A Quick Recap in 30 minutes

Okay. I'm at an Internet cafe in Puerto Viejo and had only enough money for 30 minutes on the Internet. So here's my attempt to recap what we have been up to in the past few weeks. I'll start from our arrival in Puerto Viejo yesterday and then jump back to our last week in Panama.

We arrived in Puerto Viejo from Bocas del Toro at around 11 a.m. yesterday. Easiest border crossing ever. We were supposed to meet a woman who would take us to our house at 1 p.m., so since we had a few hours, we had lunch at an awesome spot called Bread and Chocolate -- BLTs and fresh squeezed lemonade, and most importantly SALAD. Delicious salad. I find it very ironic that we are in a spot that is primed for fresh produce and fruits, yet fresh fruit and salad have been hard to come by. Anyway, we waited around until 1:30 for the woman to meet us, but she never showed up. We decided to take a taxi to our house.

The taxi driver drove us up a muddy dirt road as far as he could go until the road basically turned into a trail. We had to walk the rest of the way up hill. After about 10 minutes we came upon a house with a yard filled with chickens, ducks, and two barking dogs. We asked if they knew the owner of our house, Maria, but they had no clue. Fortunately they did know our neighbor Donna, so they showed us to our house.

We never met Donna, we met a nice man named Jose who showed us around our house.

We are IN the jungle! Our house runs on solar energy, uses rain water, and has nor refrigerator. We also share our new home with our jungle friends: cockroaches, SCORPIONS, and many other insects. Fortunately the place is very clean, so our new rules are keep it clean and keep it closed!

Despite the rustic accomodations, we have a million dollar view of the jungle.

We walked to the rescue where we'll be volunteering -- it's totally close which is good.

So that's it for now. We're in Puerto Viejo with our Norish friends who will be staying with us for a few nights.

Now back to Panama ...

When we last blogged, we were on our way to a hostel called the Lost and Found in the Cloud Forest. To get to the hostel, we had to ask the bus driver to drop us off on the side of the road, and then we had to hike about 3/4 of mile in the forest to get to the place. WOW. What a treat.

The place was absolutely remote and was fully eco-friendly, but also well organized and spotlessly clean. They did have about 20 staff members/volunteers, who didn't do much of anything other than lounge around in hammocks, which was weird, but whatever.

So our first night at L&F we took a night hike with a local guide named Gabriel. Gabriel taught us to appreciate the little things in the jungle. We didn't see any big animals, but he showed us different types of frogs, bugs, and spiders that thrived on the forest floors. Oh, and the STARS, the STARS! We'd never seen night sky like that.

Okay, so back to spiders... Gabriel found a spider and put into a tupperware jar to bring back to the local spider expert to checkout. We hadn't met the spider expert yet... boy, were we in for a treat.

After our hike we went to the hostal bar for our complimentary Cuba Libre. The bar was run by the local spider guy, Ray, AKA, Spider. Spider was a cliche. Seriously, he's a Oxforded-trained scientist who is the leading expert on tarantulas in Panama, Nicaragua, and maybe El Salvador. Ray loves, booze, spiders, chain smoking, seducing older female guests, and watching B horror movies, oh and he loves to terrorize guests with stories of creatures that lurk in the jungle and the pain and suffering these animals can afflict on unsuspecting guests! Awesome! Oh, Ray believed that the spider we had brought back was a new species. Very cool!

The next day we got up early and went on a treasure hunt through the jungle. The best and most fun way to see the entire surrounding jungle. Chris and I took it very seriously and managed figure out every clue, finding many of the clues involved hiking through the jungle down to the river below. It wasn't until we got back to th hostel that we found out this area was teaming with adders and JUMPING vipers. Jeez! You can't catch a break in the forest!

Anyhow, after finding all our clues in the forest we returned to the hostel and found out we had to wait until night fall to find out our last clue. Well, as night time came, we started chatting with a couple from Norway. We became fast friends. Unfortunately, I decided I'd rather drink wine with our new friends than solve the treasure hunt! Chris did a good job and solved it after an hour. We were rewarded with more wine, and our new friends brought out a bottle of Panamanian rum -- who knew Panamanians make good booze?! Another guest from Seattle brought out a cheap bottle of the Panamanian national rum and we had ourselves a little party-- although I almost got into it with Mr. Seattle because he seemed to think it's okay to exterminate all our animal friends that "infringe" on human territory.

Well, we managed to make it to bed and wake up the next morning at 7 a.m. to catch a bus that EVERYONE told us we would never catch. Apparently buses are difficulty to catch on Wednesdays, and since we were in the middle of nowhere, we were even less likely to catch a bus. Spider told us he'd see us later at the bar, and one of the staff said she'd have a bed saved for us. Well, the joke was on them. We caught the FIRST bus that passed by. OH I almost forgot one thing about hostel... they had a rescued Kinkajou... a relative of the raccoon that looks like a bear, monkey, cat, squirrel thing. His name was Rocky and when the sunset and nocturnal Rocky came out, guests were allowed to enter his enclosure and say hello. Rocky climbed all over our heads and grabbed on to Chris's nose -- he didn't bite hard, fortunately. Chris claims he got a Kinkajou virus from Rocky, but I think he was being a baby. I loved our furry friend!

Okay, so back to the bus... we caught the first bus to the bus station in Almarante! It really sucked, actually, but at least we were getting from point A to point B.

Chris and I had to stand in the aisles of the packed bus for an hour. It was so hot and crowded and our bus driver decided to pickup anyone who was waiting on the side of the road. Just when I thought I could not stand it anymore, the bus stopped and a woman got off. Yes! A seat. Fortunately Chris was able to get a seat on the next bus.

Once we got to Bastimentos, it was easy peezy traveling. We hopped a taxi, then got a ferry to the island of Colon and then another ferry to Bastimentos.

Bastimentos startled us when we first arrived. There is no glossy sheen for the sake of tourists. What you see is what you get. Chickens and dogs roam the streets. People sit on the steps of their dilapidated brightly colored homes. Garbage floats on the shore of the shurning water near the harbor. I was not sure I was going to like this place.

We checked into our guest house, Beverlyś Hill and got settled in. The views were nice, but the place was a little rough around the edges. The owner did not seem to care much about the guests. He just gave us our key and was on his way. I was definitely still skeptical about this place.

We had dinner at a popular spot called Roots... very good jerk chicken and ice cold beers. After lunch we headed back to our place for a nap and then we were going to head up the hill to a Thai restaurant... the only Thai restaurant in all of Panama. We had to see what this place was about.

Wow. It took us a while to get there but it was worth the walk... amazing views and even bette food. Maybe the best Thai we had ever had! We understood why it was reservations only!

We went to bed early that night and got up the next morning to explore the island. We had been in Central America for two weeks and still had not seen a beach! We hiked for about 20 minutes and got to Wizard beach, which was cool, but the waves were scary so we did not go in. Chris decided it was a good idea to hike to another beach on the other side of the island. I reluctantly agreed. This hike sucked! Mud, garbage and a dead COW greeted us on the trail. The beach at the end was pretty sweet and so were the $1.50 rum drinks! We hung out until 5 p.m. and then headed back to our place to meet our norwegian friends who were arriving that day.

We met our buddies at Roots... surprise, surprise for beers and made plans to go on a snorkeling tour.

We started our snorkeling tour at 9:30 the next morning. Our guide, Marlo, who had startling canine teeth sharpened to points, was super sweet and took us to a place called dolphin bay where we saw loads of dolphins, and we snorkeled at two sweet spots. We finished the day ready for some grub... back to the Thai restaurant! Our buddies were equally impressed as us. We enjoyed curry, drank magic drinks, watched the sunset and had fire flies greeted us as it turned dark. Nice. Then... back to Roots for a night cap!

Next day we got up and headed out for some awesome coconut pancakes and coffee. We ran into a crazy guy who was living in our guest house. He had some horrible flesh eating virus caused by a sand mite on the island. He had no problem telling us how much pain he was in and all the drugs he was taking. Terrifying!!!!

So we decided to have a mellow day on Saturday. We hiked up to an organic farm and coffee shop where we had homemade lemonade and played Uno with the cutest little boy in the world. As we were leaving he told us to wait. He came running out of his kitchen with a little wood boat with four coconut truffels in it. The truffels were for playing Uno. Aw, could he BE any cuter.

All this hiking about was tiring us out so we decided we needed some sweet beach action. We headed back to Wizard beach where we played coconut bowling and made a sweet castle.

It was our last night soooo ... we went back to Roots for cervezas, cuba libres, and awesome awesome beef that tasted like carne asada.

We came home early and started packing our stuff. I really loved this place. It took a while to grow on us but once it did it left quite an impression. I would love to go back.

All in all I give Panama an A+. Chris and I are Fan-amanians. HAHA. Okay. So that is it. Wish I could be more thorough but I have no time.

We are loving our jungle hut. Our Norwegian buddies are staying with us for a few days which will be great. We start volunteering at 9 a.m. sharp tomorrow. YAY!

Hope to post again soon!!!1