Panamanian Highlands

After some hang out and do nothing time on the San Blas islands, we set off for the Panamanian "mountains". Okay, Panamanian Mountain. The highest point is a lone volcano, a respectable 3,474 meters to the summit. From the top, you can see both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. But, we did not and will not climb Volcan Barú. We did, however, ride horses. In the rain. A lot of rain, with some lightning and thunder and a little bit of galloping through the mud. The weather here is really predictable. It rains every afternoon from 1pm to 6pm. However, we didn´t understand that fully until we had planned our little outing for the hours of 1pm to 6pm. Oh well, lessons learned. We rode our horses, got real wet, but had a good time. Even the bone chilling damp was forgotten when we took a dip in the hot springs. Hot springs, as usual, were down a 5 mile road, across a raging river (twice), through two construction sites, and on some guy´s property (who showed up carrying a machete and a pink umbrella). All in all, it was an enjoyable experience (where is the fun if you have no obstacles to overcome?).

A bit more hiking this morning (careful to avoid that rain, now, every day, 1pm...) and a lazy afternoon later, we are gearing up for our last day together tomorrow. (See picture to see Angel´s feelings on that subject.) Maybe she will perk up a bit drinking some of the world´s best coffee (Panamanian coffee from this region has been voted the best in the world, or so they say).

Panamanian Paradise

Desitination one in Panama: San Blas Islands. Shortly after arriving in Panama City, Angel and I left on the early morning (5am) jeep to the other side of Panama, where we crossed the jungle on a bumpy single lane road, forded a 3 foot river (it reached the hood of the 4x4 truck, it was pretty high), and arrived at a insect infested little boat landing at a river. Onto the boat, up the river, which dumped out into the Caribbean ocean. After some faltering from the engine (uh oh!) we eventually picked up speed and headed out through the sprinkling of islands that were visible in the near and distant horizon. We pulled up to the dirtiest, most crowded island I could imagine, no beach in sight. Trying desperately to hold on to my determination to enter the islands with no expectations, I tried to look for a silver lining. Failing to find one at arriving at this floating dump, I was immensely relieved to learn we were just picking up some gas (hence the faltering engine). Whew! We cruised past beautiful, teeny little caribbean gems, white sand beaches ringing small stands of palm trees. As we came up to a particularly pretty little island with a few cabañas on it, I hoped we would stop. Sure enough, we soon beached on a stunning white sand beach.

Three days of lounging ensued. I read 500 pages, got a little tanner, did a fair bit of sleeping. Pretty relaxing, at least for me. I don´t think that the 4 out of 6 people in our group (Angel included) who got sick (food poisoning? Who knows..) thought it was exactly paradise. However, I think I might have gotten sea-fooded out a bit (one meal was literally buckets of lobster, king prawns, and giant crab). Back on main land now after 3 days on the islands. Today we are celebrating Angel´s birthday (July 8th) since she will be leaving before it, and I won´t be back in the states yet. Pedicures, baked goods, a nice dinner, and some Media y Media (a trick I learned in Argentina, half white wine and half champagne) should round out a nice last day in Panama City. Off to northern Panama to climb some mountains (hey, I didn´t get that pedicure for nothing), and then Angel and I will part ways...at least for a week or so. :-)

So here is the Island story, part II. Mariel has got part I down for you. :-)

San Blas: 378 islands strewn about the Caribbean side of Panama, near Colombia. At least 370 of them are covered in palm trees hanging lazily over the calm ocean. They are, as they sound, a backpackers dream. For $30/night one can have a private cabaña, eat lobster and huge crabs at prepared meals, and lay out on the beach all day long. Paradise. The Islands are owned by the Indigenous tribe Kuna Yala, which are dark brown people who average 5 feet tall, with great white straight teeth (at least most of them...) They sure do pretty well of their tourist visitors! The islands don´t have fresh water on them, so that gets boated in every day from the river on the mainland.

Mariel and I went to the Island that is meant for couples. It is quiet, good food, private cabanas. Pretty awesome. I guess we are pretty antisocial. However, we were antisocial with two other antisocial couples so I guess that makes us a big social group of antisocialites. I think we all slept about 14 hours a day, waking at 5:45 and napping most of the day which of course tired us out for the 8:30pm bedtime. Very relaxing.

And then here is why Mariel wanted me to write my own blog about this...I got pretty ill on the first night, then it kept going from there. Of the 6 of us, Mariel and another girl Jen were the only ones not to get sick. Nothing that can´t be cured by some good water and clean food, can´t heal. Good thing I´ve brought my cipro! I´m on the mend now and my birthday pedicure present from mariel is just the start to a wonderful day in Panama before we head off to Boquete to see some volcanos. Then its home for me in just a few days!

Cartagena...and More Mud

Didn´t think this would happen, but even after 5 days of trekking (slipping, sliding, eating, climbing, and being absolutely positively covered) in it, we voluntarily (even paid money) wanted to get in a little more mud. Although the presentation was way cooler (a 26m tall, over 2000m deep vat of silky gray mud), the end effect was the same: I had mud in places I don´t want to think about, let alone mention.

Floating, sort of, since it´s not like you can swim in the stuff, was an eerie sensation. You could stand upright, suspended 2000m over who knows what below you, and still only be submerged to your chest. Moving was a communal effort, with one person grabbing a nearby structural pole and helping along the poor soul who got stuck in the middle. A nice dunk in a fluorescent green lagoon afterwards to get "clean" (until the thorough scrubbing in the real shower back at the hotel), and we were on our way, one mud volcano experience richer.

Shocked to realize I only have 2.5 weeks left of my trip... Tomorrow we fly to Panama. On to new and exciting things!

Into the Heart of the Jungle (Sort of....)

Not traveling alone: not only do I not get bored, I don´t even have to update my own blog! Woohoo! Here is the rundown of the 5 day jungle trek we just got back from, from Angel´s perspective.

The Lost City trek: 5 days of slipping and sliding through mud, wading through rivers, and just generally tromping through the jungle. This seemed like a really good way to spend a good chunk of my vacation. We quickly figured out the routine: The mornings are an early riser at around 5:45 (at least for Mariel and I) and included a gigantic breakfast of either 3-5 cups of fruit or a 4 egg omlett with 1/2 cup of cheese (which I found out after a day of bumbly stomach) and 3 pieces of white toast (smothered in butter). This, of course, we were all ravenous for and ate up and asked for seconds. There was so much food the whole trek and wow did we eat a lot! Mornings were sunny and pleasant and it is when we did the most hiking. Every afternoon, however, at 3:30pm like clockwork the storms rolled in. Sometimes they lasted for two hours, sometimes for 10 hours. Pretty awesome feeling to sit in a hammock and watch the rain pelt the already soaked jungle floor knowing nothing is expected of you but to stumble over to the table when dinner is ready. One night I had to share that rain soaked experience with a mouse that decided to crawl over my head. It's not the best thing to wake up to a mouse in your hair at 1am....trust me.

Of course it was beautiful too! But like most beautiful things, very difficult to photograph. Being in the Jungle is like being in a busy subway but the people are trees and the trash on the ground are countless worker ants. The sound on the speaker announcing the next train is the buzz of mosquitos awaiting to attack if you weren´t lucky enough to remember repellent. I got a few good photos of the scenery, and even better photos of the military. Up until we reached the lost city, three days hike in, I had been slightly worried about all the military walking around Santa Marta and the rest of Columbia. They are slightly intimidating, and since I´m in columbia, very freaky when they are carrying a gun. Then we met the poor kids who are forced to join the military at 18 and were then put on a mountain in the jungle with no one to talk to. They looooved the gringos.

The lost city: Apparently this city was used by the Tairona people from 700AD-1400AD, when the Spanish came and wiped them all out with disease. The Spanish never made it up to the mountain (they were probably disuaded by the 2000 moss covered slippery oddly shaped steps that lead to the city) but the disease was spread through trade with other non-lost city dwelling Taironians. The place was gorgeous and apparently very rich. When someone discovered it in the late 20´s, the archeologists found a crap load of gold. Taironians didn´t believe gold to be a precious stone, so they just had it in their houses ready to be robbed 600 years down the road.

We were promised an english speaking guide, but in true south american fashion, the dude spoke really fast spanish and not a lick of english. His favorite things to say were "this is very complicated", "This is very important", "No problem! relax!" (that last one would be when Mariel and I were complaining about his lack of plan). It was an interesting group. One dude even walked the whole thing barefoot. I´m curious to see what types of infections he gets in the next weeks...gross!

Its been 10 days now in Columbia. Its a great country! I haven´t felt scared yet and the weather is awesome. Do I actually have to go back to work at the end of this?

Sister!

Angel has finally made it (I´ve only been (anxiously) waiting for oh, a month and a half), and we decided to waste no time. I picked her up at the airport late Sunday night, and after a restful nights sleep, we headed out the following morning for a little paragliding. There is no way to see a city like flying 1000m above it. A bus took us up, up WAY up the mountainsides that surround Medellin to an altitude of 2600m (Medellin sits around 1400m). Paragliding is kind of like hang gliding, except it is a parachute/kite instead of a hard thing. The staging area was a semi flat grassy bit with a steep drop off down the mountain. I was up first. I strapped into the harness, which included a seat for the tandem rider, and they threw the schute in the air. CORRE!! CORRE!! CORRE!! Before I knew what was happening we were running at the edge (awkwardly, picture a potato sack race crossed with a three legged race) and then the edge dropped away and we were flying! Woohoo!! Didn´t take long before we were doing some aerobatics (swoops, dives, spins) with the cows and farms looking pretty teeny below us. After a 30 or so minute flight, my landing was an ungraceful plop onto my bum back at the staging area.

The following day we set about doing some proper sight seeing. Plazas, churches, cable cars, statues of fat people...Things Medellin is known for. A whirlwind two day tour of the big city and we headed up to the coast. We´re currently in my old ´hood of Taganga, setting out on the 5 day trek through the Jungle to Ciudad Perdida tomorrow morning. We really are wasting no time on this trip. Quite a change from my past month of doing...oh, nothing. A very welcome change, don´t get me wrong. Excited to have had a little time to travel with both my sisters :-).

Venturing Out

After sitting around Medellin for close to 10 days doing close to nothing, I decided it was time to get out for a bit. My adventures started at Peñol, a really big rock about an hour and a half outside the city. There are upwards of 700 some steps that climb the rock, for a sweeping lookout over the surrounding area which has been flooded by a dam (hydroelectric plant) and now is populated with summer/weekend getaway homes for rich paises (Medellin citizens).

My next adventure happened kind of by accident. I had been contemplating heading out to the Zona Cafetera (the coffee growing region of Colombia) for some time, after hearing multiple reports of how beautiful it was. The night before I was thinking about heading out, a large group of University students from a college in that region came and stayed at the hostel for a night. They were on a field trip to visit companies in Medellin. Opportunity knocked, and I ended up catching a free bus ride out to Zona Cafetera the following night on the University bus. Arriving in Pereira (one of the access towns, not much fun for a tourist) at 1am, the professor and his wife generously invited me to stay at their house instead of at one of the rather expensive hotels. I gratefully accepted. They then told me that they were going to Santa Rosa (my destination) the following morning on business, and again invited me to tag along. After feeding me breakfast, we packed in the car and picked up a colleague. First stop was a random little pueblito (tiny, tiny town) up in the mountains where the professor had the business to take care of. The drive was beautiful, coffee plots stretching down the impossibly steep slopes. Around 2pm we finally arrived in Santa Rosa to pick up their son (currently staying at the grandma´s) and to drop me off. I was taken into his mother´s house and fed lunch without a bat of an eyelash, and an introduction so quick I think I missed it. No questions asked, a 4 course lunch and my many expressions of my deepest gratitude later, I was standing with my pack on my back in front of a hotel in Santa Rosa.

Santa Rosa is famous for its hot springs, which I must say, are some of the best I have been to. A steaming hot waterfall (two, actually, one for each main pool) cascades down a rock face and into the massive hot tubs, all carved out of the natural rock bed. In case you get too hot, you can jump in the 100m tall ice cold waterfall on the other end of the pool and sprint back over to the warm before you get too numb.

After about 5 hours of hanging out at the

pools with only two other people in the complex, I headed back to town. Caught a local bus back to Pereira, and hopped on the connecting bus to Salento. Salento is the home of the wax palm, which I´ve heard only exists in this specific region of Colombia. Headed out at 730am with a small group (randomly ran into someone I had met back in Taganga and had lost contact with) to embark on the 6 hour hike through the Valle de Cocora. A beautiful lush green valley curiously dotted with palm trees, who look confused and out of place on the mountainside. On the top of the trail is a small nature reserve that served delicious hot chocolate and happened to house over 8 different species of humming birds. (Grandma Bolhouse would have loved this place.)

I got in and got out of Salento, staying for one night and then taking the night bus back to Medellin. I´m settling back in for the last few days of waiting I have until Angel comes down. :-)