Panama City, Santa Catalina, David and into Costa Rica

We really should update this more often.

We last left off somewhere around Panama City. We spent a few days enjoying the city. A strange place that was enjoyable on some levels. We stayed in an older part of town that was enjoyable and felt very Panamanian. But it does not take long to wander into the Panama City where Donald Trump is building skyscrapers and ex-pats are running you over in their BMW SUVs. We were also able to visit on of the locks on the Panama Canal. A very impressive piece of engineering. We were not aware, but the canal is not just a long area where a hole was dug to let ships pass. It actually connects large inland bodies of water with the oceans through shorter segments of big holes. The problem for the engineers was that the inland bodies of water were at a higher elevation that the sea on either side. So the locks were built to raise and lower the ships to the various elevations.

From there we went to Santa Catalina. We expected a rather remote coastal town with a nice beach and some coastal culture. What we got was an expensive town with a gringo local ratio of 3:1. The beach was nice, but only stuck around for a day as the college spring breakers were just too much for us.

We then got on a bus to head to another slightly more remote beach/island on the Pacific coast. However, we had some difficulty getting busses along the way and then we learned of a festival occurring in the city of David. So we switched our destination to David and settled in there for a few days.

The festival in David was much better than any beach we could have hit. It was almost identical to the NC State Fair. Livestock judging, produce competitions, agricultural displays, street food vendors (hot dogs and drinks for $1, kabobs for .50, but no deep fried twinkies and no blooming onions to puke up after a few poorly constructed rides (Sorry, Emily!)), tractors galore, music, cultural events, etc. We ended up hanging out at the fair each of the three days we were in David.

We finally stuffed our stomachs full of enough fair food and went into town and got our final fresh fruit snow cone (street vendors sell these heavenly treats everywhere for $0.30) and headed to Costa Rica. The border agent gave us a stern look when we told him we did not have a ticket to leave the country. He explained that this was a requirement and that we would need to go to the internet and buy an onward ticket and print it out and bring it to him...long pause...next time we cross the border into Costa Rica. We agreed that we would do this. (oh, side note. I hinted at border issues in Panama. We did immigration in Puerto Obaldia, but when we flew into Panama City, the immigration folks looked bored and we looked white, so they decided maybe it would be fun to do it again. Well US citizens as well as Aussies and a few others have to purchase a tourist card. We knew this and planned to do so at the airport. Well the immigration agent was kind enough to sell us a card for $10, despite the fact that it is widely known that they cost $5 and it says on the card that it should only cost $5. I questioned her on it a couple of times and asked for a receipt, which of course was not available. My bag had still not been searched and we were not in the clear, so I decided it was not worth it to keep pushing the issue and acted like I bought her lame story. Once we got through, I asked an official in the airport if it is normal for a tourist card to cost $10. I just wanted to express my frustration. This turned in to me being on the phone to the head immigration office, making a police report and being surrounded by multiple police officers. They took our passports and toursit cards back to make copies of them. The immigration officers wanted us to return the next day since the lady who sold them to us had left for the day. Since a taxi to and from the airport would have cost way more than the $10 we lost, we told them we could not do this and we wanted to either resolve it then or just forget it and leave and act like nothing happened. So with the police on one side angry at the immigration officers and the immigration officers extremely angry at me for opening my mouth and our passports somewhere in the airport, we stood around for 2 and a half hours. Finally an immigration officer showed up and had another lame story about what had occurred, gave us $10 dollars out of her purse and told the police she would resolve the issue with her staff member. She was able to retrieve our passports and cards and we finally went on our way. We half expected for our photos to be in up in the office where we exited the country, but we left without a problem. To be fair, we do think this was an isolated thing and the fact that the police took the incident way more seriously than we ever intended for it to be is a credit to the countries desire to keep corruption out of their officials.)

We made it to the Caribbean town of Cahuita (pronounced cow-eetah). The locals in Cahuita are of African descent and mainly speak English. This is a very Caribbean English and is still difficult to understand, but it is really interesting to see little pockets that speak different languages from various historical events. We were told that the village used to be called Cow Eaters, as the village raised cattle and ate a lot of it. However, as things became more official in the country, a more spanish name was needed and given the Caribbean accent, Cahuita was essentially the same name. We dont know if this is true, but we love the story. This is a really nice, laid back village, but it is quickly being flooded with ex-pats, making the local culture a bit harder to see.

A local National Park in Cahuita houses a large coral reef. We set up a morning of snorkeling to try to enjoy the reef. We ended up being the only ones on the reef, with our guide, meaning the reef was full of life. During the morning we saw lots of coral of various colors, thousands of fish that were brightly colored, many swimming in schools by the hundreds, an octopus, a giant lobster, a sting ray, a giant brightly colored, spotted flounder, spider star fish, conchs, and a 4 foot nurse shark. The shark was large, but it was resting completely still on the bottom. We assume he was no danger as we got pretty close to him and really could not have cared less. We were dropped off on the other side of the national park to hike back. The guide warned us that we may have to scare some monkeys away so they dont try to steal our stuff or bite us. The fun part was that he was right. The monkeys were quite daring in trying to inspect us to see if we had any food. We saw several species of monkeys in the trees, sloths, a Palm Eyelash Viper, racoons, butterflies, lizards, brightly colored birds, and probably even more.

We are now in San Jose as a strike has the roads blocked and we werent able to catch our second bus. Hopefully we head out tomorrow to continue north.

Here are a few pictures from our past couple of weeks.

Miraflores Locks on the Panama Canal:


Casco Viejo in Panama City:


Big, modern, Panama City:


The David "State Fair":


Snow Cones. We ate our weight in these things. Made with fresh fruit juice and topped with sweetened condensed milk.


This is the rodeo-esque event we went to at the Fair. If you closed your eyes and smelled the grilling sausages and hot dogs and listened to the Allan Jackson Greatest Hits CD playing during the event, you might think you were back in the southeastern USA.


Snorkeling at Cahuita National Park in the Caribbean.


Monkeys. We had a stand off with one on the trail. He wanted to check us for food. We wanted him not to bite us. He showed his teeth, we showed ours and we both moved on.


This is the eyelash viper. We were told we would have a good hour to get to a hospital if it bit us (it is venomous), so we figured we should get close enough for a good picture.



The Colonel puts the moves on Tracy in San Jose, Costa Rica. He thinks he is smooth with his greasy fingers and his nasty chicken and biscuits (which are actually tortillas here, first country so far with tortillas). Tracy wasn´t having it.