I am in Boquete, in the Chiquiri province of Panama. I´m not too keen on spending much time on the internet while I´m here, but it pours every afternoon and an internet cafe is a good place to hide from the rain. The weather here is not actually as bad as I was expecting. It does rain in the afternoon, but only for an hour or two, and the mornings are sunny. (Well, I am generalizing based on two days in Panama, but whatever.)
My plane was delayed for 5 hours in San Jose, so I spent 11 hours in the airport. The only dining options there are Poppa John´s pizza and burger king, and when our place was late, the airline brought us some delicious Costa Rican food from… Denny´s. From what I saw in the airport, I am happy that I decided to come to Panama and not to Costa Rica. I got into Panama City at 3AM, went straight to my hotel, and passed out. Yesterday I spent the day on the bus (8 hours) to David city, where I checked into the Purple House Hostel and went out for dinner with a nice Canadian guy from Ottawa.
Already I´m being pretty careless about eating and drinking. The water is (according to all guidebooks) treated and safe to drink outside of Bocas del Toro, so I´ve been drinking straight from the tap. But I´ve been eating street food and last night I had a blended strawberry slushie. In other words, a rousing game of ¨how long till I get diarrhea. I´ve convinced myself that I have bowels of steel since going to Africa, but hopefully I don´t wake up tomorrow realizing otherwise.
So far Panama has been beautiful and a nice place to travel. But it´s hard for me to say for sure yet, since I spent most of yesterday sleeping on the bus to recover from the long trip from Canada. I am now in Boquete, which is a town in the highlands above David. The trip up here was awesome – it was in a schoolbus, music was blaring and we were going SO FAST. Boquete is a little too developed for my taste (it reminds me of Jasper in Alberta) but the climate is cool, the scenery is gorgeous, and accommodation is cheap. There´s also a lot of nice hiking and other activities to do in the area. I´m meeting my friend John from Queen´s in about an hour (hopefully) and I am excited to have someone to go on adventures with.
Hasta Luego.
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