Hot Damn team I´m in Panama!
There are places in the world that I always figured I´d go to. Like England, or Thailand, or India. But I´m not sure I ever thought I´d cross a rickety one lane bridge over a flooded river, with semi trucks and people in the same lane of traffic, and step foot into Panama! (Cue Van Halen song now!) Throw up the horns and rock the f out. I did as I sat in a sweaty ass tourist van because for some reason we all lost our travel skills that day and ended up doing the 10 buck per person route from the border to the ferry stop, instead of the 5 buck per person route by teaming up on a taxi. But you know what? Who cares! I´m in Panama!!!!
Took a speedy ferry boat from this town of stilt houses on a canal. But not before I took a piss in the toilet at the ferry boat station. And if I could upload a picture I would and you could laugh, but I´ll just tell you that it was a hole that dropped the shit straight into the canal... which likely makes it not safe for drinking. I´m no expert though. ;)
The boat ride was wild, and right now I´m traveling with Mandee from Chicago. No team, again, no RBR, so stop getting so darn excited. But still, a cool gal and we checked out a few places in Bocas Town before we ended up at Mando Taitu.
Let´s talk about hostels for a second. There are mellow hostels, where you might have a bunk or your own room. Maybe your own bathroom or it´s shared. A nice common area with a kitchen perhaps. Maybe a bar. Internet. A place to meet other travelers, get info on the place you´re at, or maybe sleep...
and then there´s MONDO TAITU!!!!!!!!!
Holy shit. This place is a big ass party 24-7. Now I´m not sure why we ended up getting a room here instead of walking back to Hostel Heike down the street. I think because it was hot and humid and we were sick of carrying our bags. But we got a room, and at night this place was loud. Like raging party loud. Drinking beer everywhere loud. Dope smoking loud. Music bumping, loud talking, wild party loud. And the night before apparently it was coke snorting off the bar loud. Didn´t see any of that this night, but doesn´t mean it didn´t happen.
It was fun for a night, but the next day I moved to Hostel Brisais down the street, with my own bed, own room, own bath, private dock on the water and...holy shit...a-c!
Bocas Del Toro is a series of islands in North west Panama. You might think it´s northeast, but Panama goes east west, not north south. There are some beaches, but it´s mostly mangroves. there are tons of neat houses and restraunts on stilts hanging out over the water. It´s sorta like Venice, at least on the waterfronts of the islands. Mandee and I got a water taxi for 2 bucks and went to the 2 buck beach, and hit the water.... yahoo! Felt so good. We were in front of this big ass resort... that turned out to be a persons house! Hot tub, beach, dock, beautiful blue water, islands all around. Not a bad life Mr. English retired guy.
Yesterday.... Paradise take 2. Me, Mandee (Nurse from Chicago), Crystal (Tour Leader from ATL), Hilary (from Tahoe), and Laura (Yacht worker from Perth, Australia), hire a boat and head to an island beach about 45 minutes away. The water was clear. The beach and trees were beautiful. We hiked around it, looking for pirate gold, and swam, and sang bad hip hop songs. I even read a little of my book on the beach. It was really awesome.
Today I did some scuba, which as always is great. The Lionfish have come here and are destroying the reefs, as they are doing in the Bahama´s as well. So if you want to eat Lionfish, do it. Make it so the locals will hunt and kill them. See, Lionfish are not native to the Atlantic and it´s offshoots. They eat 10 times, or was it 100 times, their body weight daily. And they have up to 2000 offspring in every litter. They have no natural enemies here, and spread like a plague, eating everything and eventually killing off the reefs. Yikes. They are pretty, but it sucks that they are here. The theory is that when Hurricaine Andrew hit Florida, it destroyed the Aquarium and let them into the sea... and like a plague they are taking over.
Besides the fish we saw some Jellyfish! yahoo! same kind as from Australia Tom and Olga! And some stingrays. It was cool.
I´m hoping to find some Karaoke tonight. Ready to rock a song for my Panamanian friends.
Rock on
Craigo
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