and stiff like all the rest, and the ride was slow and took way more than the 7 hours it was supposed to.
The border
crossing was a very unorganized process - we have already crossed borders with buses before, but even the border crossing between Peru and Bolivia was much more organized than this one. The driver just stopped and said we are at the border... While we were standing in line to exit Costa Rica, we saw the bus driving away. Then while walking from the Cosat Rican side to the Panamanian side, we almost got killed 3 times by the passing traffic - as you have to walk in the middle of the gravel road where all the trucks, cars, wild taxis and who knows what else is going both ways in an unordered manner creating something like 7 lanes where only 2 lanes exists. At the end of this weird walk, we got to the Panamanian passport control, and the officer was asking us for our return bus ticket out of Panama. We obviously did not have such ticket, so we explained that we are intending to exit panama on the other side crossing to Colombia, so he asked for tickets to Colombia - “No, we do not have such flight tickets, we intend to go by boat” we answered. “So
show me your boat tickets”, he answered naturally starting to loose his patience and making us more nervous. Well, we replied - the thing is that we could not book the boat either, as the captains of these boats only set to sail a few days before and so you can only buy these tickets while in Panama city. We slowly explained to him, that the only thing we could show him is the flight tickets we have for July 10, back from Brazil to Israel, and the way to Brazil will be on water and land. We even bothered and showed him our computer desktop where we have a copy of this e-ticket. Luckily, this has finally convinced him, and he stamped our passports - and let us into Panama.
Welcome to Panama! An hour or so later we made it to David, Panama. We went straightforward to the terminal ATM, to draw local money, when we realized that there is no such a thing local money - they simply use
AMERICAN DOLLARS! It is their official currency! This is very strange since for the first time we had the privilege of not calculating the exchange
rate but simply pay in USD, talk in USD and calculate expenses in USD.
The next thing we have realized was that many of the buses standing in the terminal are old
American school buses, here used as regular public buses. The only difference is her;e these buses are no longer yellow - they have used them as a painter's canvas and draw on them all kind of paintings, colors, add lights as in night club and more.
We boarded one of these buses in order to get to our destination -
Boquete, an hour ride up north from David. Upon arrival to Boquete, we went to the hostel we have booked in advance (yes, we are getting better with booking ahead, Tal really became a fan of the system - he likes to know that a place is awaiting him and that he does not need to walk around to look for accomodation, esp. at night-time after 10 hours on the roads.). And then we went for a short walk in town and dinner - well after all, we have not eaten anything the whole day (well, the truth is we did have sandwiches for lunch, but
two pieces of bread with just a slice of ham are not counted as eating,,,). The restaurant our guesthouse owner have sent us to was closed, so we were directed by the gasoline station workers to another local self-service restaurant - “El Sabroson” (in English - The “Tasty”), and it was just great. The food was cheap (less than 2$ per plate!), tasty, it was ready made - so it was fast to get it - exactly what we needed. We have ended up eating in that restaurant a few more times in the next couple of days!
Our stroll in the town after dinner has brought us also to the local supermarket. Local? - well not really. First,
it is open 24 hrs! Second, most of the products from the US: peanut butter, pancake mix and maple syrup (both by “Aunt Jemaima”), Philadelphia cream cheese, Ben & Jerri's ice cream and so on...
The next morning, we went walking in town and visited many of the souvenir and art shops. Then we walked up hill to a very nice garden called
“Mi Jardin es Su Jardin” or in English - “My garden is your garden”. This is
a very large private garden around a private mansion of a rich local family. It has a pool with fish, it has some swings and bridges for the kids, a lot of beautiful flowers and trees and a nice view tower to see the green mountains around Boquete. Beautiful garden, but not worth coming to Boquete only for this. If one of you happen to
live in Boquete and have a free hour - you may well go there. After the garden, we were slightly tired, and though the way back is downhill, we have decided to try our luck and
get a ride. I was skeptic about the ability to find a ride for the 5 of us, but Tal was optimistic and have prooved to be right - the first car that have passed by, stopped to pick us up - we all hopped into the back-trank of the pickup and they took us all the way, right to the center of town - PERFECT.
The next morning, we woke up EARLY (at 4:30 am). Our taxi was waiting for us at 5:15 ready to take us to the starting point of a trail called
“El Sendero de Los Qetzales” - the trail of the Qetzals, situated inside the Volcan Baru National Park. The Resplendent Qetzal is a beautiful bird (BTW, it is the national bird of Guatemala, as it was revered by ancient Mayans), with a long long tail, metal green back feathers and a red throat. But it is a very elusive bird, plus it's rare, thus extremely hard to observe in nature (The photo attached is from the net - not ours..). According to rumors, in this trail it is likely to see this bird, especially if you arrive at early morning, when they are still active - well rumor it is - though we made all possible human efforts, we have not been able to observe even one of these birds!
Any way, we got to the starting point of the trail before 6am, and the park ranger woke up to the sound of our taxi. He was a very nice man, and so he ignited the generator so we could have light and not be in the dark (the sun was not even starting to show itself!), he even made us coffee and tea with herbs from his garden. Then, when
some light was starting to show in the sky we have started walking the trail.
We walked that day back and forth for 6 hours or so about 15 km, crossing a few times the river in the park, hearing many many birds around us especially at the beginning of the walk when it was still early morning, seeing very few of them - but no qetzal at all. The only “comfort” we had, is that a group that was walking right after us with a local guide have not seen any either, though their guide said he has heard the qetzal close by - well someone has to keep the legend going, and he needs to make sure he has more work the next day with another group that will pay him to look for the mysterious bird.... Though we were disappointed not seeing the main reason for our walk - we can still say
it was a very very nice walk, and the kids hiked it extremely well (after surprisingly a hard start by Omer who just did not want to walk, but overcomed this very quickly). Even Shachar, did the whole walk, including the steep climb at the end without too much nagging and complaining. The part they all liked best was when we found a ´tarazan´tree - they all hanged and swang on this huge air roots, and all we were missing is Jane.
Today, 28/3 is a special day - it is Nitzan birthday. This, makes it very hard for us to leave the room even for breakfast, as everyone is calling her and writing her e-mails to congratulate her.... Eventually, when it is 12:00 noon or so, we manage to get out of the room. We grab something for 'branch' in the supermarket, and then we go to another garden “El Explorador” - the guide books are promising a special garden with statutes and design as if you are visiting “Alice in Wonderland”, but the truth was very pathetic... There are all kind of strange looking remains of statues made of recycled materials, there are lots of statements about the need to be happy and smile, but the overall feeling is that perhaps sometime many years ago it actually looked like a nice garden that made you smile - now we were just sorry for falling into this trap (we actually paid a taxi to take us there and an extra fee for the entrance!...)
On our return, I went with the boys to look for something small to buy to Nitzan for her birthday. Most of the shops were closed, either because it was Sunday or because it was already after 6pm, which is the time they all close. Any way, we did come back with something nice and small. We then went for dinner to celebrate her birthday, and she selected a restaurant which serves Israeli food - yes, even in Boquete there is such a restaurant (the owner is an Israeli Woman from Petach-Tikvah). While waiting for the food, Nitzan got her birthday cards from her brothers, we sang her “happy birthday” and then she got our cards and small gifts... She got some nuts because we are nuts about her, she got some marshmellow hearts because we love her with all our heart, she got some candy bracelets because we want to hug her and embrace her all the time and eventually she also got a bandana because she mentioned a day before she would like to have one. For desert she had a birthday cake with candles and we all once more sang her happy birthday.
The next morning, again we had difficulties leaving the room - this time, it was Passover eve in Israel, and so we spent time talking to everyone wishing happy holidays, we also spent some time trying to reserve a room in our next destination. Eventually, at around 2pm we left toward Bocas Del Toro, our next destination.
The one thing we have not solved (especially Tal), even after spending 4 nights in Boquete is
what excite foreigners (especially from the US, but not only) about this place, that makes them move here - ~25%!o(MISSING)f the population is said to be foreigners!
Yes - the supermarket is open 24 hrs like in the US,
Yes - it sells a lot of American products,
Yes - they use American Dollars so it must be easy to accommodate; and
Yes - it is definitely cheaper to live over there than in any city in the states...
BUT -
The center of town is ugly, houses are falling apart,
There are no side walks,
There is not much of night life,
It is very hot and humid
The local food is not that great either...
We could not have imagined ourselves moving to live there - and so it was hard for us to understand what drove all these foreigners to do so.
Well, if you ever get to be in Boquete - perhaps you will help us solve this puzzle.
Hasta Pronto,
Lilach
To view our full gallery of photos from Boquete, click on this link:
Boquete Photos
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kuper
Erez Kuperman
Mozal tov
to Nitzan! Erez