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sorry for the delay!

// December 30th, 2004 // Boquette, Panama

ok, sorry it has taken me a while to do an actual post… i dont like sitting on the internet when its nice out… its rainy now though and michael has left for panama city.

so we´re out of bocas… the people there are horrible. not nice, don´t smile, not friendly… though its very beautiful. another thing is, to get to a beach it was at least a $5 boat ride… which gets expensive after a couple days… we had a real nice hotel… well it was actually a piece of shit… just a room with about 6 beds or so… a couple rooms like that. we had a dock out over the water which was key though… plus it was a bit cheaper than the hostel…

the dock was facing north so it was in the shade most of the day… provided a nice place to kick it and play cards and drink out of the sun… we could swim right off of it as well. me and michael met back up with a guy from switzerland that we hung out with in san jose and puerto viejo…. small world of travelers down here, i see a lot of the same people in different cities. we also met a kid (Torston) from germany but living in Australia… a kid from washington, a girl from cali, a English guy… yadda yadda… all cool kids at the same hotel… a big reason why we ended up staying so long… that and we got lucky with weather… the other guys were there for five days before we got there and they had rain the whole time… we had one day of rain, and the rest perfect days… it started to rain again the day we left, good timing!

we had to take a boat taxi from bocas del toro to the main land… its sad, so many natives (and probaby some tourists too) litter… everywhere, but especially in the ocean… just shit everywhere… its sad… i cant imagine in 10 years! anyways… from the mainland, we walked about a mile to the bus station… some little kid pointed his cane/stick at us as if it were a gun and acted like he was shooting us… nice folks eh?

we got on the bus, well more like an oversized minivan… held about 15 people, and you can be damn sure they had all of them in there. we were to have about a 4 hour bus ride to David, Panama… well we went about a half hour and had to stop due to road work or a mudslide, i couldnt quite tell… they told us it would be an hour and a half wait… and for one time in central america, they were right on with the time…surprise… so we kept trucking… the ride was awesome, through mountains, then up through the clouds… we were up pretty high, unfortunately i dont know how high… but it was high. the sun was setting off in the distance, and you could see the huge volcano i´m climbing tomorrow (3300 meters tall or so) over 10,000 feet i think.

So we got to boquette which is a nice town… definatley not poor… kids have game cubes, there are nice cars, some big 4×4 trucks as you can drive to the top of the volcano if you have a beefy enough car… but i think they have to be pretty rugged and have a winch…

the first place we wanted to stay was full, so was the second… we ended up in a nice place run by an ex panama pro basketball player… really nice, almost too nice. only $5.50 a piece which isnt too bad.

we went on a nice long hike yesterday, i guess around 8-10 miles or so. the first stop was for coffee.. supposedly the best in the country… i had some, it was good. after that was a gaden… mi jardin es su jardin… a person house that has a huge beautiful garden and they let people walk around it for free. its huge and nice… i was a bit disappointed though, a lot of the flowers i have seen in oregon. oh well, still very very nice

then we just kept walking… it was a real nice hike along a river (though we were walking on a road)… we just kept going… saw some cool old buildings… then saw kids rolling oranges down the street… one kid asked michael for money for food… he told the kid to eat the fucking orange… im so sick of people asking me for my money, or trying to scam me out of it… im going to buy a machette and hurt the next person… or use it for opening coconuts… whichever is more legal.

we walked until it rained… then taxied home. Spent the night drinking and playing cards… the owner of the hotel came and talked to us and helped us enjoy the evening… rolled us many joints, enough to have paid for the hotel room…a real nice guy… talks a lot… half spanish half english… by the end of the night i was too tired to try to figure out what he was saying so i just zoned out…

today we just chilled, i spent some time online getting things in order…

tomorrow i climb the volcano, spend a night on top and descend on the first… its 6 hours up 5 hours down… sounds like a tough hike as well. then i meet back up with michael on the 2nd and we go back to costa rica… to find some monkeys.

so wish me luck!