La Casa de Lourdes Farallon

... money and was scanned by a security guard at the door. Once inside though he said the teller had all sorts of cash spread out on his counter so I guess once you're scanned they're pretty sure you're okay. On the way home we stopped at a cigar shop where we were given a demonstration and tour of the facility. As you can imagine this is where the guys bought their souvenirs (although I'm surprised they didn't offer to buy the mannequin at one of the shops we were at)

was up all night, and had a rough morning.. a few beers a water and a cold chevchi was my recipe for my all cure. was hung over, in a bad mood and couldnt be asked to get on a bus. so everyone stayed another night. we went swimming and decided to gather wood for a bond fire. we played cards and then went out to dinner at woodys. i had a burger, yay! as it got dark we walk down to the beach and started up the fire! at 10 i decide to try to go ...

i got up early and packed my ****. kick the troops into shape and hit the road went back to las tablas. one $2 collectivo and a bus to Penenome for $4.50. penenome is a dust hot middle of panama town where the traditional pana somberro is made people wear them every were. we decided to keep moving, we needed an ocean breeze to breathe so we looked at a map and picked a town. Farallon was ...

... pictures to come. I felt like a human amusement park! But that was the good part of the day yesterday. All the rest of yesterday seemed to have a curse on it. I called a taxi to go out in Panama City and not only did the taxista overcharge me because I´m a gringa, but I also didn´t have small change to pay him. While I ran around looking for change at every storefront on the block, his blood pressure and ...

After the excitement of yesterday, we roamed around the port city, the site of an old fort--Amador--close to Panama City. We are only 9 degrees above the equator, so as you can well imagine, it is very warm here. It is cool at night luckily--but the heat and humidity of the tropics are in full force during the day. We found a lovely Panama-style shirt for Mom and a hat for Kit, so we accomplished two of our tasks for the day! Panama is beautiful and is one of the ...

This was our last day in port in Panama and a shore excursion day for me. The excursion I'd signed up for was a hike up into the cloud forest, the highest elevation part of the rainforest where it was really wet and the most exotic plants grew, see some animals and take some pictures, and then hike down into a local craft market where people sold their handmade art. It was a long bus ride but my friend Liz was on the trip with me; she's a supergeek like me when it comes ...

Today's program was actually really similar to the shore excursion that I had signed up for but had to drop when I added the AFP. I was really excited because I had actually considered not adding the AFP on the sole basis of missing this excursion and then did it anyway. Good thing too. Anyway it was a trip to Embra Drua ("Village of the People"), a community of indigenous Embera people that they have opened to tourism. Alexis, our guide, told us a lot about them on the way. Tourism is ...

... itself is very spread out as I`ve already mentioned. To walk from one end of town to the other can take over two hours, and walk everyone does because only a handfull of people own private cars, and the public transportation, an old pick-up truck, runs infrequently, sometimes not for months. I think I was placed in one of the most beautiful areas of Panama, whenever I return from elsewhere I am always awed by the beauty of ...

Hey! Well Panama City was so much fun seeing the place and catching up with Vance and having so much to catch-up on. I never knew where the rime from Rio to Lima went, and then the time in Panama seemed to dissapear just as fast, so then it was on to make my way through Panama stopping briefly at Santiago and David for transfers on my way to El Valle. I've met up some people I'll be travelling throughout Central America with, and it's me one and other ...

Our hotel is on Playa Blanca in Farallon....it's gorgeous. White sand beach, and Noriega's old beach house just around the corner. What more can a girl ask for? My friends all made fun of me for being so excited about seeing a former dictator's summer home. Yes, I'm a dork, and I don't care. I think they appreciated the history lesson though!