my hostel
sunrise
my room looking over the dock
Sunday, November 29, 2009
November 29, 2009 Leaving Bocas, Part 2
After a week of morning rain, on my last morning here in Bocas, and it looks like this:
my hostel
sunrise
my room looking over the dock
my hostelsunrise
my room looking over the dock
Saturday, November 28, 2009
November 28, 2009 Leaving Bocas, Part 1
So I am leaving Bocas tomorrow, but in only five short days I will return. For various reasons, I decided to come back here after my adventure in the jungle with the Naso tribe, which begins tomorrow and ends on Thursday. Some of those reasons include the weather here, which is just about perfect aside from some rain showers, and the very nice, incredibly cheep place I have to stay here. Others include the good food in this town and some nice people I've met. Others include me being somewhat lazy and not wanting to plan going somewhere new for only three days. Maybe if i was feeling especially ambitious, I'd go up to Costa Rica afterwards, but its just so nice here that I just don't want to.
I took a boat out to a beach today with some folks from this hostal and we hung out for about five hours. For two and a half of those hours, it was raining, but for the other two and a half, it was great. The coolest thing I saw all day, and possibly all week, was two big stingrays (3 foot diameter) bodysurfing down the face of a 10 foot wave, their little eyes on the top of their heads all lit up with glee. It was amazing. I was out there playing in the surf with a friend and just as this huge wave started to curl over we both saw the stingrays and they passed right between us. Wow. So cool. I wish I had had a camera with me today, but since I was at the beach, I didn't.
I don't have many pics to share, yet again. Just some from Wednesday night when the spanish school had a cooking/rum drinking night, and a few photos of the town of Bocas on Thursday when the sun came out in the afternoon.
Tiny Lizard.
Me and Kat (switzerland) making garlic bread.
Dancing with the swiss and a teacher in the kitchen.
An evening game of baseball in town.
Quintessential Latin American Coke ad.
Drying laundry.
Building in town.
I took a boat out to a beach today with some folks from this hostal and we hung out for about five hours. For two and a half of those hours, it was raining, but for the other two and a half, it was great. The coolest thing I saw all day, and possibly all week, was two big stingrays (3 foot diameter) bodysurfing down the face of a 10 foot wave, their little eyes on the top of their heads all lit up with glee. It was amazing. I was out there playing in the surf with a friend and just as this huge wave started to curl over we both saw the stingrays and they passed right between us. Wow. So cool. I wish I had had a camera with me today, but since I was at the beach, I didn't.
I don't have many pics to share, yet again. Just some from Wednesday night when the spanish school had a cooking/rum drinking night, and a few photos of the town of Bocas on Thursday when the sun came out in the afternoon.
Tiny Lizard.
Me and Kat (switzerland) making garlic bread.
Dancing with the swiss and a teacher in the kitchen.
An evening game of baseball in town.
Quintessential Latin American Coke ad.
Drying laundry.
Building in town.Thursday, November 26, 2009
November 26, 2009 Underwater adventures
November 27th, 2009
I haven't been writing a whole lot, and I don't have a lot of pictures because I've been spending a lot of time in my scuba and spanish classes. The spanish school here is not as good as the one in Boquete but its ok. I am in private classes since I am at an awkward level and would either have to go down a group or go up a group to find people to fit with me. Its fine though, its just intense. But I feel like, if nothing else, my comprehension is really getting better.
I had a 45 minute conversation with my spanish teacher yesterday about life, the universe, and everything. It was pretty amazing. But other than that my spanish is not progressing as I had wished because every freaking person on these islands speaks english. And most of the students at this school are dutch or swiss, so they have to speak english to communicate with one another.
But enough about that. What I've actually been spending my time doing is learning to scuba dive. Fun times. I did this on a whim. I ran into some folks in Boquete last week who raved about this place they took lessons and about how amazing their instructor was. They convinced me I needed to try it. And since the weather has been rainy I figured I really had nothing to lose. Diving is a life skill, right? Like Spanish...
So I started on Sunday morning. And I ended up getting private lessons for this too. Which was great. Except for the fact that when you have private lessons, there isn't a single second you can zone out and wonder about the cracks in the tile on the floor. Nope. Its you and the teacher sitting two feet away from one another for hours on end. Luckily I liked him. But even so, I really wanted to space out for a while.
But really that is not even the cool stuff either. The cool stuff was going in the water. Even though I'm scared of fish, it was pretty awesome. And I even let some of the fish touch me. Eek! Well, I wouldn't say I let them, I would say that I was forced into it by a teacher who seemed convinced that I would like it and since he didn't teach me the hand signal for "what the hell do you think you're doing?!?!", I really wasn't able to stop him from putting my hand right near some of these fishes.
I also saw tons of jelly fish (without tentacles), these very neat starfish that are super skinny and wrap themselves around the coral, more coral than you can shake a stick at, parrot fish, giant angel fish, trumpet fish, drum fish, stingrays, some giant groupers, a ship wreck that had a toilet sitting on the submerged deck. Here are some pictures of some of the things I saw. These are not my photos, i just stole them from the internet.
So I had to do all these drills under the water, most of which were fine, but I had to do a compass and navigation exercise and that was kind of a disaster. I didn't get lost, per se, but it didn't go well. The drill was this, I was to follow a compass bearing one direction, then turn around and come back to my starting position. I was fairly sure he told me to go 120 kicks away from him, turn around and come back. So I did that. But the water was pretty dirty, and I lost count of how many kicks I did coming back (120 is a big number to count to) and totally blew by my starting place...and I had to have blown by it by about 200 yards before i realized what I had done. Luckily I had been followed by the teacher once he realized I didn't see him so he took me back to the start place to try it again. I'm sure at that moment he was wishing he had taught me the hand signal for "what the hell are you doing!?!?" because I know that's what he was thinking.
After some clarification, it was resolved that I was only supposed to go 20 kicks away from him, and 20 kicks back (I'm still adamant that he told me 120 to start with, but he is still adamant he didn't). Turns out its a lot easier to get back to where you started when you only go 15 yards in one direction and then turn around and come back.
I also was getting nibbled on by a baby barracuda that morning. Again, the teacher is sure that wasn't the case, but I'm pretty sure I was. I have all these scabs on my legs from the bug bits I've acquired over the last three weeks; they aren't horrible, but they're probably pretty appetizing to something that smells blood. I was swimming around in some really shallow water and felt like i had a weed wrapped around my leg because something kept brushing up against the same spot on my calf over and over and over again. I tried kicking it off, and I thought it was gone, but then a few seconds later I felt it again. I kicked hard again, it went away and then seconds later it was back. I turned to look and saw this fish (or something similar) nibbling one of my scabs on my leg.
Ugh. I was really not happy about this. I kicked hard and it swam away but the emotional damage was done. I was then told by someone else, in an unrelated conversation that barracudas bite the same place over and over again, which is what happened to me. And when i pointed out later a fish that looked like the one biting me, i was told it was a barracuda. This fish was small though, so it didn't actually get any skin or anything, I think it just liked the smell of my bug bites.
More animals i saw today:
Sting Ray
Lobster
Full grown Barracuda. I saw two of these beasts today.
Eel
I haven't been writing a whole lot, and I don't have a lot of pictures because I've been spending a lot of time in my scuba and spanish classes. The spanish school here is not as good as the one in Boquete but its ok. I am in private classes since I am at an awkward level and would either have to go down a group or go up a group to find people to fit with me. Its fine though, its just intense. But I feel like, if nothing else, my comprehension is really getting better.
I had a 45 minute conversation with my spanish teacher yesterday about life, the universe, and everything. It was pretty amazing. But other than that my spanish is not progressing as I had wished because every freaking person on these islands speaks english. And most of the students at this school are dutch or swiss, so they have to speak english to communicate with one another.
But enough about that. What I've actually been spending my time doing is learning to scuba dive. Fun times. I did this on a whim. I ran into some folks in Boquete last week who raved about this place they took lessons and about how amazing their instructor was. They convinced me I needed to try it. And since the weather has been rainy I figured I really had nothing to lose. Diving is a life skill, right? Like Spanish...
So I started on Sunday morning. And I ended up getting private lessons for this too. Which was great. Except for the fact that when you have private lessons, there isn't a single second you can zone out and wonder about the cracks in the tile on the floor. Nope. Its you and the teacher sitting two feet away from one another for hours on end. Luckily I liked him. But even so, I really wanted to space out for a while.
But really that is not even the cool stuff either. The cool stuff was going in the water. Even though I'm scared of fish, it was pretty awesome. And I even let some of the fish touch me. Eek! Well, I wouldn't say I let them, I would say that I was forced into it by a teacher who seemed convinced that I would like it and since he didn't teach me the hand signal for "what the hell do you think you're doing?!?!", I really wasn't able to stop him from putting my hand right near some of these fishes.
I also saw tons of jelly fish (without tentacles), these very neat starfish that are super skinny and wrap themselves around the coral, more coral than you can shake a stick at, parrot fish, giant angel fish, trumpet fish, drum fish, stingrays, some giant groupers, a ship wreck that had a toilet sitting on the submerged deck. Here are some pictures of some of the things I saw. These are not my photos, i just stole them from the internet.
So I had to do all these drills under the water, most of which were fine, but I had to do a compass and navigation exercise and that was kind of a disaster. I didn't get lost, per se, but it didn't go well. The drill was this, I was to follow a compass bearing one direction, then turn around and come back to my starting position. I was fairly sure he told me to go 120 kicks away from him, turn around and come back. So I did that. But the water was pretty dirty, and I lost count of how many kicks I did coming back (120 is a big number to count to) and totally blew by my starting place...and I had to have blown by it by about 200 yards before i realized what I had done. Luckily I had been followed by the teacher once he realized I didn't see him so he took me back to the start place to try it again. I'm sure at that moment he was wishing he had taught me the hand signal for "what the hell are you doing!?!?" because I know that's what he was thinking.
After some clarification, it was resolved that I was only supposed to go 20 kicks away from him, and 20 kicks back (I'm still adamant that he told me 120 to start with, but he is still adamant he didn't). Turns out its a lot easier to get back to where you started when you only go 15 yards in one direction and then turn around and come back.
I also was getting nibbled on by a baby barracuda that morning. Again, the teacher is sure that wasn't the case, but I'm pretty sure I was. I have all these scabs on my legs from the bug bits I've acquired over the last three weeks; they aren't horrible, but they're probably pretty appetizing to something that smells blood. I was swimming around in some really shallow water and felt like i had a weed wrapped around my leg because something kept brushing up against the same spot on my calf over and over and over again. I tried kicking it off, and I thought it was gone, but then a few seconds later I felt it again. I kicked hard again, it went away and then seconds later it was back. I turned to look and saw this fish (or something similar) nibbling one of my scabs on my leg.
Ugh. I was really not happy about this. I kicked hard and it swam away but the emotional damage was done. I was then told by someone else, in an unrelated conversation that barracudas bite the same place over and over again, which is what happened to me. And when i pointed out later a fish that looked like the one biting me, i was told it was a barracuda. This fish was small though, so it didn't actually get any skin or anything, I think it just liked the smell of my bug bites.More animals i saw today:
Sting Ray
Lobster
Full grown Barracuda. I saw two of these beasts today.
EelWednesday, November 25, 2009
November 25, 2009 The Islands
November 25, 2009
I'm staying in the town of Bocas now, I got kind of annoyed riding the water taxi back and forth from Bastimentos. I also really really wanted a hot shower, which I hadn't had in three weeks.
When I left the hostal in Bastimentos, I saw three of these, which made me think that some form of "Survivor" was filmed here and this was one of the challenges.
Isla Bastimentos:
From my new place in Bocas:
A Barricuda and starfish off our dock.
I'm staying in the town of Bocas now, I got kind of annoyed riding the water taxi back and forth from Bastimentos. I also really really wanted a hot shower, which I hadn't had in three weeks.
When I left the hostal in Bastimentos, I saw three of these, which made me think that some form of "Survivor" was filmed here and this was one of the challenges.
Isla Bastimentos:
From my new place in Bocas:
A Barricuda and starfish off our dock.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
November 20, 2009 Last Days in Boquete
These pictures are all from my last days in Boquete.
I saw this every morning when I wake up. It’s the table cloth on the desk in my room. It took me about a week to realize penguin was mis-spelled.
The house and family I stayed with.
Antonio, Stephanie, and Samuel, Stephanie's boyfriend.
The whole family. L to R: me, Tomas, Guilleurmo (dad), Antonio, Abulea, Nieva (mom), Stephanie, and Samuel.My Lunch. Pretty Typical. Fried Chicken, fried rice, and fried plantains. The theme in this neck of the woods is fried.
My classmates and teacher at Habla Ya. Scott and Cassie from Missouri, my professora Aralis, and me. Seriously, she was one of the best teachers I’ve had in my life. Ever.
And now, we speak perfectly. Ha.
Around Boquete and finally some pics of me out too:
I kinda want this house. Its already on stilts and ready for the floods. 
The shed at the Panamonte Inn.
Me on the bridge that washed out.
Overlooking the town. Check out the new form of the river Kristen.
I kind of want this truck, once it gets running again of course.
The women in pink on the left is indigenous. They wear these awesome brightly colored dresses, I'll try to take a better picture when I go back. I just hate taking photos of people that I don't know, so I'll have to do it covertly.Then I read the newspaper when I got home on Friday, and saw this article. This is for you Jess.
I am coming back to Boquete in a couple weeks on my way back to Panama City and the states. I was gonna get a hotel, but my host family said, no, I should not pay for a hotel and stay with them. I said that I would only stay with them if I could cook them a grand dinner. I was scheming how to make eggplant parmesan, cause 1) I can make it well and 2) it is not food you’d typically find in Panama, BUT, I got home from class on Friday, and guess what they surprised me with as a going away dinner. You know it. Eggplant parmesan. Seriously. Un-freaking-believable. Now I have to think of something else. It doesn’t have to be American, per se, but something different. I’m totally out of ideas.
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