walkings

After planning on spending around 5 days in panama... and loving it while it turned into about 10... i've got some fun stories. After finishing my diving cours i spent another 2 days on Bocas Del Toro. of the 5 nights i spent there someone made a family style meal 4 of them. The last meal was just great. The organizer of the meal went out the day before, found a pig, bought it, fed it some ice cream, and then had it butchered. We marinated the hog all night with fruits and garlic and then cooked it in a home made oven for ~6 hours. the meal, when it was all said and done, was just amazing. The food was the highlight of bocas, but after bocas is when panama went from really cool to something far above that.

I grabbed a water taxi to a near by island to go spend 3 days with Polo. Polo is this crazy hermit guy i heard about while up in northern costa rica. He's lived on the same beach property for 41 yrs, and has only allowed guest to wander out for the last ten. THe island he lives on is call basimentos. THis place has no roads at all. the one small village does have an extra wide sidewalk through town but that's really it. To get to polo's beach i had to hike it from beach to beach around the island for about 2 hours. It was absolutely raining like a monsoon for 1 1/2 of those hours. but the hike was so great. I was the only one out and right when i reach polo's shack the sun came out and i was able to start drying out all my gear. Polo's place is a simple shack about 20 meters off the beach. He's seriously not all there. He's nuts... but nice, and a really good cook. I chilled out with him for 2 nights. The highlight of chilling with polo was his food, the first day i had iguana. Iguana doesn't taste like chicken... but it doesn't taste so bad either. The skin was a little weird but i wasn't going to turn anything down. Along with his cooking skills i found out that mixing coconut water and rum is just delicious. Ever hour i was getting another coconut from the palm, wacking that thing open, and mixing me a drink.

Then from polo's place i headed back to the small village on basimentos and hung out there for 4 days. The beaches on this island are amazing. There huge and nobody is there. We're able to spread out enough to where it feels like we're the only ones on the beach. I was in heaven. But, after spending my days there it was time to move on.

I'm in san jose right now at costa rica backpackers. I'm going to catch an early bus tomorrow back up to nicaragua and my favorite island of them all... ometepe. I hope to find a family to stay with while i work on a farm there. Haven't talked to anyone about this in about 3 weeks but i'm confident everything will work out. In fact, it always works out when you really don't have a plan. so that's where i'm at.

love to all