It's raining again...
Trip Start
Jan 16, 2008
1
9
35
Trip End
Apr 19, 2008
Bocas Town,
Panama
Sunday, February 10, 2008
We've had a great week this week - just for a change :)
School is still going well. Continued this week with the same teacher, Darwin, together with a new student, Kat - she studied Spanish at high school so actually knows way more than me, she's just a little rusty. This was Darwin's last week at school unfortunately - he was just here on holiday from Switzerland where he's living now. So next week we get a new teacher. Kristina has been sitting one-on-one with Cecilia for the past two weeks so they've managed to plough through almost the whole book. Being in school and talking lots has done wonders for her confidence, so she talks Spanish a lot more now and is less worried about doing it.
094. Gecko
On Monday we ventured over to Isla Carenero again and spent a few hours at Aqua Lounge, which is a backpackers/bar/"pool". They have a great deck area out over the water with a diving platform, a roped off area in the sea and a trampoline out in the water. Great way to spend a sunny afternoon without getting sandy :)
Wednesday we went diving again. Same divemaster as first time unfortunately - he's a nice enough guy but seems to be tired with diving, so it's just a job for him now. Alfredo, the other DM we've dived with is much more enthusiastic - so when diving with him you get to see a lot more of the weirder stuff. Having said that, the second dive was great and Irwin pointed out both a sea snake and a frog fish which I wouldn't have otherwise seen. Also saw a large school of small fish which acted almost like a swarm of locusts - moving to one part of the reef and eating the corals then moving on to another part - quite amazing to watch.
Thursday it was back to Aqua Lounge for a few more hours in the sun, followed by a short walk round the coast on Carenero to the Cosmic Crab Cafe - recommended to us by Darwin for it's great crab. We started off with a couple of weird cocktails before moving on the beverage of choice - beer :) Had a couple of crab claws and grouper steam baked in banana leaves with veges and pineapple
095. Devil during carnival
. Yum!!! Definitely worth a visit. A touch expensive (whole dinner cost US$46, including Key Lime Pie, tax and forced tip) - but well worth a visit. No problem getting a boat back either - by the time we'd walked out to the end of the well lit pier opposite town, there was a boat there waiting for us :)Yesterday we took a trip over to the mainland for the first time. Took the boat over to Changuinola which is pretty much the capital of the Bocas del Toro province. Much like Hamilton, it only really exists because of the nearby farms. But here the farms are all banana plantations. Changuinola really could be called Chiquitaville. They even have a Chiquita Bar. The boat trip goes through a canal which was built to get the bananas out of Changuinola, and is the central point in a large wetland reserve which has a lot of bird life and apparently even Manatees and sloths, but we didn't see either of those. From the boat we decided to walk the 5km into town (instead of paying a shocking 50 cents for the bus :) The walk was much more interesting - right through the banana plantations, so you could really see how they work with the bananas and even transport them on a kind of primitive monorail or cable car type thing (I've got some photos to upload later). Definitely recommend the walk.
Oh, and in case you're in Bocas and think that maybe the queue at the bank would be less in Changuinola - think again. I got my new credit card the other week, but of course, since it has a new number it has to have a new PIN and the only place I can do that is at an ANZ in New Zealand (sigh). Which means that cash advances have to be done in a bank, not via an ATM. Which means (at least here in Bocas) waiting 1-2 hours in the queue. Think we'll see how the queues are in other parts of the country...
That's pretty much it for now. Heading into our last week here now. Not sure when we'll leave - we need to be in Costa Rica on Sunday, and there are a couple of other places in Panama we'd like to see before then, so we may end up heading off on Thursday after school.
