Adventures of the spade # 4

Here´s the spade with a couple of real Panama hats. The type everyone thinks of as Panamas are actually from Ecuador and you pretty much never see them here. I believe they only got their name because they were worn by Ecuadorians working on the construction of the canal. Or something like that! Anyway, these are much more typical of the hats worn by Panamanians.

Rachel x

Birthday zip-line tour

I knew it would be a bit strange to be so far away from home for my birthday and that I would miss my friends and family a lot, but it actually turned out to be great fun! The weekend was very active with a long trek on Saturday followed by dinner and drinks with friends and Friday was a real adrenaline fix! We went with Kary and David from our class on a canopy tour up in the mountains around Boquete. As you can see from the video it was a series of very high, very long and, at times, very fast zip-lines!



I somehow ended up being the first to set off on the first line and I was pretty terrified, but as soon as I left the first platform, I loved it! As well as being totally exhilarating, it was very beautiful.





The platforms are incredibly high and the forest is stunning with huge old trees and sparkling rivers and waterfalls, so the views are spectacular.



One of the final lines is 400m long and crosses the valley you can see above. It was definitely the best part and is the one that you can see in the video.



Here´s me waiting for Rob to complete the final gentle descent to the end of the tour. We had a fantastic time and it was certainly a birthday I won´t forget!

Rachel x

Boquete 2

We´ve been in Boquete for 3 weeks now. We´ve really enjoyed being settled in one place for a good while, and we´ve made some real friends here. Obviously our Spanish lessons have taken up a lot of our time, but we´ve found time to do plenty of other stuff. So here we present a roundup of our time in Boquete. The most exciting thing we did though deserves a post of its own, which is coming up from Rachel soon.



Last weekend was the festival of independence - from Columbia. There´s an even bigger celebration for the indepence from Spain later in the month on the 28th November, making it a busy time for fiesta. Unfortunately, it rained pretty heavily for the parades, but they carried on regardless (including Antonio, from our host family) .



We took a trip to an open garden, "mi jardin es su jardin", just up the road from where our host family live. It´s full of interesting plant life and questionable sculpture.



Possibly Rach´s favourite activity from the last few days was a visit to a local wildlife rescue centre. They receive exotic animals from all over the place: some are left on the doorstep after the owner no longer wants them as a pet; some are seized (they are licensed to do so by the Panamanian government) from mistreatment or illegal sale. They currently have a baby sloth:



I think Rach wanted to take her home!



There are lots of rescued birds, including a pair of Toucans. When they came to the centre, they were babies. Their beaks were bigger than their bodies, apparently! Interestingly, toucans prefer to hop than fly. They will hopefully be released into the wild soon.



If you wake at night in Panama to the sound of feet on your tin roof, it´s probably a kinkajou. Don´t be scared - just look how cute they are! This one was very sleepy, after a group of schoolchildren had been visiting earlier in the day.



There are also a pair of ocelot cubs, one of whom is named Amador, after he was rescued from the Amador causeway, a shopping centre (formerly the Fort Amador US army base) in Panama City where someone was offering him for sale as a Jaguar cub. They´re being looked after with the minimum of human contact, with the hope that they can be released into the wild when they´re ready.



The best bit for us was this beatiful margay called Lottie. She´s very tame (too much so to be released, unfortunately). She was kept in a tiny cage by a family who bought her as a cub but tired of her when she started biting and scratching. You can see her tail is kinked from the confinement, which is not normal for a margay. She loves fishing, so the chap who runs the centre (a master stonemason by trade) built a river into her enclosure for her to catch fish herself.



The largest birds being cared for are the incredible (and endangered) Hyacinth Macaws. This one, Precious, is absolutely stunning. She´s a good 30 inches from head to tail!



This is the view of Boquete from a viewpoint above the town.



Lots of strawberries are farmed around the area. There are special strawberry dessert places around selling homemade ice cream and milkshakes. Here I am enjoying a sundae.



One of the nicest things to do around Boquete is to walk the Quetzal Trail. The (rather muddy) route runs through national park where the Resplendant Quetzal is protected. We didn´t get to see any, but we heard their flute-like call several times.



We went with our classmates, David and Kary. It was tough-going, very slippery and steep in places with a river to ford. We set off soon after dawn to give us the best chance of avoiding the rain. As it happened, it was dry all day (something of a minor miracle for Boquete)!



Our early start was rewarded with some beautiful weather to show off the amazing scenery at its best.



Rob

La familia Bell-Miranda

As promised, here is some info on our lovely Panamanian family. We´ve been staying with them for 2 and a half weeks now and they´ve been fantastic; helping us out with our rudimentary Spanish and making us feel at home right from the start.



Guillermo and Nivia are our host parents. Nivia is really patient with us, speaking slowly and clearly and has a great sense of humour. We´ve spent some fun evenings watching films with her while she laughs her socks off! Guillermo is really kind and helpful. He runs a farm up in the mountains which grows prize-winning coffee (the best in Panama!) and vegetables. Also in this picture is their cute little dog (you´d love her, Hayley!) Fergie.



This is the abuela (grandma) of the family, Doña Tomasa. She is incredible, working from the crack of dawn until everyone else has gone to bed. She never stops cleaning or cooking and she always goes out of her way to help us out. Her husband, Guillermo senior, also lives with us. He´s 94 but still enjoys talking to us about our life back in England. Here they are together:





This is Nivia with her daughter Stephanie (18). She is at university in David and also works at a local hotel. She´s very nice and lively.



Antonio is the youngest of the three children at 16. He is such a lovely boy, always really polite and an excellent cook! He´s very creative is doing really well at school.



This photo was taken on a night out a couple of weeks ago with Mitchell, the oldest of the family. We had a lot of fun with him and his friends and it turns out he speaks really good English! Of course it´s strictly back to Spanish in the house. This holiday weekend he´s been out 4 or 5 nights in a row so he´s certainly showing us how to celebrate Panamanian style!



Last week Guillermo took us up to his farm. It was a pretty steep journey in his pick-up, bumping over pot holes in the road as we climbed up to the highest farm in Panama! It´s about 1600m above sea level so the views are stunning. Here he is in amongst the green pepper plants.



We were lucky enough to visit on a day when they were harvesting some of the peppers and taking them to market. Although we had to leave home at about 6.30 in the morning, we just about managed to gather enough energy to help out with the cleaning process!



Here are some of the peppers cleaned, packed and ready to go!



A large part of why we´ve enjoyed Boquete so much is due to the Bell Miranda family. They´ve given us a home and made us feel like part of the family. I´ll be here with them for my birthday, which will be great. It´ll be hard to leave!

Rachel x

¡Habla Ya!

As mentioned in Rach´s previous post, we´re taking some Spanish classes for a few weeks in Boquete. We were feeling like our beginner´s Spanish wasn´t really enough so we had a look (Google) for a Spanish school in Panama. Luckily, we found Habla Ya, which has turned out to be a fantastic place to learn. We´re in a small class (4 people including us) with a great teacher, Janeth. It´s intense; 4 hours a day entirely in Spanish. It´s massively improved our Spanish though and we´re definitely enjoying it. We get more than enough chance to practise at home with the host family with whom we´re staying (post on them coming up!). We´re even managing to watch and (mostly) understand some TV, e.g. "Los Simpson"!



These two jokers, Carlos and Julio, actually set up the school. They have kept us entertained while studying with poker games, meals out and nights out in bars, one of which was particularly hectic (see below...).



The staff are great and there's a very sociable atmosphere between the students. Our classmates are Kary, from the USA, and David, from the US Virgin Islands. We're all at about the same level and keen to join in in class, which makes it a lot more fun and effective.



On Saturday last we went out for a meal with some staff & students from the school for a meal, followed by some drinks and dancing at a couple of local bars. We had an ace time, just check out the photos...




We enjoyed the first week so much that we decided to definitely do three weeks altogether. That means we'll be here in Boquete for Rach's birthday, which will be fun! We'll be sad to leave.

Rob

Boquete

After over a month of travelling, we decided it was time to stop for a while and take the time to really get to know one place in Panama. We are now taking two weeks of intensive Spanish lessons in Boquete in the Chiriqui highlands. Although we are getting plenty of opportunity to speak Spanish in Central America, we thought we could do with some more lessons to give us extra confidence. More about classes later, but first Boquete. It is a truly beautiful spot high up in the mountains, making it cool and fresh; a welcome change from the heat and humidity of Bocas. However, the weather here has its drawbacks too; every morning is clear and bright but by midday the clouds hang low over the mountains and the rain begins. As we sit here now, there is the usual afternoon downpour outside, which will probably last for hours. Luckily we have lessons in the afternoons so it's bearable!



Can't complain too much about the climate here, the regular rain and sunshine means that everything is lush and there is life everywhere. Flowers like this gorgeous orchid grow in hedges and gardens and the mountains are carpeted with cloud forest.



We spent a lovely (relatively rain free!) day walking in the mountains near the Rio Caldera. It's a perfect river with clear sparkling water, waterfalls and rapids. It's best to see it this time of year, too, because the rainy season means it's at its full force.




There's a large idigenous population in this area, largely Ngöble-Bugle people who live high up in the mountains in wooden houses or communes with several small dwellings grouped together. The women wear lovely embroidered dresses, as you can see on this little girl, and the children are very inquisitive and friendly.





Because of the altitude - most of the farms are around 1500m above sea level - and the climate, Boquete produces the finest coffee in Panama (some say the world!). During our stay here, we're living with a fantastic Panamanian family who have a coffee farm (more about them in a later post).




We're really enjoying a bit of routine and stability here and are in no rush to get back on the road yet. Boquete feels like home for now and we're thinking of staying for an extra week!

Rachel x