Bocas by bicicleta

I decided a nice way to see the island would be to rent a bicycle and ride up to Boca del Drago, a beach at the opposite end of the island. So after yoga class I negotiated a good price with a local rasta and I was off. In my mind for some reason I figured if the roads were flat in the town then they’d be flat all along the island. Well, surprise surprise, they weren’t! They weren’t too bad but it was an effort. The paving stopped half way along, just after the undulating bits thankfully. I didn’t see any other bike riders and afterwards when I read the guidebook it said that the 32km roundtrip was quite taxing, especially when the sun is beating down on you. Tick and tick. But it was a beautiful ride and very rewarding.

I only saw a few locals on the way and the odd car or van on the road. For a lot of it the road was through thick jungle, old trees hanging over the road with vines roping down from them. The air was so thick you could taste it, just gorgeous.

At one point I saw three children walking back from school and when I stopped to get out my camera they bolted towards me, so excited to have their photo taken. They were interested in what was in my bag but all I could offer them was the small amount of water I had left in my bottle. They each took a sip and passed it on and then the older boy turned into the director of this shoot and decided they should have their picture taken in front of the flowers and then took a photo of me with the other kids. After that they wanted to take me home with them but I thought it best to keep going, what would their mama think??

I arrived at Boca del Drago, an idyllic beach, for a well deserved lunch of whole red snapper with papas frites and ensalada and devoured most of it before I headed back with a very sore behind...

Mouths of the Bull

Today I left the gorgeous Bocas del Toro in Panama after five lovely days. Actually it was raining on Monday when I arrived, following a few rainy days in Boquete, but all was forgiven when the sun (and heat) came out on Tuesday.

On my first night I ran into a couple of amigos from the Yoga Farm, Nykolas and Rosie who not only were in Bocas as well but in the same hotel and in the room next door, no less.

Bocas is an archipelago in the Carribean off the coast of Panama. Supposedly very touristy, and it is, but compared to the standards of many parts of the Carribean and I suppose Mexico or even Asia, it is pretty quiet and relaxed. It is the low season here though and May seems to be the quietest month.

On Wednesday, Rosie, Nyk and I did a boat cruise around the islands which went to various places to see dolphins, do some snorkelling and swim at the beautiful red frog beach. Panama, despite initially being low on my list of priorities in Central America, has turned out to be a really nice surprise. The people are really friendly but not over the top. The islands are mostly wild jungle except for a few towns and beaches and the cays are little mangrove areas. The snorkelling was great, beautiful corals and some of the most gorgeous fish. At one spot I reckon I saw up to 100 different species.

Known as a surfing spot, the water was surprisingly flat but I've heard that on the Carribean side when the surf is up it is really up, otherwise nothing. It was nice to be able to go for a swim on a white sand beach and not play the dicey game of watching out for consistent rips, getting in and getting pounded back on the rocks, or hit by an incoming coconut. Swimming on the Pacific side is fraught with these worries and often I chose not to swim unless I was with someone else.

After the boat trip I convinced Nyk and Rosie to join me at the local yoga studio that evening for a vinyasa flow class. On the walk back we saw this guy walking down the street pulling along a model airplane. It would have been about five foot long and the wing span took up a lane of the road, it even had lighting under the wings. Not something you see everyday!

On my second day I found a little local restaurant nearby the hotel which was a great place to sit with the locals (and Steve the American owner who did little else than hang around and punch out a few tunes on his guitar after a couple of beers). They had a good bbq going in the evenings and the beer was cold and it was a good spot to hang out on the street and watch the locals going for their evening stroll.

On my last night I was hanging out there, having eaten some bbq chicken and had a couple of beers when Steve decided to get out his guitar. His playlist is pretty short so I heard again all the tunes, some Cat Stevens and a couple of his own tunes. I wouldn't have thought Steve could make a career from his efforts but it was enjoyable to occassionally sing along, especially with the locals and their accents singing Moonshadow. But the piece de resistance was when he played John Denver's Leaving on a Jetplane and right on cue the guy walks past us on his evening stroll with the giant model airplane. The sun was setting and the clouds were an electric orange. It was just one of those moments...

Muchas Cosas

Today I write from Boquete, Panama. I arrived here yesterday after leaving The Yoga Farm at 4.30am. There weren't any howler monkeys to wake me at that time yesterday but I am getting used to being awake by at least 5.30am each day so it wasn't too much of a challenge.

I made it down the hill in plenty of time for the 5am bus but on this day, there was no bus. Usually it is parked down the bottom of the hill overnight and you can just get on. But there was no bus, what do I do? So I walked up to the minisuper and asked Alvaro. He told me that there would be no bus but the man would come soon in a car. So I waited there until indeed, a little while later, the grumpy busdriver pulls up in a 4WD ute. I had been hearing that some of the roads were bad so I guess this confirmed it would not be too easy. Getting all my gear into the ute, the bus driver commented on my muchas cosas, many things, I am carrying. I need to have a purge at some point.

Ticos don't partake in the formality of bus stops so if you happen to be standing on the side of or walking along a road, a bus will generally stop to take you somewhere. This bus usually picks up a dozen or more people just on the way into Pavones. The bus driver and I, sitting in the front cab of the ute, were chatting and he told me that word had got around so fast that the roads were bad that no-one would travel on them. Even Alvaro's son who goes to school in Conte (where I had to change buses) was not going to school. So I was pretty excited that I was the one dunce to brave it. I was reassured in Pavones where we did collect a few people to sit in the back with my backpack.

The road through the mountain really was 4WD territory, sludge and mud and we slipped and slided our way through there but it was no worse than I'd experienced in Kenya a few years ago.

Once in Conte we changed to get on a real bus to Laurel. My pack was in the back of the ute and I couldn't manage to lift it over the side while I was on the ground so, to an audience of about 10 men, I jumped into the back, lifted the pack over one shoulder and then started to climb down. They must have foreseen the comedy that was about to behold them which is why no-one offered to help me. Everything was wet and muddy and slimy and as I started to step over the tailgate the pack dropped down and pulled me off the back onto the muddy ground with dizzying force. I fell straight onto the ground onto my back, smacking my head hard. Only then did a couple of the men offer to help...

After a couple of buses and a taxi I was at Paso Canoas, the border town, la frontera. After stamping out of Costa Rica and into Panama I walked through and found another bus to David. The contrast between the Costa Rican and Panamanian sides of the border is startling. I was imagining Costa Rica to be one of the most developed places in Central America but everywhere I've been, the roads are generally dirt and can deteriorate significantly after rain. The only exception to this is most of the Interamericana, the highway that runs through Central America. Immediately upon entering Panama, I'm on a minibus with airconditioning, music and we're travelling down a paved dual carriageway highway with a grass strip in the middle and guttering on the sides. The bus went so fast that every time we had to stop to pick someone up the driver slammed on the brakes, could not stop in time, then had to reverse to get them.

After one more bus I arrived in Boquete in the mountains where I will spend a couple of days. Everything here is much cheaper than Costa Rica so a bit of a treat. I had a big bowl of soup and a home made lemonade for lunch yesterday and it cost me US$1.50.

Rocking in Yoga

Thursday afternoon was my last yoga class with Lauren and I wanted to savour every moment. Practising each day on the yoga deck, looking out to the Pacific Ocean, sometimes watching monkeys playing in the trees, has been an absolute treat. Often Lauren's voice had to compete against howler monkeys or a heavy rainfall but Thursday provided something slightly different.

We were doing our final asanas, just prior to going into savasana which is the final relaxation and meditation, when the building started gently rocking. Lauren and I caught each other with widened eyes. Very calmly, Lauren asked, if we were going to have an earthquake, does anyone know what we'd do. Given we were in a structure with no permanent walls my contribution was we run out the back up the hill in case the building slides down. Most were pretty relaxed about what had just happened so we agreed to continue and finish the class. I found it a bit more difficult this time to relax and meditate but I'm sure you understand.

There in fact was an earthquake in Costa Rica at 1616 local time on Thursday. Magnitude was 5.9 and the epicentre was about 140km away from Punta Banco. I would have been much closer had I still been in Jaco. I believe in the scale of earthquakes this guy was relatively minor and there were no injuries.

Check here for the official report http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_wmce_l.html

Last Post Punta Banco

Since this is my last entry from Punta Banco and Pavones, I thought the best way to capture the past month is with this video.

Pura Vida!

El Chef

One of the fun things about living with only the basics is that improvisation, ingenuity and creativity come to the fore. Cooking here is always a bit of an adventure with many factors limiting what you might normally be tempted to prepare for a dinner party of somewhere between 10 and 20 guests. Added to this, amongst the volunteers, there has been a fairly large amount of pressure on for cooking fantastic desserts.

Imagine that you had 20 people arriving for dinner and you looked in the cupboard to find a cabbage and a large beetroot. Imagine further that you had no electricity, no hot water, no refrigerator and only some basic dry supplies. This was my first cooking experience. The veggie run did come in an hour or so before deadline so I was able to benefit from some fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and avocados. Prior to that we had scoured the property for coconuts, pineapple, limes, green papaya, yucca. It ended up being a pretty good feed of yucca frites, green papaya salad, mixed salad and pineapple upside down cake for dessert.

We generally cook two evening meals or Sunday brunch per week with another volunteer. Last night I was on again and it pretty much rained all day from just after breakfast. With not much to do in the afternoon (besides read, of course), I decided to stay down in the kitchen after lunch to get a jump on the preparing the yucca for an encore of yucca frites. I didn't quite expect to spend the entire afternoon down there but these things happen.

Kitchen disasters at home tend to seem fairly benign when cooking in this environment. It ended up being quite a comedy in the end from not having enough time to get everything cooked in the oven, then running out of gas, trying to light the clay oven outside (unsuccessfully), an invasion of flying insects who were diving in our faces, clothes and food, ants biting our feet, whisking eight egg whites into merangue by hand. At the end of all this, a pretty good feed was before us and, after some nasty Argentinian cask wine called 'Termidor' in a coffee mug, I was relaxed enough to enjoy the meal.

I still can't believe I was able to make an adequate Lemon Merangue Pie (with no recipe) in these circumstances!

Hitched

‘May the ride be with you’ is a common expression around these parts when someone is heading either to or from Pavones. To get a ride makes a long walk much more manageable, particularly when you’re heading into town with your laptop, camera, bottle of water and it is probably close to 40 degrees in the sun.

I have been fortunate enough to get a ride every trip to and from Pavones. So far. Rarely all the way, I might end up walking for an hour or more before I get one. Sometimes it just takes me a couple of kilometres up the road. But every little bit helps.

There is a bus service but it leaves Punta Banco at 5am and the return bus is at 5.30pm – so not entirely helpful.

This week the rides have been getting more fun and interesting. On Wednesday I was thrilled when it started to rain and a motorbike pulled up to take me on the back. On the way home I got a ride with Clay, this American who has lived here for a very long time and rides his quad bike like he’s 15. I swear he went for every rock and pothole.

But the ride in this morning was gold. Actually the three of us got on the back of a ute for part of the way and then continued walking when lo and behold, up the road it rattled. The blue buggy.

The fact this car moves at all is a modern miracle. The story goes that a few weeks ago it rolled down into the ravine on our hill (driver under the influence). Stuck there upside down, the driver and passenger got out, unhurt, and somehow got help to get it out of there. So this buggy now rides around with no doors, no windscreen, no tailgate. You need to be careful what you touch and hang on to as you go along as it is as though it has been opened with a can opener.

I’m pretty excited to see what awaits me on the way back today…

Howard's Way

Late yesterday afternoon as we were preparing the evening meal, Nick was just outside the kitchen getting a lime from the tree. We didn’t know there was a lime tree so close to the kitchen until Devon pointed it out. Last week we got limes from a tree all the way up near the main house. So there was Nick, machete in hand, hacking away for a lime. Suddenly, Nick was softly calling out to us. You guys get here, check this out. Not always a good omen, those words usually mean tarantula or snake or some other such deadly creature. No, he said, there in the tree, it’s a little buddha. Nick, seriously, is it a tarantula, you’d better tell us. No, he said, look, it’s a little buddha. Finally, we see him. Howard. Our resident sloth. Nick came close to taking him out with the machete and was startled to see this smiling little face looking at him through the branches. I am now truly enchanted by this amazing creature.

Let me tell you a bit about Howard and his friends…

Three-toed sloths are tree dwellers and they spend almost their entire life sleeping, feeding and moving around in trees, only coming down to the ground once a week or fortnight to poop – this exercise consumes most of their energy. Their only natural predators are eagles and machete-wielding humans. They are given their name because they move so slowly – a maximum speed of 240m per hour.

I think when I get back to the farm this afternoon, I'll go to his tree and just watch him for a while. He really is the coolest guy.

The Veggie Run

While the Yoga Farm has the Yoga bit downpat, the Farm bit is still struggling to pull its weight. It is a tough climate to grow many of the vegetables we commonly consume and much of the veggie garden is used for trying to grow things like cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, peas. However, it is notoriously difficult to grow these things here. For that reason, twice a week when the veggie truck rolls up to the Mini Super down in Punta Banco, Yoga Farm send down some volunteers with Momo the horse to pick up the supplies. Additional non-perishables are also ordered this way and brought up on Momo. If it is a really big order, Chirco (the other horse) goes along as well.

So yesterday I decided to help do the veggie run. We saddled up Momo and led him down the hill. Greg tried to ride him for a while but Momo really hates the hill (along with every other living creature) and so just stops at the side and eats. Momo ended up being pulled down against his wishes.

The routine is you get to Mini Super, grab a beer and wait for the truck to arrive. This can be anywhere from 3pm to 5pm. Yesterday it was about 3.30pm – just after we finished our beer on the viewing deck.

My contribution to the entire exercise was settling the bill with the veggie truck guy using my slowly developing Spanish. Oh, and giving Momo a few yanks to get him down the hill.

It turned out that the order included huge bags of feed for the horses and the dogs so we were advised to try and pay someone to drive us up the hill. Amazingly this went smoothly, there was someone there willing and able to take us for five dollars. I really did not want to try getting up that hill on wheels. Most drivers wouldn’t contemplate it. There is no stopping, just hammer up there as fast as you can without falling down the ravine to the side. I suppose it is a bit like going on one of those really rough jerky bumpy rides at Luna Park, straight after a greasy hamburger and a beer for lunch.

Buggin' Out

In my last post I mentioned that 300,000 of the 500,000 species in Costa Rica are bugs. Ever since seeing that statistic, bugs are everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Particularly at night time. Jungle living is an amazing experience but the bugs can make you weary. I don’t bother getting excited or scared about most of the things that crawl on me, fly into me, bite me or tickle me unless they are a threat to my life or health, or just plain disgusting.

The morning after that last post we were in the kitchen at breakfast time when I spotted a spider, a giant spider. It was about the size of the bottom of a wine bottle with a big solid body to boot. Being the only one to notice it dance across the floor, I jumped up on the chair and breathlessly alerted my friends to giant spider, dancing spider, under the sink, over there. I knew by everyone else’s reaction that my panic was nowhere near an overreaction. I wasn’t joking about the dancing either, these things don’t crawl, they kind of dance and hop across the floor.

That night I decided to move up to the Yoga deck to sleep and join the slumber party. Going without a mosquito net, I’m really at nature’s mercy now. So I’m lying on my mattress, reading my book when I glance across the floor in the middle distance and see another goddamn dancing spider, it was huge. I jumped out of bed and ran to the other side of the deck in another breathless panic. While Nicholas tried to be kind, sadly the spider was fatally wounded in the extradition process. Last night there was a giant beetle, this one though had a snout with big whiskers coming out of it. Some of these guys have eyebrows and you can swear that they wink at you as they come to land close by.

We are all very aware that we are in their environment, we are the guests and they are at home. There is something magical about lying there at night listening to the symphony, and if you open your eyes you see fireflies buzzing about above you.

On Monday a group of us decided to go fishing. We were up at 4.15am to get the 5am bus into Pavones. Early mornings aren’t really a problem here, the sun tends to wake us sometime shortly after 5am anyway. After working out which boat would take us we finally set off with beers and potato chips for breakfast. So much for the cleanse. I cannot remember the last time I had a beer at 7.48am and I’m sure it will be a long time ‘til I do it gain, if ever.

With our rods cast out the back of the boat, we trawled for tuna with just lures, no bait. After a few hours not much was happening so we went to Mata Pala, a beach across the other side of Golfo Dulce. It was such a beautiful beach and the sun was starting to burn through the clouds. The waves were pretty big and crashed right onto the shore. The whole lot of us acted like five year olds jumping backwards into the breakers and getting washed up. It was tops!

Eventually we went back to the boat to try our luck with the fish again. It wasn’t really our day but we did manage a good size tuna – about 2.5kg. We got that back to our friends place and cooked it up with a nice meal. It was certainly good to have some nice fresh fish after so much rice and beans.