Pura Vida, Mañana Mañana and other useful phrases...

Genuine Panama Hat.......made in Ecuador

The above title is the label inside my new Panama hat that I bought yesterday in Casco Viejo. It just makes me laugh..these Panamians are so genuine and kind with no pretenses in a way that does amuse me.

For example, every single taxi driver we have met have been sincerely interested in talking to us and finding out where we´re from. We get the same response each time whenever we say we´re from Australia.

´AUSTRALIA??!!! SI!!! KANGUROS!! COCORILLO DUNDEEEEE??´(miming a crocodile snapping)

I can easily spend a few more days here, but Colombia awaits. Frankly I am quite glad to skip the sailboat because the idea of spending 2 days in rough seas with 8 strangers on a 40 foot boat doesn´t really compare to spending those 2 days exploring the beauty and history of a town like Cartagena. I have heard that it is the most romantic city in South America, and much safer than the other rougher cities of Colombia. Let´s hope that is the case - I am quite over my brushes with crime so far. If anything else happens again, I would seriously be happy to pack up my things and head north for the US. At least I can speak the language better there. Y´know what I´m saying, y`all???

Yesterday, Glen and I had a great day exploring Casco Viejo, a historic area of the city filled with crumbling buildings and beautiful parks. It was amazing, I think I took something like 200 photographs. Glen was starting to get quite exasperated. I took pictures of the buildings, the sidewalks, the people, a fire hydrant, a stray cat, and some feet.

At night we headed back to have dinner among the open air markets and to walk around a bit more. We went into Cafe Coca Cola and was abruptly accosted by a strange hippie panamian-american with a long beard and a red beret. We didn´t have a chance, he was clearly on the warpath for someone to talk to. He started ranting about over-development of the Panamanian islands, about his socialist ideals, and on and on. He kinda reminded of ´Marcel the angry German´, the sailboat captain that we met in Bocas Del Toro when we were with Outward Bound. Marcel had organised raves in Germany in his youth, and then bought a sailboat which he then promptly sailed over to Panama and have been here for nine years since. He was a tad...uh...how do you say it....off his trolley? We had passed a lovely elderly couple on their sailboat with their sails down and their engine running. Marcel pulled his boat alongside the couple and yelled out:¨`Hay viento!!! (banging his sail) Hay viento, you stupid F*^*K!!!!´ (this means, there is wind!)

Anyway, after Cafe Coca Cola, we went into Calle Uruguay, a popular nightspot with bars and discos. It is so much safer here, with tourist police on every corner, and well-lit streets. Certainly a far cry from Costa Rica. Glen and I went dancing in a salsa bar, but Glen broke my toenail by stepping on my foot, so we had to go home with my toe wrapped in a napkin. MM...how sexy. Guess next time I really should let him lead.

I have been experiencing problems with my left eye being extremely irritable and sensitive to light, so we finally went to an opthalmologist on Friday who prescribed me two eyedrops and two weeks without wearing contact lenses. Arrrrgh!!! I can´t stand it. It was so uncomfortable walking around yesterday in the heat, sweating with my glasses on. I bought the Panama hat, which certainly helps keep the sun out of my eyes, and of course, makes me look stylish and oh-so-rakish.

Anyway, I am going to stop blabbing, our taxi will be here in three minutes to pick us up to go to the airport. I have my travelling purple pants on, and my travelling stick packed away in my bag. I am wearing my Panama hat, which I have named ´Alan´, and my other travelling hat which I pirated from my good friend Evan is stashed safely in my bag. I have named that hat ´Cholo´. I am guessing you guys may be sensing a theme here.

Will be sending out more postcards soon.

Take care everyone and have a fantastic New Year.

Sandra

People clap in the cinema - it is so cool

Sandra and I had a day of safety yesterday. We went to a big ass mall so that we could find out why our ipod was not charging and thoought, yes, we will stay here and look around. Not so the backpacker thing to do but it was air conditioned.

We wondered around, looked at stuff and had a great day. Not much happened but it recharged our batteries. We also went to an optomotrist because sandra was having trouble with her eyes and the sales assistant recommended an opthamologist, wrote down instructions on how to ask for one and pointed us off to the nearest hospital. And this is the thing with the Panamanians. They seem to be the nicest people you will ever meet. Every one is friendly and kind.

We went to a movie and when something cool happened, they clapped and cheered and made whooping noises. It was great. Honestly, if i had to move to another country, I would move here.

Today we are off to Casco Antiguo to do a massive walking tour and take lots of photos of this amazing city. Hopefully i will be able to blog more later but we had to spend most of this internet hour looking for accomodation in Cartagena for NYE.

Glen

Life is good again

Sorry for the shortness of this blog but i just want to say thank you to everyone who have sent us well wishes about what happened in PV. I appreciate it all and i also appreciate that it was shitty news to hear. Sandra and I are happy in Panama. We have bought our third camera for less than we thought and had a good night last night. Today we are going to do some house keeping things like visas and flights etc and then find a crocodile farm and choose the biggest one to wrestle, apparently they have only got a 50 percent occurance of injury on this activity and we thought that it was high time to risk our lives again --- I AM JOKING OF COURSE

Plans for the sailboat have fallen through. There was one available but I do not want to risk it when the casptain sounds a bit dodgey and the seas are pretty rough this time of year.

I will write tonight when we have finished all of our other stuff to do.

Glen

Not so Happy Gringos

If you choose to read this blog past this opening sentance, please understand that this will not be filled with good news and tales of adventure. On the onset, I want you to know that Sandra and I are ok but we have had our collective worst 24 hours that you can imagine.

After getting off the phone with my family, Sandra and I headed home to our Cabin for a little more christmas cheer and fun. We were looking forward to tomorrow as it would be the first day of our great adventure.

Then two men came out of nowhere and held a gun to my head.

Again Sandra and I are ok.

Anyway all they wanted was money and Sandra´s bag, so we gave them 20 in cash and they took Sandra´s bag which had our new replacement camera. We are now cameraless for the second time in 2 weeks. All I could see when it happened was the gun and hearing the young piece of shit say ¨gimme your fuckin money¨

We went back to the hotel and got the police on the phone. The hotel proprietor called for us and helped translate some of the details when the police arrived. We went with the hoteliers friend to the station and made a statement to the police. While this was happening there was a call on the radio that they had picked up one of the men who robbed us and they took him to Cahuita police station. We were asked if we wanted to id him tomorrow in front of lawyers etc and we said yes. We were told that this would happen in a town near PV called Bribri at 8 in the morning. This was ok for us as we would be able to go to the CR and Panama border and catch our flight to Panama city. We got to bed late that night because we also needed to pack for the next few days. I got to sleep at 4 in the morning to get back up again at 7 to go to Bribri.

We woke up and Sandra went to pay at the hotel where they slugged us a massive 15% credit card fee. Because the ATM was not working we could not save ourselves 70 in fees so we just had to pay. When we were leaving to catch a taxi to Bribri, Sandra fell of a small bridge that covered a drain where all the muddy run off goes. Nothing was hurt except for her ego (which at the moment was pretty fragile) and her clothes.

We got to the prosecutors office in Bribri only to find out that they need to do all the proceedings in Limon, a town about an hour away. This took them about 2 hours to tell us as there are general language barriers as well as we had to wait for some information to get from PV to Bribri. I insisted that if they were going to get us to go to Limon they would need to take us to Sixiola (the border town) upon our return so that we can get the flight we needed to take.

We got to Limon in a cop car with guns and everything and waited in the police station for a while as they got a translator and other information ready. For this to happen though we had to cross town with a police escort three or four times so that everyone could be in the same place so we could id this cadapicha. We sat down with prosecutors and defence lawyers and police and we even had a line up where i got to id this guy. It was now 2 in the arvo - our flight is at 4:40.

We then had to go to the judges office to do a sworn testemony which took another hour. We had got the guy and he will go to jail but our patience was a little frayed at this stage. We we driven back to the police station whese we got some drivers to take to to sixiola - the time is 3:15.

We were driving pretty fast and it was kind of cool to have a police escort when our escorts have guns attached to their hips but another problem arose when a bridge had partially washed away because of the rain that has plagued us all week. Oh and on a side note, it decided to stop raining today. Grrrr

We swapped cars after the river (why I am not to sure but who am I to question) and headed to sixioala. By this stage we know that we are an hour off the border and we are going to miss the flight we were going to catch. We were driving along when it was 5 in the arvo and we could not go any further to Sixiola. Why? Because of floods of course. The section of road we needed to pass was under 5 feet of water and there is no way in hell that we can cross the stupid flood.

So here I am, in Bribri still, staying the night and hopìng to get out tomorrow and get to Panama.

What have I learnt

1. There are some absolute pricks in this world
2. There are also some people with hearts as big as a basketball
3. Sandra is the toughest person I know, she has survived this day and can still smile.
4. I can work under pressure (pressure being a gun pointed at my head)
5. Sandra is wonderful and I am glad that we could survive this together
6. I love her evry much

So I will sign off now. I am tired and I want to eat. I will call my family when I can but I have no international phonecard at the ready.

I hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

It's beginning to feel a little like Christmas, but just very very wet...

I think I will certainly remember Christmas this year.

It's not so much that it was a crazy drunken mess of heart felt declarations of love towards the local Rasta strangers, or that Santa Claus himself flew in from the North Pole with brownies and gifts from our loved ones. It was special because it just didn't feel like Christmas.

It's hard to explain, I guess if I was at home right now, I'll be at my mum's house probably gorging myself on her wonderful mango mousse, while Kimmy's brood clamber all over Glen, and we have one of our million-words-per-minute conversations between bites. But I'm not, and what we did instead was:

1) Called our families last night for Christmas as they are 15 hours ahead. It was so good to speak to them, I cannot even begin to explain how happy I was to hear their voices. It did cheer me up because after saying goodbye to the group, my other pseudo-familia, I was a little down and out of sorts for a few days. So talking to my family reminded me that I will see them in three months, and I now have something to look forward to. I spoke to my parents before we did any more imbibing of the alcohol, but I have to admit, when I spoke to my darling sister, I was just a tad sloshed. I believe our conversation did go something like this:
"Hello! Merry Christmas! I love you!"
"I love you too!! Are you half drunk?"
"YES!! Now let me speak to the children!!.....Ohhh hellooo children!"

2) The next day, we woke up very slowly to buckets of rain crescendoing against the thatched roof of our cabina

3) Trudged to Chile Rojo for breakfast, picking our steps through people sleeping off last night's festivities

4) Walked back through the rain to our cabina and lazed around for awhile.

5) Glen and I rented bicycles (I made sure it was from someone who can actually SPELL 'bicycles' here. I've seen 'bicykles', 'bycycles' and my personal horror 'bykykcles')

6) We rode to Manzanillo, 12 km away, swerving to miss potholes the size of a small child, and sometimes even a small goat. I squealed a LOT. It was a beautiful ride through the rain though. I've been here for four months and this country still manages to amaze me.

And that brings us back to here, tapping away at a keyboard in an Internet cafe. Contemplating on how to spend our final night in Costa Rica. Tomorrow we take off for Panama. Hopefully we will be able to get buses to the border because I heard today that no buses were able to make it through the roads, what with all the crazy rain and flooding of the rivers. We also say goodbye to KJ tomorrow, who has been a wonderful companion to spend the last few days with. She has been amazing, and so fun to chill with the past four months. We are really going to miss her. I'm going to try not to cry tomorrow, since I am still a little bit embarassed about my emotional display last Wednesday night when I said goodbye to the rest of my group and Danny. I bawled....BAWLED..the house down. I don't think I could've ever heard, let alone made, such an inhuman noise from anyone else.

I am a little nervous as to what is going to happen from Panama on. Hopefully, we do get onto a sailboat to Colombia, but apparently the seas are rough and places may be hard to get this time of year. An alternative is to fly to the border and take a ferry across to Capurgana, the border town of Colombia. We will probably need to arm ourselves with sharp wits, and sharper machetes against the guerilla lurking in the jungle. I have been told they are happy friendly and more morally responsible guerilla, who are only interested in kidnapping tourists, but not killing. This is good news, yes?

Anyway, whatever decision we make to get across, I promise that it will be the utmost safest and most reliable one.

Alright, time to go off and get a little happy-drunk! Yay!

Merry Christmas, you filthy animals and a happy new year (10 points to whoever can guess which movie that one is from?)

Sandra

Merry Christmas to all (original title, I know)

Just a quick blog to say hi and to mention that it was really good to chat to my families last night. It made me miss them at this time of year and I also had to promise that I will not be out of the country for the next few Christmases.

Today it rained harder than ever but with steely resolve, I convinced Sandra to head out with me to grab some bikes and do a 24 k bike ride with me to Manzanilla and back. It was so good to get out after a few days of lethargy to get all active and explore.

I do have to say that Australian beaches so far kick ass over the beaches in CR. There is not one beach that rivals Esperance, Cott or even the Back beach in Bunno.

I am hungry now though. I am going to convince Sandra and KJ that we do want to eat Chicken Nachos at hot Rock cafe in downtown PV. Shall be good though.

I am trying to not freak out about being all alone tomorrow when Sandra and I say hasta Leugo to KJ and start the rest of our journey. Many things going through my head at the moment - but it is mostly hunger.

Will write soon but merry Christmas to everyone

Glen

Chocolate and water do not mix

I have finally given in. The pressure was huge and I caved like Costa Rican roads. I am now on facebook. Sandra took me through the steps and what I am to do and I joined up. I also started an email account which is lordhighconquistador@gmail.com.

It has been raining for the last three days straight. This is driving me insane because any tanning plans that I had, have been destroyed by a force that has been dedicated to making me as white as possible. It will not win. I will make a stand and tell it that it “shall not pass”. Having rain in Puerto Viajo has given me the chance to catch up on body repairs and sleep. I mentioned last post that I love the bed that we have at the moment and that still rings true. The bed is comfy and big. It is the first bed that I have been able to lie down on and not hit the end.

We went to a chocolate farm today. We took a tour around this cool farm that makes chocolate from scratch. The rain was poring down but we trenched through the muddy paths, saw the coco plant, ate the fruit that coco comes from, sand saw the beans get crushed and ground into a coco paste where we added caramelized brown sugar. We made a traditional version of chocolate and it was good. By the way, this chocolate was 50% coco butter with shit loads of sugar – so it was totally healthy.

I also noticed another thing. My 600 dollar rain jacket is not water proof. It has been put through the tests of wet weather in the last couple of days and the arms seem not to be water proof – there will be some complaints when I get back to Perth. I think I will need to purchase some kind of hard core umbrella in the near future.

Tomorrow is Christmas and I am going to miss my family but also I get to spend Christmas on some bikes with KJ and Sandra and ride to all of the near beaches despite what weather we have. I want to have a traditional Australian Christmas complete with beach activities and hopefully Sandra will have some prawns.

Merry Christmas to all and I am missing you especially on this day. But I can not complain, I am in Costa Rica after all.

 

Glen

Freedom and Apprehension

We have finally finished our four months with outward bound and we arein Puerto Viejo for a few days of relaxation before we head off on the next phase of the trip. I must say that I am appreciating not doing anything at the moment that endangers my safety or sanity. We have the most beautiful cabina with big shower and huge king sized bed. It is the first bed that I have stayed in during this entire trup that feels totally omfortable and spacious enough. I think I squealed with delight when I first saw it.

 

We are travelling with KJ at the momnt and it is really good to be able to discuss the course with her and Sandra because we have been ble to deconstruct the program and adjust to life on the outside. The course has been super tiring but in a word to sum it all up – BENEFICIAL. I feel it hs given me what I wanted.

 

I have

• · Lost 14 kgs while gaining muscle
• · Lost most unreasonable fear of the water
• · Made some really good friends
• · Become closer to Sandra
• · Learnt a good basic understanding of Spanish, btw it is only a basic understanding, I don’t think I could attempt reading the motorcycle diaries in original Spanish, but I can spell cat
• · Learnt to breathe under water, captain a raft, tie knots that make me look like a regular boy scout, become cool with the fact I can not surf, read a river and appreciate the fact that Australians have a very cool understanding of how to live a life tranquilo.

Was it worth 16000? Yes, there is no way that I could get that experience with the guides that I had for less. Danny was a wonderful person who I connected with and had a wonderful time with. Sure bad things happened but you can not expect that things will be a joy ride though. I think that the bad things have also taught me how to handle bad situations with more tranquility, something that I have been searching for. I hope that this will trasnlate into my life back home.

 

I will miss christmas though. I know that I am wanting my cake and eating it too but I don’t think christmas will mean much without my families.

 

Today and for the rest of the week I will be working very hard on my tan, which is browner than Sandra, and enjoying all the benefits of being in the Caribbean. The Caribbean side of Costa Rica is unlike the Costa Rica I am used to. We are staying in a town with an authentic feel of the caribbean influence without the brashness of Jaco. I feel it is like Margaret river pre yuppification.

 

I however have a few minutes before this internet café time goes off.

 

Love you all and will write soon. I will also call really soon as well

 

Glen

Last moments at CRROBS

Three more sleeps to go and we are finished with this course.

I have been feeling a little discombobulated with everything yesterday. For some reason, a whole culmination of all the bad luck that we´ve had in the past week became a little too much, that I had a bit of a melt down last night. I´m not saying that I´ve had an absolutely horrible time in the past few weeks because I have truly loved every minute of scuba, not so much solo though, and whitewater rafting was an absolute blast!

It just seems that in the past week since we came back from scuba, we´ve:

1) Had to fork out way too much money to send a package home to Australia

2) Had our new video camera, lens, and all our chargers stolen from the cabin in Serapiqui

3) Had one of the scariest moments in my life where I thought I was going to widowed by the Pacuare River

4) Lost our IPOD

5) Still have not received our package from home. When we spoke to Courtney last night, she said that as of Friday it had not arrived yet. This is kind of confusing with the last comment that Nigel left, saying she had emailed him to say it was here, but we had to pay customs. This news I was not told when I saw her, so a little confunded there!

One of my biggest pet hates, and what keeps me up at night sometimes, is losing things. Glen doesn´t get affected as much because he only thinks of them as material possessions where for me, it´s items that we´ve worked hard for to buy. Time that we have spent selecting songs for our IPOD. Added to the fact that someone took the time to steal things away from us upsets me even more. I know it´s a little silly in the whole scheme of things, but I guess it just takes me a little more time than most to get over stuff like that.

I am sad to be leaving the people on this course, saying goodbye to all the faces that have become my pseudo-family in the last four months. But at the same time, I am really excited to be going on our ´real´ adventure now. I feel that it is definitely time to move on.

Last night, the Lopez family came over to base for a Christmas party. Bear in mind, this is the family that has 18 children. Not stepchildren, adopted children, no...EIGHTEEN CHILDREN. The youngest from 16 to 37, all popped out by the venerable Mama Lopez herself (who look remarkably young for accomplishing such a feat, and even admitted she´d have a few more if she could). It was a huge party, children running around everywhere, women bustling over food, while men sip cask wine. The food was delicious, we had beef, pork marinated in beer and spices, and chicken curry. There was also an awesome smoked salmon pasta salad which was wonderful. It made me think of our own families Christmas dinners and lunches, and as I am going to be so sad that Glen and I will not be in Perth to share this with our loved ones, it was pretty special that we could share the Lopez Christmas dinner.

I don´t know when I´ll be able to blog the next time, but it would most likely be in Puerto Viejo when we´re enjoying our six days of luxury after the course.

I miss everyone and love you all. Mel and Adrian, I received your email and we miss you guys terribly. It is hard to email everyone personally with the limited email time we get, but I will certainly try soon.

Take care of yourselves and each other

Sandra

Honestly, this is fun :)

Hi to all,

What a week it has been. After solo we headed off to Rio Sarapiqui so that we could do our whitewater rafting phase. White water rafting is much much less scary than kayaking but still has its share of spills and thrills. Rio Sarapiqui (I think that I have spelt it wrong but it is pronounced ser-a-p-qee) is a river that is mainly class 2 and 3 rapids. To give you a rough guide to the classes of rapids I have written down my interpretation.

·         1 is easy and kind of smooth water with a few ripples

·         2 is easy as well but there are some waves and drops but nothing to fret over. You can go over these rapids without much skill and if you fell out you were being an idiot.

·         3 is medium difficulty. You can get rescued out of these rapids but you can also swim out of them. There is a risk of falling out but there is a very real lack of stress associated with it. You will get into holes (spaces found behind big rocks in the river) do some fun drops and hit a few walls but all is still fun and dandy

·         4 is difficult. There are massive drops like 10 foot, big holes, underwater caverns, self rescue is very difficult and there are some problems if you fall in. You need to have some experience with the rapids as a crew, let alone guiding. You have to follow a variety of paddling commands.

·         5 is very difficult. They do not recommend you run these in rafts. It has massive holes and drops, if you fall in you need to be skilled in self rescue and there is a very high risk of injury.

·         6 is classed for “Are you freaken insane?” Not to be done in rafts and requires a lot of preparation beforehand. The questions you need to ask yourself before you do this is about wills, saying goodbye to loved ones, selling off property etc.

We were in Sarapiqui for a few days and it was a lot of fun, however, we had our video camera, I pod, lenses, sunglasses and various chargers stolen from our cabinas. The cabinas have both security grills and windows but they removed some louvers and stuck a stick into the cabinas and grabbed my dry bag and my stuff sack with all of that stuff in it. This is a very big piss off considering we have no charger for our camera. We got a police report that day and will start the insurance process now but it is still rather annoying. We are going to look for a charger for our camera but if we do not, we will have to buy another one.

The next river we went to was the Pequari (p-qua-ree). This is a class 3/4 river and is voted in the top ten rivers in the world to go whitewater rafting in. It is beautiful with clean water and forest all around. In addition, it has some awesome rapid that get you grinning from ear to ear. They also have some fun names for the rapids that are class 4 like upper and lower grave, pinball, magnetic rock. Sandra and I had a ball going down the rapids and all was whoops, yells and fun.

And then I fell in…

I was guiding a class three and we went over a large rock because I could not turn the boat in time. We went over the rock and I fell into a “frowning hole” or a keeper. What happens in these types of holes is that you are essentially in a washing machine. The way the water works is that it goes over the rock and creates a spin where you can get stuck in the whirlpool. I fell in, got sucked under then resurfaced for about half a second when I was sucked back under. When you are in you do not know which is up and down, you are basically spun round and round. It took me a couple of cycles before I even realized I was getting stuck in the same place.

Usually behind a rock is a good place to be because it has an eddy that you can swim out of and go through the rapids to the next safe spot. I was not that lucky. So I am getting dunked again and again and loosing all of my available oxygen. I manage to get breaths when I get pushed to the surface but they are only half breaths. I liken it to being dunked by a wave at the beach but instead of that process being at most 10 seconds this was a repeated dunking… it was scary. On my fourth or fifth trip to the surface I looked at Danny who was shouting instructions to both the raft and to me. Now I had realized that I was in a keeper from the third cycle and the only was to get out of a keeper is to put your body into a ball shape and hopefully you catch alternate current that shoots you out of that hole. When I saw Danny he was crouching down and signaling to me to ball up and escape that way. I balled up and almost caught a current but it sucked me back. This process repeated itself a few times but with new oxygen in my lungs, I balled up again and got shot out of the hole like a cannon.

Then I had to swim down the rapids where I was so tired I could not get my body in to the “defensive swimming position”. I hit so many rocks on my way down the river. By this stage, two rafts were at the shore line getting ready to rescue me, they threw out a rope bag to me (but missed really badly, they accidently let go of the end they were meant to hold on to and so the bag plus all the rope went sailing past my head. I remember thinking that I have just gone through a big ass hole, don’t add more work for my by chasing shit that you want to throw to me) The rescue kayak was heading to my position by this stage and I grabbed hold of the back of it and got towed to my raft where danny pulled me in and removed my PFD (personal floatation device) cause by this stage I was freaking out and sort of hyperventilating. Sandra was looking at me with complete fear in her eyes and the rest of my crew (Mitch and KJ) were also really concerned.

All I can say that it was one of the scariest moments in my life, but the training we have had at OB prior to that point told me to be calm in the water, ball up, swim in the defensive position, which kept me sane and alive.

The rest of the week has been rather uneventful. Sandra and I are going into town today so we can replace the digital camera charger and get a new calling card so that I can call Mum and Dad tonight.

Tomorrow we are off to do some more rafting and then it is the end of the course. I will wait to finish before I blog about it.

Love you all and see you later.

Glen