Day 6: Last Day of Beaching and Back to Panama City

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Our last day was split between Bastimentos and Panama City.

In the morning it was so hot and humid that B and I couldn’t bear to think about going cave hiking with the rest of the crew, so Kelly dropped us off at Red Frog Beach. We had 2 hours of lounging with hardly any other people around. OH RIGHT, just some guy down the beach wearing a beanie, when the two of us were in our bathing suits and were still hot.

Then we went back to La Loma, had a bountiful lunch and then all 6 of us packed it back on the boat and headed towards Bocas del Toro. We walked to the airport. We stood around waiting for Air Panama to get their shit together, and then boarded the plane back to Panama City. They handed out Doritos on the trip back and I was quite excited.

Getting back to Panama City, we were staying at Las Clementinas in Casco Veijo. The room was amazing. It was a real apartment, and the shower was all hand painted tile. Also, the window over the bed overlooking Punta Paitilla, which is where the Trump Tower and a bunch of other highrises are. A weird tidbit is that someone stopped by the hotel and the front desk kept calling us to say that “KC” was there to see us. Because of the language barrier we thought they were trying to send hospitality up to us, but when we left for dinner there was a note for “Vivian” left for us. I sincerely wish we had told them to come up.

Dinner was at Manolo Caracol. It was no joke. B picked a wine, and we got to go into a little glass room that was the wine cellar. Then, they basically ask if you have any lethal food allergies, and then they get to work. I think there’s 5 plates. But now I’m not even sure. There was a lot of food. Everything was delicious.

The next morning we woke up dreadfully early, but persevered, and then got on our direct flight back to Newark. I slept sitting upright, like a zombie with a rubber neck.

You can see the whole set from Panama here.

Day 5: Snorkeling and Zapatillas Cays

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Friday we woke up and it was still raining. We debated whether or not our plan to go snorkeling was going to be a wash or not. After breakfast, Kelly, the Jamaican by heritage by Bocas born and raised captain of La Loma who consistently had a life altering smile on his face, declared that it was going to be good weather, despite the rainy start.

So we went snorkeling. Our day trip companions were two emergency doctors from Newfoundland. Besides Kelly, I was the least susceptible to being sunburnt. Everyone else was roughly the color of bright white printer paper.

We started around Coral Cay. I, perhaps, had an unfair advantage with the snorkel and fins. I’m not exactly well versed in open water snorkeling. In fact, I’ve only done it once before this trip in Cabos San Lucas. Well, and another time at Typhoon Lagoon at Disney World but I’m pretty sure we don’t count that as “open water.” My advantage comes from my childhood, my brother and I spent summers at the pool at the country club, where we would swim around the pool in full mask and snorkel, and flippers. I am talking hours and hours of this shit. I now laugh thinking about it. What did we look like at 6 and 9 years old, swimming around the pool with snorkel gear on? We must have looked like enormous dorks. But hey… those years served me well. Putting on a snorkel now is like second nature.

We snorkeled.

All day.

Also, I love the ocean.

Also, I am so glad I bought this Kodak waterproof camera.

After seriously doing some damage to my sinuses, we went to Zapatillas Cay for the afternoon. B and I walked around most of the island, then attempted to swim around an area where a lot of trees had fallen, but we misjudged how far it was, and had to turn back and then walk all the way back around. The water was clear, no one was around, and then we laid in the water for a while. We watched Kelly, who was manning the boat just off shore, and wondered what he was thinking about as he was staring off in the distance. B asked him later and Kelly said “I’m just happy.” It would be hard not to be, sitting there, staring out at the water.

We got back on the boat just as it started to rain. We stopped at the bar at Coral Cay on the way back. I had a pina colada that was like frothy warm beer, and then we saw some sloths at what I believe someone told me was “Sloth Island.” Can you see the slothiness in that photo? And why yes, sloths are as hard to find in real life as they are in that photo. They aren’t exactly quick. They will hang onto branches for days eating leaves, only removing themselves to evacuate the tree so they can poop. This seems inefficient, but gives new meaning to the words “sloth like.”

We also saw some dolphins. Trying to spot them is like waiting for one of those old school gopher arcade games. The 5 of us were sitting very silently in the boat, scanning the horizon, waiting for dolphins. Of course, when they breach it lasts for about a second so you must be adept with pointing and shooting with no real science behind it. I’m kinda good at that.

I was tired that night. I have spoken of 10 hour beach sleep nights, the nights where you are so tired that all you can do is get in bed and pass out and sleep forever. That is essentially what I did. Until the next morning when I peeled myself out of bed to go retrieve our coffee and muffins that were delivered to our cabin every morning. Yes, that’s right, room service in the jungle. Mwahaha.

And why yes, there are more photos here.

Day 4: To Bocas Del Toro We Go

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Thursday, we dropped off the rental car at Thrifty in Boquete. Remember I said on Day 2 that Thrifty ended up saving us? When we were driving around on Wednesday I screamed “there’s a Thrifty!” as we passed it. As it turned out, we could return the car there instead of driving the hour back to David to return the car to the airport.

Then we took a taxi for a 3 hour drive from Boquete to Almirante, which is on the Caribbean side of Panama. Almirante is not anything special, but the drive there is beautiful because you’re driving through the mountains, and there are big beautiful clouds and shit. Our taxi driver spoke to us in Spanish the entire way there, and we nodded obediently though I could only understand one out of 15 words.

Once we got to Almirante the taxi basically spit us out onto this water taxi that takes you to Bocas Del Toro, which is an island. When I spit out, I mean, we rolled up, the taxi driver popped the trunk, 15 young boys took our suitcases while demanding a tip and we sort of got hustled into this speed boat that was about to sink. It was a bumpy 20 minute ride to Bocas Del Toro, B was flanked by schoolgirls who were hunched over their bookbags taking a nap. A nap! These crazy kids.

We got spit out again at Bocas Del Toro. We trudged down the street to The Reef, a bar on the water with a dock, which was where the good people from our lodge, La Loma, were picking us up to go to yet another island. B looked at me when we made it to The Reef and was kind of horrified. He said he had a hard time picturing any other chick that would be cool with all the things we had just encountered. I offered that I can be cool, sometimes. But wow, if we saw a snake, I would lose my mind.

From The Reef we were picked up by La Loma folks and whisked to Bastimentos, another island further north from Bocas Del Toro, on a much more comfortable transfer.

La Loma means “the hill” and indeed, there was a large hill. There are 4 lodges, all open with some mosquito net around the beds. I loved it. It’s like some Swiss Family Robinson shit. A glorified tree fort, with plumbing and hot water and a lil bit of electricity. Ok, so, not even close to camping, but perfect for someone who is wanting to get a little bit closer to nature and doesn’t mind bugs.

La Loma is run by a couple, Henry and Margaret, who are awesome, and have carved out a cool niche for themselves. They have both a garden that yields enough produce that they can actually feed guests from it, and also a cacao farm. Henry gave B and I a tour of the cacao farm the last day we were there, though, not unlike the coffee tour, I only retain 5% of the information I can understand, thus, my memories mostly pertain of looking at the ground and investigating the cocoa pods teeming with insects feeding off of it.

Anyway, remember that I said they have a garden and can feed guests from it? The food at La Loma was amazing. It’s served as a group meal in the main lodge, and after a long day it felt really homey and amazing and actually made me miss my family a little bit.

Then we walked up the serious hill and passed out. Oh yeah, and then it poured. POURED rain. And I loved every minute of it while sleeping in my tree fort.

You can check out more photos on my flickr stream.

Panama: Day 3 Coffee Tour and Hike

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So, the third day, we took a coffee tour at Finca Lerida (which is also where we were staying). The hotel is on the working coffee farm. They have 50 hectares of land, which is mostly used to farm coffee. B and I were the youngest people on the tour by at least 30 years. And since I look 12, I am pretty sure that our fellow tourmates thought I was B’s child bride.

Cesar, our awesome coffee tour guide, took us on a little walk up the paths to where part of the coffee plants are grown. I wish I could repeat everything he told us about coffee, but really, the big things were that red cherries are the best to be picked (who the hell knew that coffee originated from a red cherry?) and that Panama in general experienced a decline in coffee farm workers because places like Costa Rica offer them better, government subsidized deals, to come work there.

Doing rough, manual labor always appeals to me. B and I might have actually looked at each other with a face like, “we should come work here” but then Cesar mentioned that coral snakes can often appear in the vines, and I effing HATE snakes so I pretty much decided THAT was not happening for me. B could stay, I’d meet him back in New York when the harvest was over.

I also had no idea that coffee beans just didn’t fall off a tree brown and roasted. I don’t drink coffee, and even when I did, there was never much thought process involved so this tour was pretty informative. Also, Cesar had amazing analogies, facial expressions and a sound effects for most of his anecdotes, which I found highly amusing.

One could say I learned about roasts, but by now, I’ve forgotten most of it. We spent an absurd amount of time talking about geisha coffee, which sells for $75/lb. and is a specialty coffee that tastes like tea. You coffee drinkers are real complicated people, you know that?

In any case, Finca Lerida’s coffee goes to Japan in this raw, green form. That’s where they do most of their business. Asia. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised as being caffeinated is a world wide problem, not just one of sleep deprived Americans.

We also partook in some “cupping” where we’d sniff the different roasts. I have no knack for this kind of thing, but I do love the smell of coffee so I readily stuck my schnoz in these cups and inhaled deeply.

At the end of the tour Cesar told us to go check out the room where they store all the coffee. It’s actually not open to the public, but above the coffee shop there was a seating area with a plexiglass window overlooking the store room. All those bags are coffee. Cesar said you have to suit up to go in there. Wait, let me say it again, THOSE BAGS ARE ALL FULL OF COFFEE BEANS. That shit is crazy.

As if huffing coffee wasn’t exciting enough, B and I also took a hike that afternoon to a set of waterfalls past the Quetzal Trail.

See that rainbow at the bottom? I was very excited about this. To get to these falls, we had to hike up and down a steep, muddy path. There is no sense of scale in this photo, and I won’t try to impress you with how high they were, but they were easily 20 feet. The maybe more comical/scary part of these waterfalls were these dinky fences made out of timber. They were like, rustic pioneer fences. They were the only thing preventing you from falling into an abyss of sharp rocks and shallow water. I do always tend to appreciate the “living on the edge” aspect of traveling outside of the United States, since everything here is made for imbeciles and to prevent these imbeciles from injuring themselves and suing someone. I personally don’t mind a bit of danger in my life.

For dinner that night, we had a seriously delicious dinner at the Panamonte Inn. We sat out on the porch, and the evening was lovely, and we were basically the only people there. The food was SO. FRIGGING. DELICIOUS. I had trout with almonds and it was actually so good that I can still imagine what it tastes like. Then we had an array of desserts and I even drank coffee, which I think is why I spent half the evening laying in bed and staring at the ceiling.

As you can see, the photos are getting there! Still only like 5,000,692 more to upload. And as always, you can see everything I’ve uploaded thus far here on my flickr. I haven’t quite worked out the labeling and tagging of everything yet.

Day 2: Leaving Panama City to Boquete

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People see that I’ve procured a tan and say, “where have you been?” and I reply “Panama” and then they give me this blank stare like… “why would you want to go there?” The New York Times listed Panama as the number one destination for 2012. Not that the NYT is the gospel for travel, but B and I were contemplating between Belize and Panama, and what tipped the scales was the article. I don’t regret picking Panama over Belize, but because I have a constant yen for travel, I sincerely wish that Belize AND Panama was an option because I would have readily accepted that itinerary. And I should know about itineraries, I made two tentative itineraries, one for Belize and one for Panama. Prepping for a vacation really brought out the anal retentive tour manager side of me.

On Tuesday we flew Air Panama from Panama City to David, which is west of Panama City towards Costa Rica. I had a hell of time booking the tickets, as late February when I was trying to see flight schedules on the two domestic airlines, Air Panama and Aerperlas, I couldn’t see either. The next day, Aerperlas had a cryptic message on their website indicating they were no longer operating. Later on in our trip, we were informed that Aerperlas lost their license to operate. It’s some political move to introduce a new domestic airline. In the meantime, Air Panama is running around with its head cut off. Our fight to David was delayed because the pilot was on another flight that hadn’t landed yet.

When we got to David, we found out Budget didn’t have a rental car for us. Something about a woman in the Panama City office not sending the 4×4 to David. The guy at the counter apologized, and then sent us to his “friend” at Thrifty. Do you notice I keep saying “something about” when referring to things that tripped us up along the way? That’s because my vacation brain selectively deletes the details that would otherwise make me flip out and become all anal and totally revise my itinerary like a psychotic stage mom. Anyway, getting switched to Thrifty actually saved us in the end, as you will see, later in this epic saga.

From David, we drove to Boquete, which is a small town at the base of Volcan Baru. Boquete is where a lot of ex patriots go to retire. Thus, it was somewhat reminiscent of a mountain town in the western United States. We had $2 beers at lunch, Balboas, which are a domestic brew and taste delicious when you’ve just experienced a slew of mistakes made by other people.

From Boquete, we had a little bit of a drive to Alto Quiel, which is just up the windy, steep road from Boquete. We were staying at Finca Lerida, which is a working coffee farm that also has a small lodge. A) the grounds were beautiful and B) the view was amazing and C) we were the only people staying there.

Also, there were hummingbirds galore.

Tuesday night we had a fantastic dinner at the hotel restaurant. We were the only people there, and the server thought B was the funniest person to ever grace her presence. She giggled from the time he chose a wine until dessert.

Also, I peeked outside our window in the early evening and saw this little guy taking a nap in the rose bushes. Cute. This would never fly with E-money though, he’s too much of a pansy to lay in the dirt.

There are more photos (but still, not all of them) on my flickr stream.

News from me.

I was laid off from my job yesterday.

It still half feels like it didn’t really happen, and the other half of me felt very luxurious sitting in my pajamas until 10am this morning.

It’s “fine” but I’m still contemplating what this means for me. People say “oh it’s a blessing in disguise” and I know for a fact that I’ve read things that talk about the nature of being laid off and people say shit like losing their job blew the doors wide open and then they felt like they could do anything. But we all know that I am not nauseating optimistic like that and that I don’t want to be classified as either one of those types of people. I’d prefer to admit to you that yes, I am bummed, but when I was told that my services were no longer needed, I found myself looking out the window and imagining my life with more free time and quite frankly, it didn’t depress me very much/at all.

Truthfully I am still processing it and haven’t figured it all out yet, but when I do, I’ll let you know with words and possibly pictures (probably of Earnest).

Now, please enjoy the plethora of Panama photos that are not even half posted yet.

Panama: Arrival and Day 1

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So, finally. My trip.

Above you’ll see the map I made outlining the basic route.

We arrived in Panama City on Sunday, and went straight to the Trump Ocean Club. The room was awesome, the only downfall was that some genius decided that the toilet would be placed in a glass box that basically amplified your tinkling, etc. tenfold. But holy cow, the view was awesome.

Panama City is filled with high rises. Some are legit, and others are half finished, vacant and will never be finished or occupied as this is some sort of money laundering thing where money is put into buildings to make it appear legit. It seems complicated, and like I have no real understanding of how one would launder money. In any case, there’s a lot of high rises. It kind of reminded me of Hong Kong.

The first day we went to the Panama Canal to see the Miraflores Locks in action. Do you know how slow they move? Really slow? Glacially slow? Still, the fact we found most titillating was that a toll for the average shipping boat costs $400,000. That blew my mind. B tried to argue that this was insane, but I pointed out that going around the tip of South America would likely cost more than $400,000 in fuel and a man’s sanity. Who’s the econ. major now!? (just kidding, I don’t even know if this joke was funny)

Then we went to check out Casco Viejo, which is the old part of town. It’s in the middle of a revamp/gentrification. We couldn’t figure out why it was so desolate. About 5 days after the fact someone filled us in that former President Jorge Illueca had died on the Thursday prior to our visit, so the day we were wandering around like fools and couldn’t figure out why nothing was open, was because the mayor of Panama declared that day a holiday and there was to be no lively music/boozing/general naughtiness. We felt less like morons once we were given this piece of information.

Still, Casco Viejo was beautiful.

A lot of the buildings are just facades, with empty interiors. We ran into what I presume were some Americans, who were making a documentary about the unfavorable adoption rates in Panama. They had just done a chalk drawing on a wall, and the torrential downpour was about to come so they asked if I wanted to come take a picture. I said sure.

Then it rained. It rained like crazy, and we went back to the hotel and loafed around like two sloths and prepared for our next day adventure to Boquete, which is east of Panama City towards Costa Rica. And why yes, we did see sloths while we were away (photos to come!).

There are more photos on my flickr feed if you are so inclined to check them out.

Weekend.

Earnest and I took a little road trip this weekend.

We drove to Connecticut to spend the weekend with my dad. He’s a swinging bachelor while my mom’s away in South America. The traffic on Friday afternoon was absurd.

Once we got there, it was amazing! Great weather, Earnest napped in several locations, and we dined on lobster Saturday night after pops and I spent two hours hitting balls at the driving range. Earnest is staying with his human grandfather this week, so I had to leave him today to come back to the city. He put his smushy face against the window when I left and I shed some tears when I left to drive to the train station (re: one hour drive, I weeped the entire way). Somehow, I never quite envisioned myself at 26, crying while driving because I would be without my dog for 6 days.

Hark, tomorrow marks the first set of Panama photos. BAM, get ready…

5 Things I Really Want To Do In the Coming Weeks

1) I have been daydreaming about This Side of Paradise. The exhibit has installations by several artists and is all housed at the Andrew Freedman house in the Bronx, which was like a retirement home for rich people who lost their riches but who were too snobby to be poor. Was that confusing? Read Wikipedia.

2) I also have an outerspace/deep sea obsession and also want to check out the Tom Sach’s Mars exhibit at the Park Ave Armory.

3) I have discussed lobster rolls 5,000,963 times in the past 3 months. It’s time I have one in my mouth. B told me Pearl’s Oyster Bar has the best, AS had once said that Red Hook Lobster Pound was supposed to be best, and Luke’s is supposedly one of the best but last year I went to Governor’s Island for Memorial Day to a food truck fest and Luke’s might as well have just spit on my face when they handed me a SHRIMP ROLL. So. If you know anything that might be helpful in my lobster quest, please leave me a note. If you want to pick me up on I-78, we could also do that and then go up to Maine and eat real effing lobster too. I would be ok with that.

4) I’m also ready to take a sailboat ride around Manhattan. I chose to link to Classic Harbor Line because they have the top rating on Yelp. Don’t you like how I do my research?

5) I want to go on vacation. This is where you bitch slap me because I just got back from vacation. Well, you can suck my _____. My parents and I are going to Alaska in August to visit my brother. For a week! It’s still 3 months away, but I am excited nonetheless. I won’t wear make up and probably will forget to pack a comb, just like I did for Panama, and we’ll hike and kayak and drink whatever alcoholic beverage you drink when you’re kind of in the middle of nowhere and it will be awesome. I can rely on #5 on this list to happen definitely, I only hope that I am not enormously as lazy as AS once told me I was, and can make the other 4 happen too.

And yeah, Panama photos… those are coming soon…

To Lola

To the greatest little French bull dog there ever was, loved and adored by so many, with speed like a greyhound, but pecs like a body builder, may you rest in peace.