Panamaniacs

Since our last post, we´ve been cruisned from Costa Rica into Panama. We spent one more night at Tommy´s – we had to San Jose´s famous nightlife before leaving. We spent the day shopping and going to museums, and Tori even got a spontaneous $2 haircut. Later that night, we met up with Tommy and Susan at San Jose´s infamous Hotel Del Rey. It is a casino, bar, hotel, and fisherman hang out, but is most famous because almost every woman that walks in the bar is a prostitute. Prostitution is legal in Costa Rica, but only if the woman is over 18, self employed, and carries a card certifying regular health tests. As Tommy says, the girl has to be an ïndependent contractor.¨ It is an interesting system, and totally bizarre to witness several hundred prostitutes converge on a bunch of fishermen in a casino. We tried the slot machines, too, but lost both dollars quickly. We are not high rollers.

The next morning, we bid Tommy and Susan farewell and finally hit the road again. It was great staying with them and we greatly appreciate all of their generosity… In fact, we ended up staying in Costa Rica about three times as long as we had planned as a result.
We had both read parts of this book ¨What Happen,¨ which is a folkloric history of the south east caribbean people´s of Costa Rica, so we decided to visit the places that we had read about, namely a small town called Cahuita. Moreover, the part of the Carribean is known to have beautiful beaches…man that phrase is getting played out in this blog.
Cahuita, it turns out, does not have particularly beautiful beaches, nor is the town ¨cute¨or ïdyllic¨in any way. Maybe it was just the torrential, non-stop, clothes-soup generating rain, but that town was lame. Also, Tori got food poisoning. Thus, we left early, cursing Cahuita as we left.

We passed through Puerto Viejo, a similar town known for bigger parties and (yawn) beautiful, long sandy beaches. It was raining there, too, so we stayed on our bus and kept on toward the border with Panama. Once again, we walked across a busted bridge into another country, paying minute taxes along the way and getting confused between lines. Eventually, we got across, however, in time to realize we had just barely missed the bus to Bocas del Toro and would have to take a taxi with a family of missionaries. Yay, adventures!

Bocas is a series of small islands on the caribeña side of north Panama, discovered by Columbus on his fourth and final voyage. It means ¨Mouths of the Bull¨ for reasons that no longer make sense (to us) and have generated conflicting legends. There are no bulls, much less multi mouthed bulls. There are, however, beautiful beaches.

One of them is called ¨playa de las estrellas¨which means beach of the stars because it is covered in star fish of all colors. It´s pretty cool. We played in the wáter with them and took pictures. Some old tourists went by on a tour and we felt cool because we had gotten there on a local bus and hiked down the beach. For lunch we shared a plate of french fries and chicken fingers (the cheapest thing on the menú at the only restaurant near the beach), but really filled up on coconuts we found on the beach. Stew bought a machete for this very purpose, but had left it in the room. Thus, he practiced his technique of holding the coconut firmly in one hand and smashing it against a tree until it leaks delicious milk. Then, he splits it open with his hands he-man style. Tori finds this process hilarious. The coconut was delicious, but contained so much meat we couldn´t finish it.

The second night, we met some fellow travelers from the United States. Two (Megan and Zack) had just graduated from Indiana University and are doing a similar trip to ours, while the other two (Avery and Brittany) are current students at UGA on Thanksgiving Break. Thus, we had another opportunity to party like college kids, and spent the next few days touring the various islands and bars with our new friends (we never found the Ngobe Bugle, prounounced Nooblie Booglie). Likely, by now, there are already facebook pictures documenting our goofiness. We had to skip a couple of beaches because a girl died going to one recently in stormy weather. The seas were still rough, so we, like responsible travelers, decided that we shouldn´t take such unnecessary risks.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. It was hard to be away from our families on this special holiday for the first time. Fortunately we were with new friends. Also, a hostel run by ¨Cosmo¨ an American Harvard gradúate ex patriot, organized an epic feast for only six bucks a person. It was an amazing turkey dinner with mashed potatoes, stuffing, tropical fruit chutney, green bean casserole, Johnny cakes, mac and cheese, gravy, pumpkin pie – the works.. While it wasn´t on par with our families´cooking (no one can beat Liz Clifford at a Thanksgiving blow-out), it was great to get proper American food. In short, it beat all expectations that we had for finding some semblance of American Thanksgiving in Panama.

The next morning, we decided to head out once more after spending way longer than inteded at a beautiful beach. This time, we set our sites on a mountain town in the highlands of Panama. The hiking is supposed to be great, with volcanoes, waterfalls, hot springs, views, pumas, and quetzals. Also, today is Panama´s Independence day and this is the center of the celebration. Who knew? Initially, this was a bit of an issue, as the first 23 hostels we went to were full, but there was one only a two kilometer hike up the hill (not the direction we started in), so everything turned out well. Actually, Tori fell in a hole and twisted her ankle, but it was kind of funny and everything turned out well when the owner gave us roasted pork and vodka tonics after we checked in.

Today, we went to see a garden called ¨mi jardín es su jardin¨meaning it was free. Also, it was expansive, well maintained, free, epic, and free. We took about 200 pictures of pretty flowers, so when we have a good connections, there will be an inundation of photos. We also watched parades and ate meat on a stick. Panama is awesome.