Quest to See the World

Mom went home today, but we had an excellent time here in Costa Rica. But….before i get to that, i have to continue where i left off about panama.

Back to Bocas del toro—Overall, i liked Bocas for the expectation i had. it was pretty and relaxing and i enjoyed seeing dolphins on our day tour. The thing that i didn´t like though is the blatant racism there. First, on island Colón, I was told to be careful in Bastimentos because there are mostly ¨those black people who came from Jamaica living there.¨ The driver on our water day tour mentioned something negative about Bastimentos too while referring to the color of the people who live there. Later that night we were walking back to the hotel after dinner and i stopped to ask a cop a question and he also told me to watch my things on the island because ¨the black people¨ will steal stuff sitting on the beach (he was hispanic). The next day when we were eating breakfast, some kids came into the restaurant and bought some food that was served in aluminum foil and they would drop it off of the deck into the water when they were finished eating. I asked one of the boys why he did that and told him that he should keep his island clean by not littering, or something like that. well, when he was leaving he said something to me using the ¨f¨ word and the word ¨white¨ referring to my skin color, i was shocked. a native spanish speaking girl that was sitting at a table doing school work (her family owned the place) started to yell at the boy calling him something dirty referring to the color of his skin again. It was just nonstop there. i thought that in such a small community people would live as one group and not be so racist, but it´s such a huge problem there. it´s really sad.

After Bocas we made our way to the town of David via the Chiriqui highlands. This was one of the most beautiful bus rides i had taken. We must have passed at least 10 significant waterfalls along the way. It was really amazing and the vegetation was so lush and green and the air was cool. I´m going to go back to that area someday to explore it more. I really messed up with having my mom meet me in Costa Rica 3 days after Dave left Panama because I missed out on so much in that country because of it. There are so many lush areas and jungle, but i didn´t get to see too much of it unfortunately. I´d really like to go into the Darién a little, not near Columbia, but in enough to experience it´s richness.

In David there´s not too much to do so we went to the pretty country town of Boquete. There are a lot of coffee farms up there and the air is refreshingly cool. We walked for a good while on a country road in search of a lookout spot that we saw a sign for, but never found it and no one seemed to know exactly where it was. There was a beautiful creek and a couple of small waterfalls along the way. It started to rain (which i love) and we stopped into a little restaurant with a 180 degree view of the creek and countryside for a coffee to warm up and dry off a bit. After the walk we headed back to David so that we could pick up our laundry before the lavandería closed. There are a lot of housing plans going up for gringos and europeans in boquete, but it´s still a pretty, quiet, country town right now. I didn´t see too many gringos while i was there.

Next stop was Panama city. I LOVE THAT CITY!!! It´s such a comfortable city to stay for a while because the buses don´t run on a schedule and they´re $.25-and they use U.S. dollars in Panama, since 1904. It´s super modern and i felt very safe there compared to other capital cities in Central America. I was surprised to find out that it´s been so long since they started using U.S. currency. Even though they use the dollar, prices in some places are stated in Balboas which is what their money was. They still mint coins that say a quarter of a balboa or something like that, that are equivolent to the U.S. coins. It´s kind of strange because for change you get a mixture of U.S. and Panamanian coins.

We did a lot of running around the city to see as many sights as possible. On Monday, our first full day in the city, we got up early to catch the 7:15 train to the city of Colón. Colón is a very decrepit, run down, dirty, stinky Caribbean city. It reminded me of Kingston, Jamaica, but smaller. Both in Colón and Panama city, there are a lot of the ghetto looking high rise housing buildings. They are exactly like the ones in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands that were built by the government for public housing. I´m not sure, but I´m assuming that they were built by the U.S. some time ago. We road the train for an hour passing through unimpressive forest and could see parts of the Panama canal along the way too, but i´m not really into the canal. When we got to Colón we walked a couple of blocks to the bus stop and immediately got on a direct bus going back to Panama city. Both of the books i have talk about how horrible Colón is and make it sound like if you walk around you´ll definitely be a victim of a violent crime. i don´t think it´s that bad, but i didn´t want to see any of it.

The train is mostly for commuting purposes. Almost everyone on there works for a company in Colón and gets paid beaucoup bucks. the ride was okay, but too much at $22 for an hour ride. later that day we looked into san blas islands some more and ended up in panama viejo, the ruins of the old location of the original city. the next day, tuesday, we bought our tickets to fly to río sidra in san blas and went to casco viejo (the colonial area of the city) and isla flamenco. Casco viejo was beautiful, just like old san juan, but not as developed. i think that it will turn into an old san juan with a ben and jerrys store within a few years, but right now it´s still in the beginning stages of revitalization and there are a few fancy restaurants and art galleries alongside old, crumbling buildings. Apparently the area is not the safest of all places, but it seemed fine to me. There are a million armed guards on the one side because the president of the country lives there overlooking the bay, just like the governor´s house in puerto rico. once we walked a couple of blocks out of the revitalized area it got uglier before turning into the pedestrian mall which goes for a good number of blocks up to plaza 5 de mayo. it was a lovely part of town. at the end of the pedestrian mall there´s an artisian market too and a stop for the bus to get back to where we were staying.

we didn´t stay here because it was full, but mamallena hostel seemed like a really nice place with a very friendly european guy running it. he was very helpful and recommended another place as well as looking up info on a couple of other places to stay for us. it´s in el cangrejo bordering bella vista in a very safe, central location. voyager hostel didn´t seem to have too friendly staff.

the next day, wednesday we got up before 4am to be at the airport at 5am to get the plane to Río Sidra. The day before, the lady who works at Air Panama told me that her co-worker owns a place over there and she called him so that i could talk to him about it. He told me that it was Cabañas Kuna Yala and when I asked if they were huts with sand floors on a clean island he said yes, but none of it was true. I even asked if it was definitely Cabañas, and not Hotel Kuna Yala which was in my guide book and he said, no, it´s Cabañas. it was Hotel Kuna Yala. I wanted to stay on a quiet, clean island and take a boat to visit a Kuna community, but we ended up staying on a very small, very polluted, very densely populated island in a Kuna village, but it turned out to be wonderful! Kunas are the indigenous people who live on the San Blas islands. One of the guys running the place explained a lot about the culture and it is very complex. For example, when a girl goes through puberty and menstruates for the first time, there´s a long, complicated ritual which involves her staying inside for four days and at this time she begins to wear the traditional dress that the women wear. Men haven´t worn traditional clothing for about 30 years. The girl also has to cut her hair short and eats special food for 4 days and gets bathed by a special lady in the community who specialized in this. After 4 days there is some sort of a ceremony in which the whole community participates. There are so many different ceremonies for different things.

The guy, Rogelio, was also explaining that the children are losing the native Kuna dialect because the teachers come from Panama (Kunas don´t consider themselves panamanians) and only speak and obviously, only teach in Spanish. Each new teacher has to do a 3 year tour in a rural area, but only stays in San Blas for a year. there´s a movement to open a bilingual school, Kuna and Spanish, so that the children don´t lose their native language. He would have to translate for most of the women and children under 5 from Spanish to Kuna because they didn´t speak anything but Kuna. I learned how to say thank you-phonetically it´s ¨new-eddie¨ all together. i got a big smile from people everytime i used it :).

When we arrived to the island we went to our room in the hotel kuna yala which was a decent cement block building. it was much more modern and comfortable than i expected. as soon as any child under the age of 8 would see us they would yell, and i mean yell, ¨hola, hola, hola…¨ it was so sweet. we walked around the island which was no bigger than half of a football field and walked past the school. all of a sudden kids ran to the door and windows to greet us, yelling ¨hola¨ and waving to us. it was very different than what i was used to with indigenous people because in Guatemala for example, they think that every foreigner wants to steal their kids and are extremely reserved. It was a welcoming change for me.

After breakfast we went by means of a small wooden, handmade boat, but with a motor, to a little nearby clean island where 2 women supposedly lived (I think they just came for the day when they know tourists were going to be around). The other guy taking care of us, i don´t know his name, hung 2 hammocks and asked what time we wanted lunch. when we were on the dirty island i mentioned the breadfruit trees that were on the island and asked if i could have some for dinner and he said yes. We told him that we would like lunch at noon and ordered 2 pepsis and 2 beers. we rested for a while in the hammocks and he returned, without the use of a watch, exactly at noon with the most delicious lunch ever. it was fresh fish, probably just caught a few hours earlier, fried plantains and one of my favorites, breadfruit. he also brought the drinks and snorkel gear. it was heavenly. We sat in hammocks on a pristine, tiny Caribbean palm covered island surrounded by turquoise blue water and ate lunch with the warm sea breeze blowing in our hair. it was paradise! After lunch I added a great new piece to my ethnic doll collection. the 2 ladies who were on the island of course were selling their molas, i also bought one of them, and a handmade doll made of wood. it´s very primitive and is dressed in the traditional clothing that the women wear. it´s either my new favorite or second favorite after my haitian doll. The women wear these beads on their entire bottom half of their legs and the women were selling small ones of those too. when i saw them they looked just like regular bracelets that would clip together, but they´re not. it´s one long string of beads that was designed to have a special pattern that´s visible when it´s wrapped around the leg. look closely at the pictures when i post them at the design on the ladies´ legs. i bought a small version of one for the doll and asked the women to put it on the doll. well, it´s so difficult that they couldn´t get the design to come out on it, both even tried.

later, at 3pm we got picked up after doing a little swimming and snorkeling, although there wasn´t anything to see in the water. Dave wasn´t feeling well, so he rested and i decided to take another walk around the island and Rogelio came along and explained more about the culture. I figured it was a good time to break out the bubbles that i had been carrying around with me for 2 months. when i started there were only about 5 kids and before i knew it there were like 20 and i had a couple of really small ones, under 2 years old, literally trying to climb up my clothes, using my pant pockets to try and climb to get to the bubbles. what an experience! they were going crazy over those things. unfortunately the bubble wand wasn´t a very good one and it was sometimes difficult to get good, strong bubbles. i can´t imagine what they would´ve done if i had one of those ones that makes bubbles as big as your head. i was holding the wand and letting them give it a try because i was afraid that they´d start fighting if i handed it off to them. an older girl, about 12 years old, showed up and was into it too, so i handed it off to her and they enjoyed the bubbles for a while longer and i watched from a distance and fixed my clothes which had gotten a bit stretched out. One of the probably 3 year old kids was trying to hold up a one year old to reach them. they were so happy. i gave rogelio the other 2 bottles i had so that they could enjoy them another day too.

after the bubble craze i walked around to take a picture of the school and some kids that were nearby wanted me to take a picture of them, so i did. i would take the picture and they´d come running over to the camera to look. one of the mothers was even fascinated by it and really enjoyed looking at them. When i got back to the city i got a few of the pics printed and took them to the office of air panama and asked the lady working there to give them to manuel, the guy who owns hotel kuna yala and works for the airline, so that he could deliver them to the kids or have them sent. when i went to the office to take the pics, i ended up chatting with the lady for over an hour and she wanted to exchange emails, so now i have a friend in panama.

after the photo session i went back to the room and noticed some kids on the dock jumping into the water and playing. i went down and sat there watching. they again wanted their pics taken so took a few and then they wanted to see other pics on my camera. unfortunately i didn´t have all of my memory cards with me so i could show them pics of the other countries as well, but they were happy with what i had. i was sitting there on the dock with my feet dangling, a kid in the water pulling at my leg to try to get back up on the dock and a bunch of others with their heads pressed against mine to see the photos. they were so excited by it. one kid even climbed onto my lap. they´ll really love the pictures i sent back. i´m sure tourists go there all the time and take pics and show them on the camera screen, but i don´t think that too many of them actually send them back. they don´t get mail, so the only way would be to do what i did or to go back myself with the pics. while i was sitting on the dock with the kids, Dave had gotten up by that time and was standing in another area with another crowd of kids. they were so excited by the cameras.

we paid $45 each to stay in a very basic room made of cement and bamboo and it included 3 meals, transportation to the clean island to swim and transportation to and from what they called the airport, which was just a landing strip in the middle of nowhere. i´m really glad that the guy lied to us about the accommodation being on a clean, quiet island because it was a million times better to be on the dirty crowded island with the the community. the people live in bamboo huts that you can also see in the photos when i post them. i would`ve liked to have stayed in a one of those instead of in the cement house, but i can do that next time.

earlier in the day when we came back from the other island and i had that doll i asked rogelio about taking a picture of one of the bracelets that they sell so that i could try to get the design to come out on the doll myself later when i got home from my trip. he said that he would find someone to fix it for me and he did. the woman was so into this doll that she called about 6 other women over to check it out. they had never seen one like that before which was strange considering that the ladies who sold it to me lived a couple of islands over. they were also interested in the mola that i bought too. molas are rectangular hand sewn designs made by the women and used for the the bottom part of their shirts. a good, traditional one can take up to 4 months to make. they make traditional ones and non-traditional touristy ones that aren´t very nice. i got a couple of traditional ones, one of which is a cat design. i think that they wanted to see what i bought so that they would know what the tourist wanted to buy-the traditional design and not the ugly flourescent bird ones. i voice recorded the women on my mp3 player while they were looking at the doll and mola and talking about it. i really liked to hear them speaking in their dialect.

the next day we took the boat back to the landing strip and got back on the 10 seater really old plane at 6 something in the morning. it was an awesome experience that i plan to return to someday, but with good bubble makers and some school supplies too.

After San Blas we went to the metropolitan rainforest where monkeys and sloths live within the city limits, but didn´t see any of them on our hike. we also made our way to the miraflores locks to watch some ships go through the locks so that when i get back no one can say, ¨you went all the way to panama and didn´t go to the locks?¨

the next day, friday, dave´s last full day, we caught a bus to las mañanitas to visit with Sister Loretta and Sister Jane. My great aunt Betty (Sister Elizabeth officially) used to live there a little over 10 years ago. We made our way up there and they had a lovely lunch for us. We walked around and met some women that worked on the sewing workshops with my aunt which gave many women in the community a skill with which they could find work and support themselves. They were lovely women and happily greeted us. The send love and hugs to you Aunt Betty. It was another wonderful afternoon in the Panamanian countryside.

The next day, Saturday, May 26th, Dave left around noon and I headed to Mi Pueblito. It´s a touristy place that has life size replicas of villages of the different ethnic groups in Panama. it was a pretty neat place. I caught the 5pm bus to go back to David and arrived around midnight.

The next day I was going to hike the quetzal trail, but i had read that it may be necessary to cross a creek with waist high water and it can be tough. i decided not to do it myself in case i´d get washed down stream or something. the person who wrote that also wrote that it´s a good idea to bring a survival kit along because it´s a challenge. that´s another thing i´ll do on my next visit to panama. instead of doing that i decided to go to the hot springs in caldera. it was a refreshing country hike that required me to walk across a poorly maintained suspension bridge. I was skeptical about walking across it on the way over and on the way back i saw a jeep drive across it, so i figured that i would be okay walking afterall.

the following day, Monday, May 28th, I made my way back into Costa Rica. The border crossing went smoothly, but that´s about all that went smoothly. My bus connections were horrible and i ended up reaching San José late. The next day mom arrived around 2pm and my luxurious vacation began. She rented a car and we headed to the Pacific coast to the town of Quepos near Manuel Antonio National Park. We stayed at hotel ceciliano for $20 a night for a private room with private bath with hot water. it was a normal, clean place. the next day we went for a hike in the park along the coast and saw both howler monkeys and capuchin white faced monkeys. mom was pretty impressed with the red crabs too. there was a nice beach in the park also. it´s amazing how the pacific coast looks the same from washington state all the way to costa rica.

the next day we headed out for the monteverde/santa elena area, little did we know you almost need a 4×4 vehicle. it took us 2 hours to drive 25 kms in a hyundai accent, but we made it. it was really cold up there in santa elena. we stayed at hotel el sueño for $25 per night for a nice wooden room with huge picture windows, including breakfast. the beds each had 2 thick blankets on them, that´s how cold it was! the following day, we did a canopy tour which means ziplines. there were 15 of them and towards the end they also had a tarzan swing. they strap you on to a rope and you´re supposed to step off of a platform and swing really high up into the air, but the guy will give you a push if you can´t step off, which i needed help with. it was soooooooooooooo much fun though. for some reason, the guys who reel you in decided to spin me around a lot as i was swinging back and forth. it was super fun! the whole zip/tarzan thing lasted 3 hours. After the canopy tour we hiked for a little bit in the santa elena cloudforest reserve, but all we saw were hummingbirds and wild turkeys. it was a beautiful hike in lush, bright green vegetation. oh, there was a small waterfall too.

On sunday we slowly, but surely made our way to La Fortuna/Arenal. We had to go down another very bumpy dirt road, but this one also had a really muddy spot where the mud was at least a foot thick. luckily for us there were 2 guys there ¨fixing¨ the road and one of them rearranged the boulders so that we could drive over them to get through the mud. when i saw that stuff i seriously didn´t think that there was any way we were making it through there, but we did.

well folks, that´s all that i can handle for today. now that i´m on my own again for the final stretch (only 3 weeks left) i should be updating and uploading pretty often again. i have a couple of more days in costa rica and then i head back into nica. hasta pronto.

Tags: Boquete, Central America 2007, Kuna, Panama, racism, San Blas

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 12:53 am and is filed under Central America 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.