This blog is just to sum up a few more thoughts I had about the three countries I travelled in the past 3 weeks. As close as they are to each other, as interesting it is to contemplate differences between them. Each one of them has its own specials and I thought it was a good idea to point some of them out.

 

Panama seemed to be the poorest out of the three, or better said the one with most people living in absolute poverty. One couldn't miss the crowds of people in the streets of Colon or in the poorer barrios of Panama City roaing the streets. Every single bus station had a group of volunteers who made their only money on foreigners showing them which bus to take and subsequently bagging for a dolar. The country itself is really beautiful and it is difficult to find tourists outside of Panama city or further away from Panama Canal. Although these two places are probably the internationally considered key attractions of this small country, there is much more to it. Panama has a long history of Spanish occupation, of fights with English pirates, then the dominance of the United States for its strategically important position on the world's map. But seeing all that I felt that more could have been done everywhere - to attract tourists, to bring in investments, to get the economy going ... Panama Canal is a great construction success, a success achieved by Americans (although French started building it in fact, but never finished ;o)) ... but there could be more that the locals could do. If you're interested in history and architecture, Panama won't be your prime destination. If you want to have fun, Panama City seems to be a good place to be, but then you're sorted. If you want to see the nature, then Costa Rica has more to offer. IF you want to do beaches then there are those Carribean islands which Panama cannot match. But what if you want to do a bit of each, then you should go and see Panama. People are generally very nice and can be helpful, although in Panama city you'll struggle avoiding beggars and will need to be careful to avoid being robbed. Interestingly I also found Panamians to be very poor on knowledge of the places they lived at. For instance getting information on major tourist destination within Panama city from the locals seemed to be quite a big deal. People never admitted they didn't know and very resolutely offered their opinions, but these were mostly wrong! We once had to take some 3 Chiquitos to reach our destination just because no one knew where to go and everyone was sending us to a wrong place. What a lot of people don't like about Panama is the always present American culture. Roughly said sometimes it looks like the Skyscrapers were built on someone's scrap-yard. What's also remarkable are the contrasts. In Panama City you can find one luxurious street right next to another where people live in shacks ...

 

Costa Rica is rightly the tourist center of the region I guess. We didn't make it to Nicaragua and everyone we met said that the Nico's also have lots to offer, but yet, the Tico's got one thing right - their emphasis on sustainable green development. Coming from Panama, the difference will strike you right when you cross the boarder to Costa Rica. The jungle literally swallows the main Central American Highway (not really a highway though). One can see green, green and only green everywhere ... we were thrilled right from the first minutes! The Ticos are also a proud nation. They are proud of their economic achievement and the fact they're now most advanced in Central America, way ahead of their neighbours. One cannot miss the sudden drop in poor folks begging for money in the streets. We have hardly seen any at all now that I think of that ... The country has almost no natives. Its history is very similar to the one in Panama, but somehow there happen to be only 5,000 surviving natives these days, which makes the country a bit poor on traditions and culture overall. What I couldn't appreciate though is the commercial turnover of some key travel areas, especially around Monteverde and La Fortuna, where El Arenal is. The supposedly rich and money spending tourists reflected on the locals' characters very badly. Absolutely EVERYONE was trying to rip us of left or right ... there was lots to see in these two places, but one really had to be careful, so careful that the plain enjoyment truly suffered. On the other hand, there are still places in Costa Rica where things didn't get so much into people's minds ... if you want to see some specials of the country, visit Dominical, Quepos and Manuel Antonio. These places are really beautiful and there are ways to get around without people mining deep in your wallet! If you want to go out, make sure you say Pura Vida (pure life) to your buddies, do your homework and learn a few handshakes to impress the chicas and maybe take a salsa class. Salsa is danced and loved everywhere and no one looks more stupid than us Europeans or North Americans checking out the locals from afar with no clue of what the hell to do on the dancefloor. Our women are mostly asked to dance, but hardly ever perform better than average (if at all). I chose not to dance to the Salsa and Mergenge tunes at all to conceal my weak spots! The capital of Costa Rica is a place to watch out for. First there's almost nothing to do or see and second it's super dangerous, so watch out ...

 

Cuba, yes, what to say??? I thought I could learn a lot about the country and I thought I did. I spent most time speaking to the locals out of all the countries we travelled, I felt I could most relate to their lives 'cause I come from a country, which shared the same political regime some 18 years ago ... but now I feel like I understand nothing!!! Why do things work they do, I have no clue ... So, yes, the country is stuck in the 50s, that's right. You can see all those American cars that we Europeans would pay a fortune for if we could only export them out of Cuba! You get to see a lot of Russian cars from the 80s, the ones I wouldn't take for free (on the other hand). Havana was the most beautiful capital out of all the three we saw, with Panama City or San Jose not coming even close to it! The people were better off (on average) than Panama, but worst off than Costa Rica, but still they thought they had the best living standards in Latin America for some reason. Lots of propaganda was posted in the streets, mostly telling the people how great their leaders were or are. Jose Marti gave name to every other street and Fidel, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos split the rest among themselves seemingly. People bag you for money, beer everywhere, but no one was robbed! The place is as safe as it could possibly be. We could go absolutely everywhere. The Cuban ladies are difficult to speak to 'cause they either want to get something out of you (inclusive of marriages) or they don't want to speak at all. The socialist regime doesn't make sense at all. As the theory goes, everyone should have the same, but all Cubans know it's not the case. There are people apparently far richer than others - the Cubans say that the official salaries say nothing about how much wealth there is in the streets. Many government employees (i.e. taxi drivers, cooks, etc.) were pushing hard for business, but why??? Weren't they supposed to get the same if they did nothing anyway? Or did they keep the money we gave them and never claimed them? If so, how come they weren't rich as food was cheap for locals while we, extranjeros, paid so much everywhere! As I said, this country needs much more than a week to be understood. I'm really happy we chose to travel there. There certainly isn't anything even close to what's happening in Cuba. If you choose to do beaches only, Varadero is a great place with great sand and crystal blue water. But all the tourists serving their 2 week time at the beach seemed to be bored. They're so tired of drinking and clubbing that they often welcome their ride home, and I don't blame them ... but if you want to invest just a little more energy, and maybe even learn a bit Spanish to get you around, you'll love this place full of contradictions.

 

I'm sure I could write more, but then who's actually going to read it ... I put some of my points across, you guys enjoy reading it if you ever find time for it and drop me a comment when you get all the way here - maybe just to let me know you read it, hehe ... will make me happy ...

 

 

Varadero, that was the last place where we were going to travel on our journey and we were right up for some fun there. Although in light of all the discoveries we’d made in Panama, Costa Rica and even Cuba, the place was destined to be quite poor when it comes to cultural or natural learnings, but at this time, we were frankly ready to enjoy a few days of eating, drinking, lazying and clubbing …

The hotel seemed to be nice right from the beginning. Andre purchased himself another spot in our room and got a small folding bed in return. He was fine with it as sleeping wasn’t what we came for anyway. Michal and I had bigger beds of course ;o)) …

The food appeared to be do-able, although nothing super fancy I’d say. We had pretty much chicken every day of course and sometimes the cooks added in some squid or shrimps. I was cool with that as food was neither my main objective there …

What was more important though were the bars, one close to the beach and another at the swimming pool. One can had as many coctails and as much as desired. Also the pools were quite nice and the beach was superb. I didn’t expect to see a match to what for instance Cancun has to offer. The sand is literally white and sooo soft. Beautiful! And the water is sooo blue … The hotel provided a towel for a small deposit, so first thing we did was to lay down on the beach and took it easy.

The night started well. We first got some good food and went straight to the pool where we found a group of cute Canadian ladies (one didn’t have to ask whether they were Canadians as everyone with American accent was Canadian – there’re no Americans in Cuba, or hardly any …). We didn’t have to do much and the girls came up to introduce themselves and there we had 3 beautiful female friends right at the beginning of the night. What else could we only hope for.

The hotel put on a competition that night called Miss Villa Cuba (Villa Cuba was the name of the hotel by the way ;)). During the competition the men from the audience got stripped of their shoes, t-shirts and to a complete embarassment of all of us, also pants. Then we were politely asked to pick up our clothes on the podium, but before we did that, we had to pose for the women audience … really great stuff to stand there with only slips and socks. At least our trio had some cigars to pretend we were cool with all that …

A very cute Canadian lady won the competition and we headed out for a bar. As expected the girls decided who they would befriend that night, so my dancing partner called Jenna just grabbed me and we didn’t stop dancing until almost 3am … I was exhausted. Then, as it was already planned for us anyway, it was time for a night swim, so we changed, got some food, which the girls already knowing the works got ordered for us while we were changing and headed for the swim … I got back to my room at 5am! So this was the first night.

The day after went by quickly. We slept, slept and slept even more. I had no desire to have any lunch, so we skipped it, then headed right for the beach and the swimming pool and started preparing for the night. The dinner was special as we booked a place in a smaller restaurant, where the hotel arranged for smaller dinner with full service. The food was good, the waitresses even nicer. The show started earlier than expected, so we hurried out of the dining room, grabbed a drink and expected the scheduled magicians to show up. Instead the entertainers pointed their fingers at me asking me to show up on the stage instead. As always, I wouldn’t wanna become famous without Andre being present there, and they needed another guy anyway. So now it was us competing in Mr. Villa Cuba competition. First thing was to take off our shirts, then do some display of muscles in front of the audience, do some running after acing a cup of beer, pick up a cute girl from the audience and demonstrate some kind of animal seduction (I ended up with a Jaguar seducing Jaguar female), and so on and on. The whole thing was fun and I somehow got voted Mr. Villa Cuba, hehe.

Now that we were celebrities around the hotel, we pushed the momentum further and took pictures with yesterday’s Miss Villa Cuba. She was really cute and I have a nice pic with her as a result. She was even so cute that we decided to stay in the hotel and have fun with her friends, who were actually really fun, but far not as beautiful as this one … and that was a mistake!!! Miss Villa Cuba announced to be tired around 1.30am, refused to do more dancing with us and left us around with her friends, who were funny, but a bit chunky in the same time … Andre pushed for a quick exit and an attempt to raid nearby bar, but I got suddenly tired too … well, this night was ok, but not very successful.

The third day started well. Ladies greeted me everywhere saying Hello Mr. Villa Cuba. I always commented on how silly the competition was and did a great job pretending as if all this didn’t matter to me. Of course it did though! I felt like the world was at my ankles ;o)) … Anyway, a group of some 15 Canadian nurses got on very friendly tunes with us and we felt like the last night was gonna be really fun. The day went buy quickly, dinner was ok, swimming pool was ok and then there we were sitting in the beach chairs waiting for the stupid good night entertainment and most of all for our new friends to show up. The entertainment didn’t entertain at all. Some kind of a clown was trying to sing regaeton and dance like Ricky Martin. All of us agreed that what was happening on the stage was simply sick … The girls showed up, we offered cigars, and then stayed behind to finish our drinks while the girls left for the bars without us … when we finally made it overthere, the girls were just about to return back to the hostel … so that was a bit of a let down … well, we tried hard and made friends with everyone around and also paid 10CUC to enter another Cuban club. For some reason the locals were all coupled and refused to bother with foreigners, so we went back to the hotel, where we still met two Canadian nurses, had a nice chat and went to sleep …

The last day was a Good bye day. First I said good bye to Andre at 10am, then to Michal at 11am and then started killing time until 5pm waiting for my transfer to arrive. I was knackered enough to do anything productive, so sleeping looked suddenly like a very appealing activity to do. And so I did the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. Then I said good bye to our Canadian nurses from Vancouver. They sympatheticaly asked me to produce a last BOW of Mr. Villa Cuba, which I happily did for the sake of being in the center of attention one last time ;o)) …

And then the works … I slept on the transfer back to the airport (3hrs), then at the airport iteself (2hrs), then all the way to Madrid (9hrs) – meanwhile I got sick as well to make life more interesting, then I fell asleep on Madrid airport (2hrs), then slept all the way to London (2.5hrs), then I fell asleep even on the tube from the airport (2hrs) and then went to bed early to make sure I got enough sleep … it’s 2 days later and I’m still tired. God knows where I took all the energy to travel like that for 3 weeks, but as everyone says, vacation isn’t to relax, but to get tired. One can relax at work, right? Well, I wish …

We arrived to Trinidad on Monday late at night. Our taxi driver from Habana new this Casa Particular, which was of course the best buy in the town, and we didn’t mind bringing some business to his buddies. In fact, the house he showed us was nice, roomey, clean and after a bit of a push even cheap. We purchased 3 nights of stay right away and also ordered some dinner, which was full-heartedly offered to us. The owners were selling Langostas for 9CUC, which also included soup, salad, rice and fruits. I have to say that we were more than surprised to learn what kind of culinary feast was awaiting us …

After we got our stomaches completely full it was time to head off to streets of Trinidad and check out what night activities the town has to offer. As everyone suggested, the most recommended path lead to the Casa de la Musica, so we obediently followed. Trinidad’s disco brought one specialty to the table – it was a place surrounded by walls, but exposed to the night sky with no roof! It was sooo great to see the mixture of the clublights with sky dotted with stars … really nice. Also the entrance only cost 1CUC, which couldn’t be felt anyhow. Although we got there a bit late (30mins after midnight), the house was full and reaggeton was to be constantly heard! We met some English chicks there, had a nice chat with them and danced away until 3am, when we headed back to our casa …

The next day in the morning we pretty much did nothing else but sleeping and in the afternoon we only managed to see the very minimum of Trinidad and desperately ran for the main beach located about 14km away from the town. Although the locals bragged about the beach at length saying it’s the best one to be found in Cuba, we later learnt that it cannot match Varadero in any respect. But it was ok, quite deserted, water was clean and sun was shining … so we slept a bit more and started preparing (theoretically) on that day’s night out. All the planning made us leave the beach earlier than originally planned, so that we could get an early dinner, light up our cigards and stroll off into the streets. By 7pm we were sitting on the plaza in front of Casa de la Musica waiting for some fun to arrive. To our disappointment, only local staff showed up, so we had to leave for another walk in the city. The night actually started too early and finished too early as well. For some reason no good looking women showed up, so we returned back home earlier = at 1am …

Our plans for the day after also collapsed very easily. We announced to our hosts that the nearby waterfall would fall victim to our photocameras, but all these were just empty threats. None of us made it out of the bed before 11am and when we finally did, all we managed to to was to find a taxi and get a ride to the beach. As the previous 2 nights didn’t bring any much of luck, no further acquisition plans were made. We made it to The plaza at reasonable time, found a lot of people dancing Salsa in the street, watched them for a bit and went back home relatively early. The next day was a big one – time to take a taxi to Varadero where we had made a reservation in a 4-star hotel, all inclusive, for 3 nights!!! And while on that we planned to stop in Santa Clara to see the statue of Che!

The next day was tough, I have to say. We managed to wake up at 5.15am, get a shower and by 6am the taxi driver picked us up at our Casa Particular. The guy was as friendly as first time and happily started narrating about Cuba right after we jumped in. As interested as I was, it was a bit difficult to focus on Cuban Spanish at 6am, so I only felt his words passing by my ears, but could hardly pretend I was still listening. Anyway, he was cool to speak, so I didn’t stop him. In about 2 hours we reached Santa Clara and took a quick foto of Ernesto Che Guevara. We didn’t bother with the museum, as Varadero was waiting and who cares about a few bones of course … The city itself offered a bank where we withdrew some more Pesos Convertibles and also grabbed a sandwich. All of us had a ham and cheese sandwich as nothing else was pretty much available. After that the taxi driver directed his Daewoo towards Varadero.

On the way to the Cuban most touristy zone I also learnt how great Cuba is, that it is the most advanced country in Central America, which effectively not poverty. Not sure what it was that I saw in the streets though, but if the government says there’s NO poverty, they’re probably right. Those people begging for food in the streets of Habana must be some kind of clowns I guess …

Anyway, we reached Varadero at 1.30pm, checked in and ran for the All inclusive lunch. The place looked good and there were some ladies around too, so all was cool with us. The beach was so nice that we got instantly over excited … but that will be left for the last blog on our stay in Cuba …

As expected, Cuba didn’t really provide me with a reasonable and reasonably priced internet access, so I’m about to sum up the whole week in 3 blogs from back here in London.

On Saturday, the night before our flight out from San Jose, Michal and I found accommodation in one smaller San Jose hostel, which didn’t happen to be advertised by Lonely Planet, but would be certainly recommended by me if I only remembered its name ;o)) … The interesting part about our stay there was that the staff, which was very helpful, offered to book us a cab to the airport for Sunday early morning. Understand that we needed to be at the airport 3 hours prior to departure. We were not necessarily happy about the 15USD fee charged for the taxi, but as there were no buses or other public transportation running to the airport, we simply didn’t have other options at hand. At 11pm that night, when Michal and I were busy browsing the internet, the staff brought up a guy, who was allegedly heading to the airport at similar time. As it turned out, the guy was actually taking the same flight to Havana and was also about to do some backpacking around Cuba with a very similar itinerary to the one of ours. It didn’t take long for all of us to become friends and Andre from Norway became an integral part of our Cuban adventure the next 7 days.

La Habana airport surprised me by its relative modernity and the customs officers surprised me by being more relaxed than I expected. Well, what I expected was probably the worst that could possibly be happening there anyway, so it wasn’t hard to beat. I only responded to a few questions in Spanish, politely asked the customs officer to repeat every single question he asked and speak a bit slower. He then returned my favour of making an attempt of speaking his language by complimenting my Spanish, which I found a cheap compliment anyway, but was somehow happy to hear it anyway.

The route from the airport to downtown La Habana is fully operated by the government. The tourist are first forced to exchange their pocket money for Cuban Convertibles (CUC) for rates dictated by everything else but free currency markets. I was exchanging from British Pounds and received 1.8CUC for 1GBP (if I went for dollars, I’d have to pay 10% commission for showing up with this unfriendly currency). The first attack at our wallets happened right at the taxi pick ups where agents squeeze foreigners into government taxis charging 20CUC for a ride to the centre. We insisted that there must be a cheaper way of doing this, but were proven wrong shortly after. At least we found this Russian Lada car from the 80s and paid 15CUC (5CUC less = each one of us saved 1.6CUC = less than 1GBP after some 20mins of hassle).

Cuba is also famous from friend-to-friend business relations, so the taxi driver was quick to recommend a friend’s Casa Particular, which is a Cuban version of hostels. In fact these are houses run by families appointed to this business by the government. One can always tell which ones they are ‘cause they present themselves with a blue mark on their door. From outside they look like an ordinary Cuban house (= worn down), but inside they are fully equipped and quite comfortable. Of course everything is owned and overseen by the government and in Habana one doesn’t need to worry about the prices as all Casas Particulares charge the same fee of 25CUC per room. Another rule, which no Cuban will break, is that only 2 people max. can stay in one room, so Andre (our Norwegian friend) had to stay in a different house from the one where we stayed.

I read a lot about Cuba in the Lonely Planet guide we bought for this trip, but still, Habana turned out to be a bigger surprise than expected anyway. One can probably never prepare for something so different. So yes, I took plenty of pictures of the 1950’s American cars. And yes, they are still running, as well as the Russian cars from 1980’s (including Lada and Moskwich). La Habana center offers plenty of beautiful historic sights ranging from huge palaces, cathedrals to forts and alongside that one can find a few tanks, land-to-land rockets and lots of propaganda at display. The first day we only did the Habana center tour including the view of the forts, stroll alongside the coastal area, Museum of Revolution and the Museum of Art, Plaza de 13 Marzo, El Capitolio, etc. People somehow figured we must have been millionaires (with backpacks) and kept on asking us for money and food. Unfortunately we couldn’t really feed everyone, so we decided conversely to feed no one instead.

We originally thought that it would have been a great idea to somehow obtain local Cuban Pesos, which the ordinary people use for purchases of ordinary goods (apart from meat for instance, which simply isn’t offered in stores). This idea soon turned slightly unrealistic as we were actually expected up front to pay with the hard currency – that is CUC – everywhere we went anyway.

Our family from Casa Particular also happened to be very entrepreneurial. I sometimes felt they would sell their daughter if they only could. Their scope of business included absolutely everything – i.e. booking a hotel in Varadero or Trinidad, car rentals, shopping, buses – just everything where one could make a buck. I developed a slight mistrust towards these people up front, so their info was since then taken with little credit.

Something very welcoming about La Habana are the women, who happen to be very fit and quite often also very beautiful. Guys definitely don’t get easily bored out there. Of course expectations were essentially raised in a matter of minutes and all three of us were suddenly ready to go clubbing, even happy to skip a few sights at its expense. Also the dinner had to be sorted quickly, which was an issue of its own again. It took us time to find a restaurant with sensible prices. Cuba is known for menus many pages long, but only a few items from it available. In our case only two or three meals were actually available, so we quickly made a choice – it wasn’t very hard – and ordered food ;o)) … The portions were miniature, but the environment built up by a live salsa band was highly appreciated, so we easily forget about leaving the place just a little less hungry than what we were upon arrival and left for our Casas Particulares.

It seemed to be a great deal of a problem to choose a club to go for, but Andre’s host-mom recommended a governmental chain of discos called Casa de la Musica. First I expected some kind of boring folk music being played there, but surprisingly the place was quite modern and music they played was very good. I specifically appreciated the Latino music called Reggaeton, which originates somewhere in Puerto Rico I guess.

The girls addressed us right on the way there. They had three reasons to speak to us, but none of them was simply friendship. They either asked us straight for money or for presents (beer, ticket to disco, etc.) or they wanted us to merry them. The last one is probably the most interesting reason. It is well known that many Cuban families live on money transferred to them by their relatives from abroad, and so the youths are encouraged to move out of Cuba and the only way to do it is to marry a foreigner. Maybe it’s also that they themselves don’t want to be there, but it’s still very remarkable. As none of my friends weren’t ready to either pay anyone, give presents or marry anyone, we arrived at the disco alone, and should we have decided to change our minds, plenty of opportunities to revert back to one of the three points listed above were present everywhere.

The Casa de la Musica was really fun. We danced and had a lot of fun. At one point, the entertainers went around the place and asked people which countries they were visiting from. I publicly admitted to be a foreigner and was promptly called onto the stage to perform in a dance contest. That was apparently a lost battle. As I also managed to drag my friend Andre on the dance floor too, the embarrassment could be shared. As we were then well established as extranjeros (foreigners), the girls’ attention intensified and all three of us got lured into buying drinks for the hope of building some friendships around the place. This was soon to be learnt as fault and we decided to never be stupid again …

Four o’clock in the morning seemed to be right time to go back to our casas. We also managed to meet two girls on the way out of whom one was good looking, smart and didn’t seem to expect gifts, money or marriage. We quickly got onto a friendly note and bought the girl a mango juice. This time it was not because she asked for it, but because we offered! Her friend was a bit annoying, so we decided to move on while Andre stayed behind. Before we left, we managed to get a promise out of her that she would show us some Habana in the afternoon.

Our first night sleep in Cuba was among the short ones. Since there was still plenty to discover in Habana, we only did some 5hrs of sleeping and met up at Andre’s place ready for further discoveries. Meanwhile our hosts set themselves a goal of finding us a rental car for the week. The whole plan blew into pieces some 2hrs later and cut out even more of our precious time that we wanted to spend touring the Cuban capital. Also our friend from early morning showed up to provide us with a guided tour, so we took her for lunch and then had her show us a few sights. I had to translate everything from Spanish to English, I was knackered as much as she was and my friends could probably hardly focus on what I was saying anywhere, so we decided to send her home with some money from us given as a gift intended to increase her standards of living (at least slightly).

The rest of Habana was a challenge. We were pretty much tired to do any walking, so the Habana Vieja (Old Habana) was suddenly finished in a matter of minutes, pictures were obtained and we returned back to our casas. The next stop was supposed to be Santa Clara, which is a town dedicated to the memorial of Ernesto Che Guevara. Che has a huge statue out there, which we wanted to see. Fortunately enough everyone decided to talk us out of it and said that it made much more sense to spend some 2hrs in Santa Clara and rather go straight to Trinidad, which we originally planned to be our next stop after Santa Clara. Good thing in Cuba, as we learnt shortly after, is that one can take so called Colectivos, which are normal taxis heading back to their original destination. These taxis stand around particular places and charge one the same rate as what we would have paid for the buses – 25CUC each (for about a 5hr ride). We thought for a while to be a great idea to take this fancy American open roof convertible all the way to Trinidad, but that would cost us about 3 times the amount we ended up paying, so the thought was quickly dismissed on the ground of insufficient funds. Our taxi instead was some kind of a Daewoo with a great built in fan screwed into the cockpit and a CD ROM providing the CD player capabilities sitting right below the fan. In Cuba, everything seemed to be possible then ;o)) …

The taxi driver was a cool guy who explained lots about Cuba to us. He also knew a family in Trinidad who would put us up for 3 nights later on. We were happy to arrive to Trinidad after the road was almost blocked by crabs crossing the street and threatening to burst the tires of our car. We almost ones got hit by running cows when the cowboy was stupid enough to run his heard on the main road of course in the opposite direction (well, that’s Cuba ;o)). So there we were in Trinidad and I’ll take it further in my next blog.

Hello everyone,

 

last time a blog was posted here I was in San Jose ready to go out and see the night life in the center. Now I´m sitting in the same internet cafe and ready to stroll down to the same street, but this time to grab a quick fast food meal and return back to the hostel. All that because tomorrow we have scheduled ourselves a flight from San Jose, Costa Rica to La Havana, Cuba ... So what lies ahead of us is the need to spend the rest of our money, book a taxi for tomorrow morning to take us up to the airport and prepare our luggage for the tender loving care I expect the Latino airport staff to pay to it ...

 

Anyway, lots and lots happened between these two San Jose stays. As mentioned above, last time I checked in, I was on the way to seek through the streets of San Jose center. In fact, the night wasn´t necessarily a success. We didn´t find one decent club to frequent, so early in the night we were back in the hostal trying to catch up on some sleep preparing for a lengthy bus ride to Monteverde-Santa Elena, which is actually a small town of Santa Elena located in a Monteverde region with two national parks in the names of these two respective areas surrounding them ... understand??? Good ...

 

We hit Santa Elena with a 1hr delay, which is probably No problema according to Costa Rican standards. You wouldn´t believe the roads we travelled on the way there. First the elevation was absolutely incredible and I never got to understand how come these ancient buses actually make it all the way there ... at places we Europeans wouldn´t allow even off-road motorcycles enter the roads for safety reasons. But local bus drivers don´t know the meaning of the word impossible and feel free to overtake other cars on those paths ... Yeah, we made it all safe, so another interesting experience to speak about ...

 

Monteverde was really nice, really up in the mountains, but also very touristy and all Ticos had the need to be selling something to us, particularly tours were the best business. They have managed to create absurd tours I felt and the whole place cannot bring up the analogy with Disney World in one´s mind ... Anyway, Michal and I got dragged to a hostel first thing we got off the bus. They only charged us $8 each, which was acceptable and also sold us a jeep-boat-jeep transfer to La Fortuna (That´s where the famous El Arenal volcano is) and also a SkyWalk tour and a ticket to an exhibition of reptiles ... The plan to do the SkyWalk tour was born on the way to Santa Elena, so no surprises there ... we also knew the price of it thanks to our Lonely Planet guide. The reptiles were sold to us for $5 each on top, so we took it and in half an hour a minivan carried us up the dirt road towards the Monteverde park where the hanging bridges were built up in the tops of the trees.

 

However, since we got to Monteverde in the afternoon, hardly any animals were to be seen, but still it was cool to see the jungle from those hights. We got to see a racoon though at least!!! And I have taken a few pics of course too ... After the bridges, it was time for snakes, which was a small guided exhibition and though it was interesting, Michal and I weren´t particularly sure whether it was really a good value for money ... this feeling was essentially elevated upon the return to the hostal where the receptionist announced that we should have been charged $12 instead of $5 and thus owe $7 each ... I was pissed off, but then I thought that this is my vacation and it´s not time to argue with those people, paid the money and let go ... The hostel was funny anyway! It was all covered in posters advertising various tours, which of course, could be booked in the hostel ... then the owners would keep on bragging about how we had to do everything with a tour and there was NO WAY around it - i.e. Please no individual trips ...

 

I was sad not to make it to the Monteverde national park. Time didn´t allow for it, so we said goodbye to the place next day in the morning when a van (called jeep) picked us up in front of the hostel, took us to a nearby lake, where we boarded a small boat and transferred across to the La Fortuna side of the lake and there we were picked up by another van (also called jeep - that´s where the name jeep-boat-jeep was established if you hadn´t noticed) and taken to the La Fortuna village. Surprisingly, La Fortuna and all it´s surroundings in the direction of San Jose and also west to the Carribean side, has roads!!! My back could relax for a bit finally ...

 

Again, Michal and I were jumped on by local vendors advertising hostels first thing we stepped out of the van. This time we chose hostel called 'Jerry´s' ... there was a very young kid with a bike advertising it. The guy looked like he could be trusted for once, so we let him walk us to the hostel, where we got put up for $8 each. Just for you to understand, La Fortuna is famous for its overprised hotels and hostels due to its popularity with American tourists. So $8 was quite a good deal. And it included warm water ... believe it or not ...  Anyway, the guy also managed to sell us a transfer to Tortuguero for the next day morning and also a tour to see the El Arenal vocano´s eruptions. We got ripped off on both, but didn´t know it yet, so all was paid and Michal went to sleep as he didn´t feel too well ... On the other hand I felt more than fine, so I left Michal to his pieceful sleep and booked a taxi to nearby waterfalls (cataratas de La Fortuna). Upon the arrival of a taxi an American lady approached me enquiring about the waterfalls, so I offered that she and her husband could share the ride with me. The two were an older couple, who were either on a short budget or overly careful about their spendings, as I could see the relief in their faces once they learnt that I would cover some of the $5 expense ...

 

The waterfall was really great. It´s very fotogenic, exactly as Lonely Planet describes it. People actually swim in the lake underneath it, which I didn´t due to the insufficient time I planned for this discovery and also we were supposed to swim in natural hot springs on the way to El Arenal anyway ... so why bother, right? ... The experience was spoiled by pouring rain, which came and went exactly when I turned around heading back to the gate. Understand that the way to the waterfall is fine as one descends, but on the way up it´s a good 20min steep hike up and of course that´s when it started raining. Thanks gosh I had my raincoat with me this time, but still I could call this a challenge ... Anyway, some 30mins later I was sitting in a taxi heading back to say hi to Michal ...

 

Meanwhile it started raining heavily and El Arenal got covered in quite a dense fog, so the top could be anything but seen. Our perspectives of enjoying the $30 tour we paid for were vanishing in the thin air ... I tried to call on the young kid who sold the tour to us, but he was nowhere to be found all of the sudden. Instead another guy showed up surprisingly on time, came in in an old Toyota vehicle - apparently had nothing to do with an official travel agency ... and started discussing what to do about the trip ... I confronted him with my query to cancel the nonsense ... he didn´t let that one hit the mark and dismissed it simply by saying that he couldn´t return the money to us as he didn´t have it on him (the younger kid had it of course). So we set out to go. Good thing was that there were two very sympathetic Canadian girls who also got screwed on this one, although their damage was worth $5 less than hours - we got screwed a bit more ...

 

So, the deal was to go to hot springs first. Arturo, our self-proclaimed guide, took us to this hole, which lay underneath the main road outside La Fortuna. We first couldn´t really believe our eyes. This was far from the romantic sight we expected. But Arturo explained the greatness of the place, we got to understand that the money won´t be returned no matter what, so what was left was just an attempt to enjoy the occassion. Meanwhile El Arenal was still well hidden in the clouds, so we put on the swim suits and headed for the warm hole underneath the bridge. Although the thing reminded me more of a waste water cannal, rather than of a natural hot-springs sight, I have to admit that the whole thing turned into quite some fun. Arturo was at least a fun talker, so we had some fun, discussed women and enjoyed the place ... Right after it was time to head for El Arenal. It was already quite late, so time to go ...

 

None of us managed to bring the flash lights along. Thanksfully Arturo was well equipped and provided all of us with a flash light and lead us to the jungle for a 30min walk towards the El Arenal observatory. Apparently we had been told that an entry fee was to be paid, but I never saw Arturo spending any money what-so-ever, but that didn´t matter ... We got to the observatory alright and stayed for an hour or so watching the volcano spitting lava out of the crater occassionally. The sky was much clearer then and we could see red lava flowing down the mountain. It was a great view and lots of fun. The Canadian girls also turned out to be fun. We discussed the snakes in the forest, who are active particularly at night and we were about to walk another 30mins back ... good stuff ...

 

Arturo also realised what a great bunch we were and wanted to present himself as a great dude who cares of his customers. Lay aside the way he obtains them though ... So we were all cordially invited to come along to the biggest disco in Costa Rica that night. Arturo said it´s going to be fun, so Michal and I agreed to join him, while the girls turned him down. I´m sure he would have preferred the scenario to evolve the other way around, but sometimes you get what you didn´t want ... so here we were, Michal and I - Arturo´s buddies for the night ...

 

That night we left the hostel for the disco with a decent 45min delay - ok-ish in Costa Rica. Arturo brought the younger kid along who turned out to be his cousine. So, thinking back, of course it was so difficult to get our money back, right? ... Anyway, the guys took us to the disco. On the way we also stopped by the road where a young senorita was waiting for her ride, introduced ourselves and offered a gentleman ride to the disco. She unforutnately had a party of other amigas coming with her, so we couldn´t accommodate them due to the limitted space in the car (Michal and I occuppied the back of course). The news wasn´t that bad afterall as the night promised loads of women ... so we parted, said good bye and continued with our mission ...

 

The disco place was trully quite big. Michal and I blew it right at the entry door. There was a table full of very beautiful chicas, who apparently liked us right away, smiled at us and pointed their fingers at us when we entered the place. Our reaction was simply DO NOTHING and we got ourselves a beer. 5mins later some Latinos took care of the girls and in about half an hour, the ration guys:girls turned out to be some 4:1 and all the girls were gone (no matter how ugly they were, the Ticos take anything that moves). Even American ladies got their share of attention and you would understand my concerns about the locals' taste if you saw them too ... anyway, the night dragged along, Michal and I envied how well Salsa and Merenge can be danced and then took a taxi home. The taxi driver was a buddy of Arturo's who hasn´t made a buck on us that day yet, and quickly offered a ride back to the hostel for $3. We took it and went to sleep ...

 

The next day early morning another transfer awaited us, which took us to Tortuguero. This place was carefully picked by me. It´s a very interesting location, which one can only access on water or by air. There is no road leading there and the place sits right on the Carribean coast in the middle of a jungle. Tha van took us to a town called Cariari and then to a small mini-port in the middle of a Chicquita banana plantation. There we were handed over to a captain of a small motor boat. The captain drove us to Tortuguero, while we got to see Crocodilles, river turtles, lizzards, birds and all various kind of flowers on the way ... once we even had to zig-zag through a bunch of cows and horses, who happened to be taking a bath there ... really cool stuff ... again, many pictures followed of course ...

 

Tortuguero was a cool village. There's one cemented street in the center where all the restaurants and hostels are. Our hostel was located slightly aside the main street. It was the cheapest one in town ($5 per night per person - super cheap). The owner was a really funny, always laughing, no-English-speaking lad. He really welcomed the fact I could communicate in Spanish and was always happy to chat ... so I found out how safe the place was given the fact that a dog of maybe 40cm in size was guarding it ... and yes, the dog was always on the guard as it turned out ...

 

Michal and I quickly booked a tour for the next day to do a canoeing tour in the park and took a short walk to the beach where we found out appeared to be noumerous opportunities to take photos, which we did ... The next day in the morning we woke up early and went right to the port to take the cannal tour. Although Tortuguero is super small, we got lost and couldn´t find the port ... when we did, it was already some 10mins after 6am, so I was damn upset that we would miss the tour ... however, this is Costa Rica, so I suddenly calmed down once I found out that the guide who asked us to show up 10mins before 6am to ensure we started right on time didn´t arrive before 6.30am ... must have had a wild night prior to that morning ...

 

The canal tour was cool as expected. We saw caymans, monkeys, plants and other animals and had fun. Michal and I then walked through the  Tortuguero National Park, which only took us some 30mins. There were no more animals to be seen as it was afternoon already, but we still got busy with our photo cameras ... the rest of the day was just beach, relaxing, chilling and we also got to know some fun people, with whom we went out later that night ... oh, in fact, one cool thing that happened that evening was a crab running around the restaurant where we set out to eat sea food. First we thought it ran away from the kitchen, but then it seemed to be just looking for a way out. I have no clue what it was doing in the restaurant, but we made sure it didn´t run away before it was properly photographed. It was a good 15cm crab and looked super funny when hiding underneath the tables and chairs in the restaurant where we were chasing it ... On the way out Michal got almost attacked by another crab, who was standing in the middle of the path with its claws up in the air facing Michal ... well, then the poor animal thought it wasn´t such a good idea to fight the big Czech and ran away ... Michal simply kicked one´s ass for once, hehe ...

 

And today we took the water taxi back to Cariari and the bus back to San Jose. Tomorrow we´re flighing over to Cuba to check out what the 50s probably looked like in Europe and elsewhere. The country is supposedly stuck in that period, so it will be exciting to see the retrospective view ...

 

You take care and if Cuba doesn´t provide me with a solid inet connection, I´ll sum up the Cuban story in a blog once I return to London.

Hello from San Jose, Costa Rica ...

 

Lots of great experiences gained since I last checked in!

 

First of all, yesterday morning, Michal and I travelled to Parque National Manuel Antonio and I don´t have much to say apart from - splendid, brilliant, lovely, great, fabulous, incredible, amazing, ... well, you got the message I guess. Manuel Antonio is just a MUST SEE ... One gets to see so much flora and fauna that I never thought was possible on such a relatively small piece of land. I´ve taken more than a hundred pics there and I´ll post them up here first thing when I get back to London, trust me on this one ...

 

I´ve first seen orange crabs living in the forest, a sloth in the trees, Cappuchin monkeys stealing people´s bags and running just a meter away from me, a beutiful beach and views ... just amazing ... really ...

 

In the afternoon Michal and I left Quepos, where we really enjoyed staying in a great hostel recommended by, what else, Lonely Planet, and run by an English - New Zealand couple ... It only took some 4hrs to get to San Jose, where we arrived at a very dodgy place called Coca Cola terminal ... all was closed, but thieves and prostitutes seemed to be right in business ... we were happy to get ripped off and take the first taxi we stopped there ... The hostel here in San Jose is ok, but internet isn´t working and free breakfast comes late, so we will never take the pleasure of having some ... but that´s life!

 

This morning we woke up earlier and took a taxi to a San Pablo bus station where we bought two tickets to Monteverde National Park, where we´re going tomorrow early morning (will be a busy day tomorrow and also hopefully lots to write about ;o)) ... After that we walked down towards the downtown where we reached another bus station, where buses for Volcano Poaz can be taken. Since we had a bit of time, we did a bit of a stroll around the terminal just to find out that there really isn´t much to see here in San Jose, and hence we shouldn´t reserve way too much of time for it ... while discovering these top secrets, we looked up a small bakery with a very beautiful shop assistent, so we stayed there for 3 small doughnuts and then returned to the terminal to catch our bus ...

 

The bus was a bit of a mystery. Lonely Planet says at one place that it takes 4 - 5hrs to reach Poaz and at another that it only takes 3hrs. In the hostel they said 4-5hrs as well, but advertised only 2.5hrs on the board. I went ahead and asked local staff who said it only takes 1.5hrs max ... well, the truth was that it took those 2.5hrs ... but really, we couldn´t make any plans for the day as it was absolutely unclear when we would return from the trip ...

 

Volcan Poaz was really cool. It only takes some 10mins walking to reach the crater ´cause the bus does the work for you and brings your ass all the way to the peak of the volcano. That was great news for all of us. The crater is actual 1.3km in diameter and one can see a small green-ish lake at its bottom and a steam of water rising up from it. It´s a very beautiful site ... On top of that, the less-lazy folks can do some 45min walk towards a green mountain lake, which was really nice too ... On the way one is presented with typically dense Costa Rican nature and animals and flowers. Again, Michal and I were busy hiding behind our cameras ...

 

We returned back from Poaz actually earlier than planned (as of yesterday´s plan). Lonely Planet again did the job for us and planned a walking tour through the center of San Jose, so that one sees all the major sights. The actual tour took us some two hours and we saw a mercado (place with No 1 score where tourists get robbed). We didn´t hang around the Mercado way too long. In fact, we just saw it from outside and didn´t have the balls to walk in and most likely say goodbye to our money and cameras ... Then we also saw a few plazas, cathedrals, shopping district (Avenida Central) and parks and statues. The center is quite nice actually, but I couldn´t stop thinking of my bag and money as feeling safe is something one simply CAN NOT ...

 

Later in the afternoon we felt a bit lazy to seek through the abundance of local restaurants and find one which would have reasonable prices and good food in the same time, while all the thieves were certainly circling around us ;o)) ... so KFC was chosen and it was a good choice. Looking European, the chicas selling chicken found interest in us and we had some fun ordering in English-Spanish sort of speak. I hardly understood their Spanish, as fast foods are always quite a challenge when one learns any foreign language and they hardly spoke English ... but we settled on smiles and wishes of a great night and happy evenings and great times and all this stuff ...

 

So now we´re ready to go out and enjoy a bit of night life of San Jose. I have nothing on me apart from some $30 cash, so if I get robbed, it won´t hurt way too much ...

 

Take care and I´ll try to check in from Monteverde or La Fortuna if time and means allow for it ...

This will be a quick check in as not way too much happened since I last added a note here. I am also writing on a keyboard, which somewhere forgot how to type a letter - p -, so I have to use CTRL+V to slot one in every time I need it. So please excuse all possible misspellings where - p - is nowhere to be found and try to picture smaller case - p - for an upper case, oki ...

 

Basically last night Michal and I took the liberty and opportunity of catching up on some pubing and headed for a bar in Dominical, which actually has quite a lot to offer specifically in this regard. We managed to locate a disco with very symathetic Costa Rican waitresses and some latin chicas dancing on the podium. It was fun, esecially when the DJ kept on playing my favourite music, i.e. Sean paul or Daddy Yankee with their energising tunes ...

 

This morning we woke up into a great sunny day and just being us, while all the other people would probably quickly run into the ocean, Michal and I picked u our cameras and went picture hunting ;o) ... I now have some cool pictures in store for you - promise ...

 

Anyway, the heat brought us into senses anyway and we eventually did get to the swimming activity. Well, not exactly swimming, but we did get wet ... Dominical is really a great place to be, laid back and relaxed ...

 

After we managed to check out of our room, it was just about time to wait for another bus to take us to another destination - a small town on the pacific coast called Quepos. We did not expect way too much and only wanted to spend a cheap night here to get to the famous touristy attraction called Manuel Antonio National park, but the whole thing turned out unexectedly great. First the trip here, which went on a gravel and bumpy road all the way, was an exerience of its own. Michal and I sometimes had a hard time keeing our assess on our seats ;o). Then when we finally got here, we found a great hostel and a beautiful small coastal town and a great hostel to spend the night at ...

 

Also, the last thing to mention is the dinner. My portion including the drink was some $5 and I had trouble walking away from there - such huge was my meal, really ... something about these countries I love is the food. One can always eat super cheap and plentiful ... Im loving it (McDonalds sort of speak)

I just returned to the virtual world and have so much to share.

 

So, where did we leave last time? Yeah, last time I checked in was still in Panama City on our relaxing public holiday of May 1. As I had correctly foreseen in that article, we headed off to the Miraflores Lock and found it open, although people had been quite pessimistic about that visit the days before. Miraflores Lock is the Pacific side of Panama canal and it´s also the one where people get to know quite a bit about the whole ´canal´business ... i.e. that 70,000 workers worked on the canal over the period of app 10 years, that the most expensive transfer over the canal cost $250,000 and the cheapest one cost $0.36, which was paid by a swimmer I guess ... cool stuff ... we, again, took plenty of photos, so I´ll be more visual once I get back to London ... The day didn´t finish with the locks, so we managed to do some discoveries around Panama and found a great artificial peninsula, which was originally a set of 4 islands, but the ground from Panama Canal was used here to connect these islands and a new party & shopping center was alive ... really nice place, which offers great views of the canal, only if it wasn´t so damn closed on that day of May 1!!!

 

Our plan onwards was a real killer. First in early evening we did a quick stroll around the modern center of Panama, discovered a huge mall, checked the food court and then headed onto the discovery of ´Calle Uruguay´, which is famous in Panama for the abundance of bars. We kind of liked the place, so it didn´t take much to decide on the spot that it was time to return to the hosel, change and get ready for a night out. We had alread had a bus booked for midnight going to David (north), so we needed to burn a few hours anyway and this was a good opportunity.

 

In 2 hours we were back there sitting in a bar, drinking beer and checking out the locals. Unfortunately not many people showed up that night as the next day was a working day (we must have been one day too late). Anyway, the good thing was to discover how beautiful Panama women are, or in other words, the ones who frequent this area in the evenings.

 

Midnight was the time for a bus ride to David. I knew it wasn´t the best way to get some sleep that night, but things turned out a bit worse than expected. First, as usual, the bus driver felt like what´s concerning air-conditioning, there´s never enough. So we were freezing like hell. Second, the bus stopped maybe every 100 meters or something and lights had to be switched on every time such occassion occurred. That didn´t eas off my sleep either ...

 

We got to David at 5.30am and hoped on another buss to Boquette where we quickly got ourselves a hostel room (very cheap in Panama´s mountains - just $9.60 per night per room!!!!). Once we got rid of the heavy bags, it was time to show our stamina to the world and climb the highest peak of Panama, which happens to be Volcan Baru. The taxi took us to a lower gate where one has to climb a kilometer of a steep road to get to the official gate where he gets charged 3 dollars by a guy called Victor and once also receives a lecture about the ban on photographs in the area, but Victor makes an obvious effort to be friendly and pretend as if the cameras weren´t seen.

 

Michal and I got on the way, just to find out that Michal should have had maybe prepared better for the challenge after another 1.5km (with 12km still to go). I tried my best and persuaded him into giving it a try and managed to pull ourselves up all over to the sign showing 10kms from the base (3.5kms to go). The path was incredibly steep and to make things worse, it started raining really, and I mean really really, heavilly! So we turned around and ran back. I was cursing this hike all the way down and when we got in sight of Victor´s hut I finally fell and lost my watch (only to find it again in the middle of all the stones after I have reaslised it was missing 20mins later). We then asked Victor to call us a cab and got home ...

 

The next day was just lame. We were dead, everything was wet and I had a headache. So we took it easy and managed to get ourselves into hiking to a ´Hot springs´place nearby Boquette. It was good and relaxing. In the evening we awarded ourselves for not doing much with a super sea-food dinner in a top-rank Peruvian restaurant and went to sleep ...

 

Today, Thursday, was full of travelling. First we left Boquette in a 5.30am bus towards David, where we changed for a smaller bus, which dropped us on the Panama-Costa Rica border. There we purchased a few stamps and filled out a form and successfully crossed to the ´Rich coast´(= Costa Rica as it was baptised by Christopher Colon). From the Costa Rican border, we took another bus to Neily, where we stupidly realised that Costa Rica is one hour behind Panama when I was nervously calling on the bus-ticket-vendor to explain how come his bus is 15mins late. He was trying to explain that the bus will be there on time, not to worry, but I had an answer for that saying that the 'on time' was 15mins ago ... anyway, he showed me the clock, I apologised and relaxed ... Yes, the bus was on time and 4hrs later Michal and I stepped into the town of San Isidro. There we hanged around for an hour and a half and hopped onto another bus, which took us across the mountain range, into the town of Dominical ... we got our appartment here at Dominical at 6pm and here I am posting this blog right now ...

 

The village (better said) should be a surfers' place with lots of bars and fun, so I'm running to make a few more discoveries. Take care and I'll check in sometime soon.

 

So I´m checking in again ...

 

Today is May 1 in the morning. According to pretty much every one I spoke to yesterday and the day before, everything should be closed today apart from maybe restaurants and taxis. So that doesn´t really provide us with loads of to-do options. Anyway, we have generated a plan, so let´s give it a go ...

 

I arrived to Panama some 2 days ago. Was a great flight. Only found out at the airport that my flight to Panama City wasn´t reserved, but luckily enough there was still space on the flight, so they put me on it after just a bit of discussion and some smart ass comments of American Airlines´ staff about what should have been done, etc.

 

I got to downtown Panama at 2pm, met my friend Michal in the hostel and went straight off to the streets of the city. Surprisingly enough the place isn´t too big, so we´ve done with most of it in half a day. There is a place called Panama Viejo, which is a place destroyed by an English bloke called Henry Morgan (England owes quite a lot to these people as all the ruins to be found here are a legacy of their activities around the region few centuries back). Then there is Casco Viejo, which is also an old town, but the one which the English didn´t get a chance to destroy, so the buildings are still standing there and one can see quite nice plazas and views of the Pacific side of Panama Canal. And lastly there is the modern Panama, which greatly resembles of a typical US city - skyscrapers all over the place.

 

Yesterday - Apr 30 - was a day full of adventures. First we took this funny turisty train up to a town called Colon, which scores top marks in 3 categories in Panama - highest unemployment, poverty and crime. The trip was great. One can see a bit of jungle here, a bit of the canal there ... we also ran into a Czech lad, who happens to be the Czech ambassador in Mexico with his wife. Nice people to chat with and to get an interesting perspective of the region´s whereabouts.

 

In Colon we made sure we hold our bags well close and rather not walk too much and take a taxi instead. So we hired one taxi to take us to Gatun Locks, which is the Atlantic entry side of the Panama Canal with an elaborated hydraulic system to lift huge cargo boats up by some 29m to level them up with the surface of Gatun Lake where they continue down to the Pacific. This was really great!

 

From there we booked another taxi to a former American base called Sherman where we met this interesting Vietnam-veteran-investment-banker whose boat broke and he got stuck there for six weeks and had nothing to do but discover the jungle around the Shareman base. He gave us a great tour, explained all the facts about the place and was overall reall friendly. After that we went to a coastal town called Portobello with another 2 ruins, again destroyed by the pro-active Englsh pirates. And from there we returned back to Panama ...

 

Lots of interesting stuff we learnt about the locals yesterday, i.e. that nothing is free here and what seems to be a good business is to simply ´be helpul´. So if someone provides advice, you simply have to reward them with money. I kind of don´t appreciate the attitude of being seen as a wallet to these people - we´re expected to pay for absolutely everything or be told off ...

 

Anyway, time to discover more today ... I´ll check in again ... if you´re coming here from Michal´s blog, welcome ... and HASTA LUEGO ...