Tom´s central-american adventure

I finally dragged myself out of Boquete & headed towards Bocas Del Toro.
Last time i went there was with the voulenteer crew from spanish school in San jose.
This time i went to meet a friend i worked with in Cabo Blanco national park and her friends.

By luck i bumped into her on the main street & 5 minutes later was booked in the same place they were staying in.
Bocas is the main party place to go for backpackers. Not too expensive & with plenty going on.
Panama city was different.
The main party street called Calle Uruguay was home to most of the clubs in the town.
All of them had a cover fee and you had to be smartly dressed to get in.
It reminded me of a typical saturday night out in Oslo.
Expensive, false and boring.
The only exiting thing i saw was a white Lamborghini and a hooters sign!

Bocas was better, allthough im not a party animal & not only did i find it difficult to adjust to the constant heat it felt more like brits going wild in Ibiza or nowegians in Greece getting foolishly drunk.
I did however find a solution.
While the girls were interested in getting a tan i walked around the main island with my camera and getting to see what it´s really like behind the main street.. fun indeed!
I find walking around much more satisfying than lying on a beach getting brown

I stayed in Bocas for 3 days happy to leave for San jose.
7 hours later i arrived in the capital and realised just why i wanted to leave for the city.
Hardly any museums or other tourist attractions it´s just a place to stop for a night before heading north or south to explore the rest of the country.
After a relaxing weekend at hostel pangea i went by Otec´s office on monday morning to check if they had any families i could stay with before i leave for Cuba.
The following morning i recieved a message that a family had been found and that i would be picked up in 30 minutes.
Packed all my stuff, checked out and was driven to the family by my new hostdad.
His name i s Humberto and he works for Otec in the sales department.
He lives 20 minutes outside the city center in a quiet neighbourhood.
HUmberto lives in a beautifull house with his boyfriend Jorge
It´s a nice change from all the hostels ive stayed in so far.
They both speak good english, but i try my best to make sentences in spanish.

Since i dont work at the moment i help out around the house and basically just chillout.
So far i´ve been to Escazu the posh area just outside town to eat lunch with Humbertos family.
We ate typicall costa rican food consisting of pork soup with rice and salad.
Dessert was a sticky horrible thing traditionally served during semana santa ( Easter)
I wasnt a huge fan but the family was so nice to me i forgot all about the dessert.
I´m fortunate to be learning spanish in Costa Rica because they speak slowly and if you struggle to understand what they are saying they will try really hard to make you understand.

I´ve learnt that spanish spoken in the different countries of central and south america is not the same.
Sometimes it will only be the pronounciation of words, other times you could find yourself saying straw in Costa Rica and muttering the same word in Mexico without being understood.

Puerto Ricans have a problem pronouncing their R´s so when they say " im from Puerto Rico" ( it´s an island in the carribean) it comes out like this - Puellto Llico!

Nicaraguans cut the last s in sentences. This is crazy as the last letter in the sentences often is the most important one !

Argentina is notorious for their south american sloppyness.
They pronounce Ella (She) as Ejsha..

Ok.. enough with the lecture... you get the point

Moving on, homelife with Humberto and Jorge is alot of fun.
Yesterday Humberto arranged a surprise birthday party for Jorge.
All his co workers came to the house and they had hired a band with dancers in colorful outfits ( some were abit short though..)
When Jorge came home the lights went on, the band fired up a saucy show of samba rythms and the dancers danced like it was the carnival in Rio de Janairo!
The living room exploded into a mix of tropical colours, bouncing around. It was amazing to watch!

Costa Rican food was served and the spiderman cake made the day!

I never wrote about my final week in Boquete.
The climax must have been on monday when all the voulenteers showed up for a day of filming.
Paul and Jenny have wanted to make a dvd they can sell on the internet for some time.
Their american friend Jim was the camera man helped by his panamanian girlfriend doing all the lighting.

When i showed up at around noon the place was full of people.
Filming had started at 8 in the morning so by the time i arrived they were almost finished.
I did however make my on screen apperance a cuople of days earlier (with Neimis and Sean)
so maybe my face will pop up on the final dvd.

The previous week was just as eventfull.
Paul took Sean and me to the Lost&found resort an hours drive from Boquete towards Bocas del toro.
Joining us was a good friend of Paul called Steve, originally from South-Africa, but has lived all over the world it seems.
I´ll get back to Steve later.

L&F is run by a nice canadian called Andrew.
He sometimes visits Paradise Garden with visitors.
The L&F is a eco friendly resort 10min from the main road, but you feel like your deep in the jungle.
Everything is pretty basic and it works as people want to experience a new environment and not just stay in boring hostels.
We watched a lovely sunset from the observation deck and later ate shepards pie with chicken and salad.
It was so good!
The beds in our room were crazy.
We had to leave the following morning but i would have liked to stay longer.
The primitive feel to the place was nice and it beats all hostels ive stayed at so far.

Back to Steve:

Steve owns some land in Chorcha, 45 min away and has built a sanctuary where their baby howler monkey, Yahoo now lives before being released into the wild.
Im not 100% sure but i think Yahoo shares the same kind of storie as Maisie at Paradise.
Groups of howlers and white faced monkeys live nearby and the goal has always been to release both Yahoo and Maisie down there.

First to be released however was Hanny a white faced monkey (Capuchin).
He started to attack female voulenteers as well as Neimis, Jenny and Paul.
The plan was to put him in an enclosure with another older cappuchin called Ringo.
Ringo´s previous owner was an alcoholic that used to abuse him when drunk.
Sadly this is a common story in the Panama.
When Paul took off Hanny´s lead to put him in with Ringo he managed to escape!
When i first started at Paradise Garden, i never thought id be chasing monkeys running about, climbing trees, but there you have it
Makes for a good storie though.

Hanny back in his cage again, it was decided that he was to be released down at the sanctuary.
I was told later ut went well and that he dissepeared amongst the trees to find some new friends.

Neimis, Sean and me had planned to go camping, spending the night in the sanctuary , but when Neimis heard that Hanny might be around we decided to go the hotsprings instead.
Craig joined us too and after managing to get the tents up we went to relax in the hotsprings.
Afterwards we lay down on some blanquete´s and watched the stars above.
There must have been millions of them!
We even saw a shooting star
The rest of the night was however less perfect..
Somehow everyone exept me, managed to go to sleep with a blancuete.
During the day its hot, but when the sun goes down and the evening turns into night it gets really cold!
Cold and tired i woke up next morning with a terrible pain in my back.
It was worth it though

The last adventure in Boquete was not a happy one.
Driving back from town in her truck, Neimis was stopped by a local who wanted her to take an injuried animal back to Paradise.
It turned out to be a baby sloth, probably driven over when trying to cross the road.
By the time Neimis got back, the sloth had died in the back of the truck.
With two badly broken legs and probably other serious injuriesit never stod a chance - a reminder of the constant struggle that occurse when humans and animals live side by side.
I helped put the sloth in a bag that would eventually go into a freezer in the basement.
Jenny has a passion for stuffing dead animals and the sloth would be added to the collection of other dead animals such as snakes, lizards and small rodents.
The dead sloth was not a nice sight, but at paradise you dont get to pick the day, it picks you.

Well thats roughly how my final week in Boquete looked like.
Im sad i had to leave but 5 weeks spent in Boquete gave me alot more in terms of experience and also understanding the culture in the country.
I made alot of good friends there and i hope i one day can return to see how Paradise Garden is holding up.

Since i started to write this blog i´ve already been to Havana, Cuba so i´ll update you asap (when the computer is finished uploading some new pictures)

Here are the links for the pictures

Bocas Del Toro

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=35805&l=09bf6&id=509299407

Havana

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=35811&l=062f4&id=509299407