Entries about panama

So it's been just under a week since I last posted a blog, a long time for me, but, it's not just laziness...

Since I last posted, I've travelled from The Galapagos to Guayaquil, from there to Cuenca, then back to Guayaquil on an amazingly beautiful bus ride through the clouds until I eventually caught a flight to Lima, Peru and finally now to Cusco Peru. That's a lot of travelling! In fact I've now travelled over 10,000 miles this trip!!

I've also been planning. I pretty much have the entire rest of the trip planned out to a degree now, ending on September 7th when I land at Gatwick. That will be about 4 months, which is enough. As I said before, 6 months was too long for me.

I've also had problems with my bloody laptop, which has taken to turning itself off (sort of) indiscriminately. At any point, sometimes before I've even had a chance to log in on the computer, the screen will go blank. It could go black, or white or now, sometimes blue. I have no idea, but it's a massive pain in the arse .I have found though that the power needs to be in all the time, or else it goes straight to the blank screen, and if I have a video running in the background, even YouTube, it tends not to do it. Although I have to reboot many times tonight just while writing this (and watching Ted Lasso)

An update for this, it looks like I need a replacement battery. They're not expensive, but I doubt I'll be able to sort it until I get home, I'll have to soldier on..

Amazing views as you enter into the clouds

My week was pretty much this:

Flew back to Guayaquil, stayed there for one day, left my water bottle in a cab (that's twice now I've lost the same bottle at £20 a pop)
Got a four hour bus to Cuenca, which was very nice and the hotel was great, so I stayed for four days instead of two.
Got a Covid test. Passed
Took the bus back to Guayaquil where I took a flight to Cusco Peru, via Lima and an 8 hour layover.

They had a working fountain in Cuenca! Most others I've seen have been turned off during the pandemic

Cusco (or Cuzco, it seems interchangeable) Is a lovely town in the Peruvian Andes, it's the Gateway to Machu Picchu, which is where I'm heading Wednesday, or at least starting my four day tour. Its surrounded by mountains, filled with lovely colonial buildings and some Aztec ruins, is pretty cheap and has great food. Although I did see this sign today outside a restaurant!

I always enjoy humanizing my food before I eat it

Of course, I din't eat guinea pig! Of course not! No, I ate alpaca! and it was lovely, and the alpaca burger, amazing chips, strange barley drink and an incredible passion fruit cheesecake came to less than £6, including tip! Although it was a bit off after seeing the people parading their alpacas for photos on the square. Sorry buddy, but you taste great!

Bloody lovely dinner!

I had given myself two days space to acclimatize to the altitude, but I needn't have bothered, I feel fine, so maybe tomorrow or Weds I'll take a tour somewhere, maybe the rainbow mountains.

Until then I've not much to add, although I have some thoughts..

It's cold now! It's 20 odd degrees here during the day, but down to as much as minus two at night. I don't have the clothes for this.

I haven't seen any pubs, in fact, I didn't see any in Cuenca Ecuador either. Perhaps it's not much of a thing in South America? I saw a couple in Quito

What is the point of cash machines issuing expensive notes if no one wants to take them? This has been a thing across my entire trip! Ive spent the last couple of months trying to use $20 notes and now the machines in Peru give out 200 Sol notes, about the equivalent of £40. No one wants them!! I could take out smaller amounts each time, but I get charged for using the bloody machine.

I am constantly pounced upon by people after money here. You can't walk 15 steps without someone offering you something. It's mostly fine and they're only trying to make a living, but some won't take no for an answer. There are many people here selling identical art from identical folders that they claim is original (it's not). I explained to one guy that I can't buy anything because then I'd have to drag it across two continents, but he wouldn't have it, then saw me again later and followed me around for ages again. There are people selling tours, selfie sticks, fruit, sweets, photos with alpacas all in one square. It's relentless. I'm very lucky to have my life, lucky to be here, I shouldn't moan, but it's a pain...

They REALLY like to dress their dogs up here. All the dogs look like Dodger from Oliver & Co, some even have little toys tied around their necks. It pretty funny

Right, I'll try to update this more this week and ahead, I have lots of plans to see lots of things in Peru, so I should have stuff to talk about!

I arrived at my hostel in Quito tonight at 10pm, some 3 hours after I was supposed to have arrived. How did this happen? Well let me tell you.

Most other parts of the travel were fine. I left Colon this morning, grabbed a bus to Panama city where I got the Metro train as close to the airport as I could, for some reason, neither of Panama City's two metro lines actually stop at the airport! I had to get the train, then jump in a minibus for a dollar to the airport.

The airport was great, only really two things of note. Firstly, the vaccinations worked a charm. Instead of paying out for a PCR test now twice, I have only had to show my vaccination details, saving me at least £100 - £150. Great.

Secondly, Panama City is the only airport I've been to where they don't sell cigarettes in the duty free! These weren't for me, I don't smoke (more on that in 10 days), but I was looking to see how much they were for friends. Nope, none at all that I could find. I looked online and apparently they don't sell them there!

Anyway, on to the flight, nice little 90 min trip. All was good until at about 300 ft the pilot decides that it's not safe to land. This is now the third time this has happened to me in three years! First in Istanbul where the pilot pulled up ten feet from the ground and then in 'Sarf'end a couple of years back where we had to loop round as he arrived at the landing strip too fast.

Beautiful Ecuador

This time was pretty scary though. Ecuador is stunning from above, low clouds over volcanoes and mountains, deep cracks in the ground where earthquakes have pulled the country apart. It looks amazing, but when you want to land on a runway 3000 meters up in the mountains, it can get a bit hairy!

Out the window photography

We flew around for about 30 mins after that, when the pilot told us that we were being diverted to Guayaquil, a town some 250 miles SE. This much to the annoyance of the old boy sat 2 seats away from me. We landed there fine, refueled, waited for some news or idea if we'd be staying there the night or going back. After a while apparently the wind died down and we flew back, landing in the dark with no issues at all.

I don't know what part of my body is in this cack handed shot!

It wasn't the scariest flight I've ever been on, I'll give that to the Istanbul flight, but it was up there! Any safe landing is a good one, but three near missed in three years I could do without!

Oh P.S! Quito is bloody cold!! Back to jeans tomorrow!

Just so you know, I've been writing this (or not) for three days, so when I talk about yesterday, I'm actually talking about Saturday 26th June. I have been a mixture of tired, travelling and lazy. Apologies

So yesterday was the craziest of days yet.

I had decided to hike to a series of waterfalls with one of the women from my hostel, Anita and we were ready to set off at about 9:30. A couple also staying at the hostel offered us a lift to the start as it was a long way past the bus stop to the waterfalls. Unfortunately we accepted.

Some cute little Panamanian girls we met that just live in these stone houses with no windows

The couple are born again Christians. I have no idea to which particular denomination they belong (I suspect none), but their beliefs also include:

The Earth is flat
The moon, sun, stars are all made up, put there by Christ as a test or something, I don't know why he's being an arse about it.
So no moon landing or any other space stuff.
The outline of a bird that can be seen from above in some mountain range is what's left over from an actual 150 mile long bird from the past
Basically, all conspiracies that you have heard of are real and anything that randomly resembles anything else is actually that.

This was ok I guess when you could walk away, but when we were stuck in a car with them, there was no escaping the idiocy. When we stopped to take a look at an interesting rock face, we were told that all rocks, apart from volcanic rocks, are the leftover muscles of giants - The Devils Tower in Wyoming is the ankle of a giant. The Giant's Causeway? More giants. It's interesting that the only rock that isn't giants is the one that you see formed in front of you... Although how they explain tectonic plate shifts I don't know, probably more giants.

No rock, remains of a giant, or some other insane ramblings

We eventually escaped and started our walk, but this nonsense went on all week, with them trying to convert new arrivals and trying to convince me that lunar eclipses and horizons aren't real. They failed in all of it.

The first waterfall, where we escaped

Anyway, back to the walk. After losing Mr and Mrs Munchhausen at the first waterfall we continued up through the rain forest climbing up and over rocks, up ropes and across rivers, there were three more waterfalls, all more impressive than the last, they were truly beautiful and well worth the effort, although as you could guess by now if you've been reading my blogs, it's usually around this point where it starts raining hard and this was no different.

Waterfall no 2

The walk to the waterfalls had been mostly uphill, so getting back was a little easier, although it was a lot slippier and we both fell a few times. We were absolutely soaked though as we left with a good couple of hours walk along the road ahead of us. Anita suggested that we ask a guy who had walked in front of us if we could get a ride into town, she's Polish, apparently it's a thing. Before we had a chance though, he offered us a ride! We just had to wait for the other two people he'd offered a free ride to!

Waterfall 3, the weather is getting worse!

What a gent! His name was Frank, a Cuban who had moved to Panama a decade ago and apparently just gave people rides? On the way to town, he surprised us again by pulling into a coffee house and buying us all coffee! It doesn't get much better than this!

Or so we thought until he invited us all to his house for dinner! It was incredible and crazy.. We'd met the guy an hour before and here we were contemplating going to his house for dinner. We were fairly sure this would be some kind of Murder House, but I was bored of cooking my own pasta every night, so I accepted. After a quick stop to buy a huge piece of meat, and another to let us change our wet clothes, we arrived at Franks house and just WOW. It was huge! After we were shown around the place and his two enormous gardens we chatted and drank, got to know each other and finally ate what tasted a lot like perfect beef and hopefully not the remains of the people invited there before.

The final waterfall from the front and back! Aren't you lucky!!

It was a fantastic night. One that I can only imagine happening while travelling and even then very rarely. You'd rarely even hear of someone giving strangers a lift in the rain, let alone buying them coffee or inviting them into their home! But six people from five different countries with varying levels of English and Spanish spent the evening laughing and singing and dancing like we'd all known each other for years. I'll never forget it.

First getting to know each other in the coffee house

Finally, today is day 40 of this trip. on day 40 of the last attempt, I arrived back in Gravesend beaten by the stupid virus, so every day from today is officially the longest I have travelled for. I very much doubt I'll be out here for a full 6 months, it just seems too long and the price of flights back to Costa Rica from Peru are about the same as a flight back to the UK, so I suspect I'll return to the UK from there, travel conditions permitting, so I think I'm around a third of the way through the trip, but who knows at this point!! If the last week has shown me anything, it's that anything can happen.

I seem to have found myself at yet another turning point after making yet another stupid mistake.

I'm definitely finding this trip harder than last year's Thailand attempt. Whether this is down to the weather not being as great, or everything costing more or if there is actually less to do here I don't really know, but everything here feels like it takes more effort.

Now I find myself in Panama, a perfectly nice country similar in many ways so far to Costa Rica, with another four weeks remaining here and thinking that half that would have been enough. I had to book a flight out before I entered the country and I booked 5 weeks, mostly because that was the cheapest option, but I sat here for hours last night trying to work out where to go next, with little success. Where interested me? Where could I get to easy enough? Where was affordable? I couldn't find anywhere and have ended up booking an extra 3 nights at this hostel, which is fine, it's nice here and there's still some stuff I would like to do, but it's really just about my not knowing where to go next.

Apparently a very poisonous caterpillar. I always wonder where all the caterpillars went from when we were kids? There were loads then!

At this point my options are to head up to the Caribbean islands in the North, down to the Pacific beaches or West to the Panama City area. As I fly out of Panama City, it seems natural to do that last so I'm guessing I'll head either North or South. I'll just book a few days so if I don't like the place I can leave, if it's great I can always stay longer.

Boquete (pronounced Bo-ket-ay) is a nice little town with lots of ex-pats around, Panama's only volcano a few miles away and lots of jungle around. My hostel is great, pretty cheap and there's still some hikes around I'd like to do, so staying another three nights worked out fine.

Coffee beans, not yet ripe, those are red

Today I went on a tour of a local coffee plantation. After a fairly hefty walk up there It was great! very interesting, the hosts really friendly and funnily enough, loads of free coffee to drink and take back with me. I even got to try the Geisha coffee, which everyone goes crazy for around here. A kilo once sold for $1000+ on auction, but they were selling it for $30 a pound, so I don't know who was paying that. It's nice, tastes like someone mixed tea and coffee together with some fruit juice.

They sort the beans out by hand, four tonnes a year of them!

I was shown the whole growing and picking process, although it was out of season, so there was nothing to be grown or picked, but I then got to roast my own beans to my taste which I then ground to take with me! Along the way being told lots of facts about coffee such as how it's mostly cut with other products and the smell from any coffee sold without a valve in the bag (so most coffee) has likely been added chemically and is mostly the cause of acid reflux.

Beetles eat coffee beans, ducks eat beetles! This I did not know.

Then another worker came along, and showed me different ways of making coffee. Happily, I've mostly been doing it right. It was very interesting and far less poncey than you'd imagine lol. Overall it was a great day and the owner even gave me a lift back to my hostel, which was pretty nice of her.

All the coffee types and ways of pouring. The Geisha coffee is in the front in the odd looking jug

Tomorrow I'm going to some ex-pat thing with the owners of the hostel and then hopefully I'll hike most of the weekend, maybe today I'll figure out where to go next!

My coffee, which I roasted, ground and even glued the packet! Sealed in a packet with a valve to let the carbon dioxide out, but no oxygen in. Very important it turns out.

I have no photos! I have done nothing now for 2 days!!

I was expecting to be in Boquete tonight, a small town in the Panamanian highlands on the edge of another volcano, instead I'm spending another night in this windowless room in a mediocre hostel on the edge of a mediocre city. That may be a bit harsh, maybe.

This turn of events started last night when I was told at 5 pm that the city goes into lockdown today. For one day. Apparently they have a load of little rules about travel that affect different people, such as men and women being allowed to travel on different days and foreigners being allowed to travel at certain times depending on the last number of their passport. Stuff like that, all confusing! But most importantly, no one is allowed to travel on a Sunday.

Quite how this stops the spread of Covid is beyond me, I figure people just travel on other days, but they seem to be doing pretty well with numbers, so who am I to argue? I just wish someone had told me when I booked this hostel to leave on a Sunday, or when I booked the next place actually for a Sunday!

To be fair to both hostels, they dealt with it pretty well, were both very accommodating, letting me stay an extra day here and moving my time in Boquete back a day, so no harm there. As far as I know though, I'm here in this hostel completely on my own, the manager gave me a key to the kitchen and her number for emergencies yesterday. All pretty easy.

The unexpected consequences came today.

After spending all day just watching movies and reading, I decided to go out to eat. I'd been to the Supermarket yesterday, but only bought enough food for one day as I expected then to be off this morning. I had enough for a bowl of noodles, but that was about it. Looking on Tripadvisor, there seemed to be a good few restaurants up on the main highway about half a mile away, so I thought I'd try there. As I arrived where the restaurants were supposed to be, I noticed that no only were they nowhere to be found, but all the other businesses were closed, however I spotted a McDonald's along the road some, so headed there. Unfortunately I was told when I entered that they were only open for deliveries!

Determined to find anything at this point, I checked Google Maps for an open Supermarket and headed towards the same place I shopped yesterday. About a mile or so away from my hostel, it was at this point that it started raining. Of course it did.

It was a bloody great storm, that's still going on now two hours later. It had some crazy thunder and lightening to go with it as well. I headed for the supermarket, getting shelter from overhanging roofs where I could and made my way there slowly, getting pretty wet along the way. When I finally arrived, it was of course, shut. It was supposed to close at 9 pm, some two hours later, but I guess everything is closed today as I saw nothing open at all on my 5 km journey. I made my way back, now with no shelter at all, just pretty much getting soaked.

My dinner tonight was spaghetti. No meat, no veggies, but a sauce, which is better than nothing. I also emancipated two slices of bread from the kitchen, but today has been pretty pasta heavy, I've had just that and about 10 cups of coffee today. The cat here fared better than me, I saw him with a lizard in his mouth earlier, at least he had some meat.

Tomorrow, Panama returns to normal. I don't know if this was a one off thing or weekly, although I'll likely be in another part of the country next week so they may have their own rules. At least now I've learned that these rules exist and I can work around them. It's all part of the journey I guess!