Panama

Bocas del Toro, Panama. Somewhat the competition beach area for San Juan del Sur. The main difference is that there is no beach in Bocas del Toro. All of the restaurants, businesses, etc. are located ON the water. So the views were great, but to go swimming you had to take a bus, taxi or walk to a different beach. But let’s talk about one of those beaches. We took a 45 minute bus ride ($5 round trip per person) to Starfish beach. A bunch of tourists got off and we all walked about a mile and arrived at a small sheltered bay with the clearest water and big orange starfish just lying around smiling at us. They didn’t mind if we picked them up (heck – they let you do that at SeaWorld) and they seemed to enjoy our attention. Great place! Food in Bocas del Toro ranged from very mediocre to fabulous, but currency there is the American dollar and it was pretty expensive. Compare a rum and Coke in Nicaragua at $1.00 to $3.00 in Panama! Luckily we found a really inexpensive hotel. Nightlife music was pretty typical of Latin America….salsa, meringue, bachata, cumbia, reggaeton, a little electronic. We went to one place called Barco Hundido that was built over the ocean. Jellyfish, big fish, swimming right under the bar. You could fall right in…we thought it was pretty dangerous for a bar. Pity the person who parties too hard..probably wouldn’t feel so well falling into a bunch of jellyfish! After three days in Boca, we felt we had seen what there was to see (still loving San Juan del Sur much more), so we decided to move on.

We took our first long bus ride….10 hours from Bocas del Toro to Panama City. Stacy didn’t know if she’d like it too much, but she MUST…we have a 20 hour bus ride from Cartagena to Bogota in Colombia. (Did you know that Stacy?) I actually like the bus rides. They are relaxing, you see the countryside and we can listen to our iPODs. Read, write, think, etc. Ask me in two or three months and see if I still feel the same way. Arrived in Panama City with some mix ups about our hotel. We got there and there were no rooms. In fact, Panama City is pretty packed right now and it’s hard to get a room. But everyone helped us and we found a reasonable hotel not too far from the downtown area.

Stacy had been talking to some informative guys at Bocas del Toro and they told her about a great trip to the San Blas islands and she decided she wanted to go there. So we went the next day! We left our big, huge suitcases at the hotel in Panama City and took small packs with us. We left at 5 in the morning with some other tourists from Argentina and Germany. We picked an island (there are 49, but you can’t stay on all of them) to go to and took a 3 hour ride in a truck and then a one hour ride in a boat to our very own island – Pelicano! This island was tiny…had four little cabins and could only hold 10 people. There’s no electricity in the cabins, no running water on the island at all, very primitive. So the first day we spent our time with an Argentinian couple (and the gal might even loan Stacy a parka for her trip to Antarctica!) and a family of four (father and three kids) from Finland. We spent our time swimming in the ultra clear turquoise water, getting a tan, talking, swimming in the ultra clear turquoise water, getting a tan, talking….you get the picture. The island was so tiny that on our second day (was island fever setting in so quickly?) we decided to explore the island and then do a power walk the island to see how big it was. We decided that it was half the size of a North American football field. We explored it, looking for shells, commenting on interesting things we saw and then did the power walk. Three MINUTES and twenty seconds! That is how long it took us to walk around the entire perimeter of the island. It was tiny! That afternoon we took a boat ride with the Argentinian couple to the Kuna Village. The Kuna Indians are supposedly the most autonomous and not changed by modern society in all of Latin America. The men have abandoned their traditional dress for western T-shirts and shorts, but the women still wear what they have been wearing for centuries. Very brightly colored head scarves, hand-embroidered blouses and skirts. They design beautiful beads that they wrap around their legs from ankle to knee and also do that on their wrists…sometimes up to their elbows. Also, the women draw a black line down the front of their noses, sometimes straight and sometimes it is an interesting pattern. 50% of the people don’t even speak Spanish, but I ascertained that this line on the nose was nothing more than an adornment. It had no special meaning. We had a lecture about the Kuna from our island host, Ricardero. He explained that they have their own laws. For example, if a woman is found to be unfaithful, she is banished for a month. No one can talk to her, she is a pariah. Silly me asked what happens to the man who is unfaithful. Ricardero just giggled and changed the subject. Need I say more? The only time a Kuna is put under Panama law is if he murders someone. The little kids were friendly, yelling “hola” to us all the time. But their parents just kind of stared at us. We weren’t allowed to take pictures as they don’t like that, but I was told that I could take a picture of the women’s traditional dress if I paid $1 per photo. We decided to take two. We just didn’t want to leave there without all of you seeing how interesting the Kuna are. So check out the photos.

Went to bed early. Of course! There’s no light…what do you do? The generator allowed our food to be cooked, lit two lights, illuminated our dinner table and helped us find our way to the outhouse at the edge of the island until 10. After 10, you were on your own. Hopefully you had a flashlight. In our case, hooray Stacy because she remembered hers and I forgot mine. No music. It was so serene and wonderful. I would just have to wait to do my dancing ‘till we returned to Panama City or got to Colombia. No problem! The next day we took an excursion to another island to go snorkeling around a shipwreck. Unfortunately it was pouring rain! I saw a beautiful rainbow and some great fish under the water, but suddenly I got so cold (can you imagine? It was only in the 80s and the water was probably in the 90s) and had to get out. We were pretty wet all the way back to our island, but we still had fun. Back on OUR island, there was still space, so four more people arrived. Two men from Italy and two men from Norway. They kind of stayed to themselves, but at dinner we all had a lively discussion about traveling, health insurance, politics and Panama. The night before, a lively little gecko baby decided to jump onto our dining table and eat the tiny ants. We were all for it. If you can believe this story (also, see photos), we taught the little gecko baby, who we lovingly named George, to jump from one person’s hand to another’s, to another’s and so on. George got so excited about pleasing us with his trick that he showed us that he also liked to jump from the table right onto each one of us! No one had ever seen such a friendly gecko! He took a real liking to one of the Norwegian guys and kept jumping onto him. We’d put him back on the table and he’d jump onto him again. We were hysterically laughing for about an hour over this gecko (island fever again???). Anyway, after all that time jumping from hand to hand and showing us all his other tricks (also liked to climb up water bottles), little George got tired and started just walking from hand to hand rather than leaping. We knew he was tired so we set him down. About a half hour later we wondered what happened to him and suddenly he crawled up the Norwegian’s leg and jumped back onto the table, this time bringing his little sister, Georgina! I kid you not. She was just as happy to jump from hand to hand. George must have taught her this before she met us. But two little geckos jumping all over us suddenly seemed a little weird and we stopped the show. Thanks to George and Georgina for giving us such good entertainment.

The Norwegian guys were going to teach us a card game called “American” and we really wanted to do it, but all that tanning, swimming, snorkeling, talking and attending the George and Georgina show tuckered us out! We went to sleep early again. The next morning we left our beautiful island for Panama City once more.

Well, I didn’t think there would be much to say about Panama City, but I was wrong! When we got back on Tuesday, we spent a couple of hours at an Internet café, ate dinner, etc. That night we went out at about 11:00. We had been given a couple of recommendations of nightclubs to go to, and we had two recommendations for this one place called La Bodegita VIP, so we went there first. We were early, so we took a seat and ordered a drink. A shot of rum was $4.60!!!! Extremely high. As we were sitting there, one young woman after another came in, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs…with skirts or shorts up to there and blouses down to there. Basically, they weren’t wearing much. Stacy and I were trying to figure out if this was the “new look” on young women in Panama, but it seemed strange. Men started coming in and would sit at a table together and invite one female or more to join them. It was when the woman at the next table started making eyes at the three guys at the table next to her, then went to sit with them, then LEFT with them that we finally figured the place out. Silly us! It was a hooker bar! They must have been laughing their heads off when we walked in and sat down, thinking we were going to get in a few dances!! We left quickly (but it took us an entire hour to understand why the bar was filled only with women who hardly had any clothes on – we should be a little smarter, don’t you think?) and walked to another bar close by that was fabulous! There was a group of people celebrating something there and they were so happy and so drunk that they invited us to join them and we danced the whole night with all of them! The night was a dancing success!!!

The next morning we got up early and went straight to the Panama Canal. It didn’t open until 9:00, so we had to wait a bit. We went to the Miraflores locks and watched a huge ship go through, and then a little vacationing sailboat. It was cool. That morning we went to Casco Antiguo, an old colonial section of town. We happened upon a great place for lunch, set in a refurbished building. We felt like we were in Europe! We strolled the narrow brick and cobblestone streets and walked up some steps to a lookout. As we were looking at Panama City from across the water, we hear “Bonnie, Bonnie!” Would you believe that it was my friend German from Guatemala, an artist that I knew in San Juan del Sur!!! How is that for a coincidence? I had no idea he was in Panama…he had said he was going to Costa Rica!

After that we took a taxi to Panama Viejo, where the city used to be located many years ago. There are many ruins there of the old buildings of Panama City. We took a nap, then went out dancing with German at “Moods.” Fun night. And that’s the end of our Panama story.

We’re on our way to Cartagena, Colombia today, where we will spend Christmas with Tia Monica. More later! Merry Christmas to everyone. Click here to see the photos from this part of the trip.

Nicaragua to Panama

Our trip started out with a bang! I met Stacy at the airport in Managua and we went straight to our hotel to rest. We had to get ready for the party our friends were having that night in Managua! We wanted to take a nap, but we had so much to talk about, we never got a chance and Yader and Loli picked us up at 5 o´clock to start the fiesta! We went to two places and got so tired at the second one (Stacy had been up straight for 30 hours), that we never got to see the show or the real festivities. But thanks to Yader, Loli, Josue, Clara and Villanueva and Flora (who showed up on our way out) and Amaru (who was trying to get there but never made it) for making the evening special.



After a good night´s sleep, we flew on a tiny, 12-seater plane to San Carlos, Nicaragua. This town is on the edge of Rio San Juan, a river that flows all the way across Nicaragua to the Caribbean. There has been constant talk of making a canal here, bigger than the one in Panama. Who knows if it will ever happen? Anyway, our guidebook told us we could get a boat to the Solentiname islands on Saturday and it was Saturday. Guess what? Our outdated Lonely Planet guide told us wrong. Only Tuesdays and Fridays. We were out of luck and stuck. But no, I never take ¨NO¨for an answer. So I asked and asked and asked and finally found out that a boat was going at 3 o´clock that afternoon to take one gentleman home to his island. Instead of the $120 USD other people were asking to take us in their private boats to the islands, this boat captain only charged us $5 each. Of course, then we were stuck on the islands until Tuesday, when the next boat left back to San Carlos. We decided to chance it.



Were we thrilled with our decision!!!! The first three days and nights of our vacation were so serene and peaceful. Our cabin was right on the lake (and for only $16 a night for the two of us!!! ). Lake Colcibolca, one of the largest lakes in the world. For those of you who have visited Nicaragua, this is the same lake that houses Ometepe island with the two huge volcanoes. Anyway, Solentiname consists of 36 islands, with only four of them inhabited by people. We stayed on Elvis island, named after a martyr in the revolution. It was perfect, lovely, the food was unbelievably good! One breakfast consisted of eggs, cheese, gallo pinto (beans and rice), cantaloupe and prune fruit salad, toast with homemade guava marmelade, fresh orange-lime juice and delicious Nicaraguan coffee. One day we took a boat to some other islands, one to see birds, the other to see monkeys, and one to see the original culture of the islands. Lovely day. Weather cooperated.

Since we were ¨stuck¨ on the island for three days, we alternated between taking it easy, reading, hanging in a hammock, drinking a beer or a rum, eating, swimming in the lake, looking out on the lake, talking, taking boat rides, your usual tough days. But I´m taking too long to tell the story.

We finally left the islands at 5 in the morning, took the boat back to San Carlos, then took another beautiful boat ride to Los Chiles, Costa Rica. Our plans had been to take a boat ride down the Rio San Juan all the way to the Caribean, but there was no longer a border crossing there (so they said), and even though you could walk across the way right into Costa Rica, I was afraid of leaving Nicaragua without getting a stamp in my passport. Since I´m a legal resident, I didn´t know what would happen when I tried to get back in. So...we had to scrap those plans.

Instead, we got to Los Chiles, Costa Rica, then took a 6 hour bus to San Jose, arriving there in the worst part of town, the bus station at 8 at night. Rather than fuss with trying to find a place to stay and taking a taxi (risky at night), we stayed at a hotel OVER the bus station! Never saw one of those before, probably never want to see one again. We were contemplating what a ¨bus station hotel¨ must really mean, but decided not to think about it too much. We had a wonderful dinner of Ritz crackers, string cheese with slices of Delicious apples from the states and Gator Ade. Didn´t feel like walking around outside the bus station to find a place to eat. Didn´t sleep well, got up at 5 in the morning, took a cab to another bus station and got on another bus to the border of Costa Rica and Panama. We were going to go to Puerto Viejo for a couple of days, but when we got there, there were so many tourists and it looked pretty much like a beach town in the U.S., so we scrapped that and went straight to the border with Panama.

That border crossing was a bit of a disorganized nightmare, where we got ripped off, had to walk across a suspicious bridge over a huge river with all of our stuff (of course I brought too much, my suitcase weighs 77 pounds, way over half of me!), not knowing if we would make it across! But we did! Took another bus for an hour and a half, then a boat all the way to Bocas del Toro, Panama, where we are now. I am making the comparisons (will tell you in a later post) between my town of San Juan del Sur and our big competition here. Hope you are all well. Let´s see what our adventures in Bocas del Toro will be............. Click here to see the photos from this part of the trip.

Finally back to Nicaragua

I recently completed my six-month trip to South America. It was absolutely fantastic!!!! Please take a moment to read my blogs or just look at the pictures. I saw some pretty incredible things.

To view all the photos, follow these links:
Nicaragua to Panama
Panama
Colombia Part 1
Colombia Part 2
Ecuador
Peru Part 1
Peru Part 2
Chile
Argentina Part 1
Argentina Part 2
Argentina Part 3
Bolivia Part 1
Bolivia Part 2
Machu Picchu
The Adventure Home

My next trip will be in December 2010 when I will go to Australia to see my daughter Shanna get married to Daniel, who she met in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua (where I live) on November 2, 2007. Friends Lyn Hall, Stacy Matseas and Marc and Lynne Friedmann will all be going, so I think we will all have a wonderful time. I will also get to see Talia, my other daughter who is getting her Master's degree in Melbourne.

Check out my new business with my friend Kirsten Kleine (from Germany) at www.spotlight-ca.com.