Day 3: Boquete

Yesterday was a long, eventful day for me in Boquete. As I mentioned yesterday, I began my day with a coffee tour. After my blog yesterday, I met up with Kaytee and Oscar for some lunch at Nelvi´s, which serves traditional Panamanian food. It´s a cafeteria type place where you pick what you want, a la carte, and pay a flat rate for the lunch. I had some white rice, steamed veggies, a carne dish, and fried plantains all for $2. Granted, the food was a little odd (not too hot, temperature wise), but was still good. After lunch, the three of us went on a hike to a waterfall about 15 minutes of out downtown Boquete.

We took a taxi to the waterfall and walked halfway back to Boquete because we were crunched for time. Of course the waterfall was beautiful, but I thought the walk along the Caldera river on the way back was even better. We passed many different fruit trees and Oscar would climb the trees to grab some fruit. The fruit that I really liked was Guayana (I think that´s what it´s called), but it was weird eating something straight from the tree, seeds and all. On the walk back we also passed the dwellings, I guess that´s how I´d describe it, of the indiginous Indians. It´s amazing how simple their lives are, yet they seem so content. We passed some kids playing on the clothes lines, who would then run to us, wave, and say hi. They seemed so happy to see us and for us to acknowledge them.

Right before we hopped a bus back to Boquete, we passed one indiginous dwelling, which was simply traps tied together with string for walls, then metal slats for a roof. Their bathroom was a doorless outhouse that had a cement hole for a toilet. When we walked passed, we noticed that there was a dog nursing a new litter of puppies. We stopped to look at them and a little girl came up to us and picked one up for Kaytee to hold. These puppies only looked about a week old and it was sad to see them covered in mosquitos and the mom was so skinny that you could see the ouline of both her rib cage and spine. While we were there, I saw 3 adults and 1 child living in that house. Once Kaytee gave the puppy back to the little girl, we quickly caught a bus back into town. This bus, a run down VW-like van, eventually held 16 passengers, plus the driver and an 8 year old looking buy who was working by taking everyone´s money.

Once back in town, we went to the grocery store, so that Kaytee and Oscar could get food for the dinner party they were throwing that night and so I could get a cell phone. At this point, the 3 of us went our seperate ways for the time being and I walked back to my hotel. As I was crossing the bridge over the river, I was walking by a man who´s walk captivated me. I studied his foot movement in the rubber rain boots he was wearing, when it occurred to me why he was walking the way he way. It looked as though he had a clubbed right foot that had never been corrected. For some reason, of all of the things that I´ve seen so far, this was the saddest to me. I could help tearing up when I thought that this could´ve been how I would´ve been walking, so painfully looking, had I not had my club foot corrected.

A couple of hours later, Kaytee sent her friend Deamus to come pick me up for the dinner party that she was throwing, so I could meet some of her friends in Boquete. There was such a mix of people at this dinner party: Kaytee (from Scottsdale, AZ), Oscar (from Columbia), Deamus (from Panama City and getting ready to move to Argentina), Carlos (native Boquete), Evelyn (from Luxenborg, now living in Boquete), and Felix (from Germany, visiting Evelyn). It was interesting to be a fly on the wall, watching the men doing all the cooking, and all of the friends would switch in and out of English and Spanish during their conversations.

After dinner, we all headed to Zanzibar, which is an African themed bar in North Boquete. Live music was playing at first by two guys playing the guitar and bongos, then it kind of moved to the a freestyle music night, where Carlos and Deamus would randomly start playing either of the instruments and singing. As I sat there, listenting to this music, I couldn´t help but to think "Wow, this is my life. I´m actually experiencing this!"

It was pushing 1am by this point and I decided to call it a night. After saying bye, Carlos warned me about walking alone through town at that time. Never before would I think I would hear the words, "Don´t take the left road, it´s full of indiginous drunks that you don´t want to walk past." I took the right road and made it back safely, even without seeing any indiginous drunks. I do have to say, I was disappointed that I never went with Kaytee and Oscar to get "street meat", which is the equivelant of a hot dog after going to the bars.

Today:

I slept in a little bit this morning and found myself in a rush to check out of my hotel and make it to the Canopy tours on time for the 10am departure. I cut it so close that I didn´t have time to check into the hostel before getting to the tour, but just enough time to get coffee next door.

The first part of the canopy/zipline tour was a 20 minute drive up in the mountains. Let me tell you, this was an adventure in itself! Unpaved roads, old truck, and uncomfy seats means a sore butt! All that didn´t matter though, since the view was beautiful, both on the drive and also when we got to the top. I would have to say that the view of the Chiquiri valley rivals some of my other favorite views: Alps from both Kleine Scheidigg (I´m sure I misspelled that) and Gimmelwald, the ocean from a restaurant in Cinque Terre, and the view of Germany/Austria from Mary´s bridge (which includes the castle that the Disney castle is based on).

We hiked to the first platform to zipline from and as I waited for my turn, my whole body began to shake. I hate heights, but knew I would regret not doing this. Once I was secure, I slid off the platform for a 10-15 second ride. At this point I didn´t know what to feel...fear, nerves, excitement? Going from platform to platform was rather quick, until platform 6 when we waited for everyone to reach. Once we got started again, the same fears and nerves came back as the first time I jumped, but this time my body was shaking from the same nerves AND having the stop and pull myself on the previous ziplines tracks. There were 2 more tracks to go before we stopped again as a group. This last group stop was right before the longest track of the whole canopy tour, which was a 410 meter track and would take about 20 seconds to go across. Although it was the scariest track of all, it was defintiely the most thrilling!

We finally hit the end of the zipline course and we were given the option of going on the Tarzan swing. I still had my harness on and though there´s no better time to do this than now, so I went for this. We stood in line, since there were many people that opted to do this, and during my waiting time, I saw my first large, not-behind-glass-at-the-zoo cockroach. Ewww! The only reason that I noticed it was because it had flown right past my ear, grazing it, before landing on a rock at my feet. Ewww!

The whole zipline tour and Tarzan swing experience was amazing. In our group was the cutest 5 year old girl, who was so excited about everything and enjoyed every thrilling mintue. She just glowed; it was so cute!

We then made our way back down on the same bumpy road as before, but it was worse going downhill. I think I spent more time in the air on the ride down than on the tour! The whole way down I was concentrating on looking for an animal, any kind of animal, in the vegetation that we drove past. It was like trying to find Waldo in the middle of those puzzles/posters that you´re supposed to stare at for 30 seconds before seeing the object of the picture. Needless to say, I didn´t see any animals. Darn!

Once I got back into Boquete it was time to finally check into my new "home" for the rest of my time in Boquete (5 nights). This new "home" is a hostel, where rooms are seperated by boys and girls. When I got there, the room had 10 beds, reminded me of Annie, yet I was/am the only girl in the room right now. Now it may be hard to believe that I´m not a fan of communal living, seeing that I´ve lived with up to 6 people in my house at one time, but I think this part of the trip is going to be the most difficult for me. Part of me knows that this will be a great experience, but part of me is placing a bet on how long I´ll go before throwing in the flag and getting my own hotel room.

Well, tomorrow morning my volunteer teaching begins in the moring for 5 hours, followed by a 2 hour break before going to my Spanish class. I think I´m going to take it easy tonight in anticipation for the next 5 days. I will send out off with these pictures taken by the Canopy tour since they are the only pictures I can post right now.

P.S. As I was attaching the pictures, the power when out. The music playing in the streets was still going and everyone just stood in the streets. Apparently it´s common, but it was the first time I´ve experienced it. Thank goodness for saving!