Hi guys... I hope you aren't too cross with me since I've not been updating so regularly since I met up with Sam. I've been packing my days full of activities and time has been scarce. Thankfuly we've both got significant sunburns and need to catch up on the great indoorse so I have plenty of time for this today. So then, what have we been up to? Well, we hooked up with Sam's sister Alex and her boyfriend John and headed down to the Bocas del Torro islands in Panama. Another country to add to my list.
Alex is an energetic type... she's been in Costa Rica for a month now to improve her spanish a bit (not that it's lacking in any way) and spent a week on this very island that we're at now. She was living with her cousin Tanya and Tanya's bf Gabriel. Since we've got the local's perspective we got into a sweet vacation routine very quickly. First thing we did was to rent a cool cottage on the other side of the street from Tanya's home. It's $40 a night and has a living room, kitchen, and a huge bedroom all painted blue and yellow with lots of beach themed bickabrack all over the place. It also came furnished with a could beach cruiser bicycles with big baskets on the front. Super fly indeed.
The first day there we spent the whole day at the Aqua lounge seen in the pic above. It's a bar built on a pier and we spent the time swimming, drinking, and playing dominos/uno. Being the pale ghost that I am I naturally got a little burnt on this first day in the sun, but that didn't discourage us from spending the second day on the beach. We chartered a boat out to a small island that happens to be a national park. I set up a hammok and we enjoyed a cooler of beer, rum based cocktails, and lunch meats. You can see in the picture how low I set up that hammock and with some inclament weather rolling in we started getting big waves and rain after a couple hours and I started getting wet from above and below. After that we took the boat to some other dock based bar on a remote island and spent the afternoon snorkeling.
Panama strikes me as an odd place. The first thing you notice when you come into the country is that it's primarily non hispanic unlike everywhere else that I've been. It's mostly populated by black people which was a great relief to me beacuse I finally got some real reagea music instead of reageatone and there is a lot more english on the signs. Tragically the food is pretty weak, but that's ok since I've got a kitchen and can take on some seafood + garlic dishes whenever I want. Another odd thing here is that US currency is used. The govt prints some immitation quarters and dimes but the bills are all from back home. All costs are rounded to nickels so pennies are not used at all; I think that we could learn something from that. Of course Panama has
a similar history to the rest of Central America. Chiquita bananas owns most of the land, the US army and CIA shoot anyone or any governments that object to their not paying propper taxes or wages, and then there's the whole canal business. I had heard that the US gave it back to the Panamanian people after their lease expired last year and I thought that surely this would be a good thing for Panama. It turns out that the canal cannot fit the newest classes of ocean cargo ships and must be made wider. The US wisely gave the canal back to Panama under the 'agreement' that Panama will do all the work and foot all the costs of such a venture. So the people got screwed again. I've been reading a book by Gore Vidal that has an essay advocating the disolusion of the Federal Government. I'm starting to see at least some sense in that.
Today is our last full day in Bocas and I think the plan is to celebrate Gabriel's birthday at some restaurant that his friend owns. Should be a good time if I can get over the extreme sugar hangover that I recieved last night. We threw a small party at my cabin where we made Pina Coladas from fresh ingrediants and I also made Bananas Foster with ice cream. I fear that this could be my last post as tomorrow we're doing the LONG trip back to San Jose to catch my early flight home on Thursday. After that it's back to work and I gotta be honest... i'm really craving some steaming hot code!
Hi guys... I hope you aren't too cross with me since I've not been updating so regularly since I met up with Sam. I've been packing my days full of activities and time has been scarce. Thankfuly we've both got significant sunburns and need to catch up on the great indoorse so I have plenty of time for this today. So then, what have we been up to? Well, we hooked up with Sam's sister Alex and her boyfriend John and headed down to the Bocas del Torro islands in Panama. Another country to add to my list.
Alex is an energetic type... she's been in Costa Rica for a month now to improve her spanish a bit (not that it's lacking in any way) and spent a week on this very island that we're at now. She was living with her cousin Tanya and Tanya's bf Gabriel. Since we've got the local's perspective we got into a sweet vacation routine very quickly. First thing we did was to rent a cool cottage on the other side of the street from Tanya's home. It's $40 a night and has a living room, kitchen, and a huge bedroom all painted blue and yellow with lots of beach themed bickabrack all over the place. It also came furnished with a could beach cruiser bicycles with big baskets on the front. Super fly indeed.
The first day there we spent the whole day at the Aqua lounge seen in the pic above. It's a bar built on a pier and we spent the time swimming, drinking, and playing dominos/uno. Being the pale ghost that I am I naturally got a little burnt on this first day in the sun, but that didn't discourage us from spending the second day on the beach. We chartered a boat out to a small island that happens to be a national park. I set up a hammok and we enjoyed a cooler of beer, rum based cocktails, and lunch meats. You can see in the picture how low I set up that hammock and with some inclament weather rolling in we started getting big waves and rain after a couple hours and I started getting wet from above and below. After that we took the boat to some other dock based bar on a remote island and spent the afternoon snorkeling.
Panama strikes me as an odd place. The first thing you notice when you come into the country is that it's primarily non hispanic unlike everywhere else that I've been. It's mostly populated by black people which was a great relief to me beacuse I finally got some real reagea music instead of reageatone and there is a lot more english on the signs. Tragically the food is pretty weak, but that's ok since I've got a kitchen and can take on some seafood + garlic dishes whenever I want. Another odd thing here is that US currency is used. The govt prints some immitation quarters and dimes but the bills are all from back home. All costs are rounded to nickels so pennies are not used at all; I think that we could learn something from that. Of course Panama has 
a similar history to the rest of Central America. Chiquita bananas owns most of the land, the US army and CIA shoot anyone or any governments that object to their not paying propper taxes or wages, and then there's the whole canal business. I had heard that the US gave it back to the Panamanian people after their lease expired last year and I thought that surely this would be a good thing for Panama. It turns out that the canal cannot fit the newest classes of ocean cargo ships and must be made wider. The US wisely gave the canal back to Panama under the 'agreement' that Panama will do all the work and foot all the costs of such a venture. So the people got screwed again. I've been reading a book by Gore Vidal that has an essay advocating the disolusion of the Federal Government. I'm starting to see at least some sense in that.
Today is our last full day in Bocas and I think the plan is to celebrate Gabriel's birthday at some restaurant that his friend owns. Should be a good time if I can get over the extreme sugar hangover that I recieved last night. We threw a small party at my cabin where we made Pina Coladas from fresh ingrediants and I also made Bananas Foster with ice cream. I fear that this could be my last post as tomorrow we're doing the LONG trip back to San Jose to catch my early flight home on Thursday. After that it's back to work and I gotta be honest... i'm really craving some steaming hot code!
1 comment:
Don't you miss it?
void vacation(){
int i;
(for i = 0; i < 30; i++){
Have fun
}
Back to work!
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