Feliz Navidad

Location: El Valle, Panama
Hours travelled by bus today: 8
Lunch: Carne Guisada, noodles, and grapefruit Fanta at a bus station ($3.75)
Dinner: Vegetable pizza with feta cheese in El Valle and an Balboa Cerveza ($6.50)

Well I didn´t get to write exactly on Christmas but this is close enough. I spent Christmas in a small town in the mountains called Boquete. Boquete is a wonderful town surrounded by mountains and home to some of the friendliest people in the world. Boquete is easily the safest place in Central America. Its name means both valley of flowers, and valley of rainbows. There was a rainbow everyday that we were here. I´ve never seen such pretty rainbows that stretch across the mountains! This was the only one I caught on camera on a rainy day. I don´t think it does it justice.

I actually had a really fun Christmas week! It all began a few days ago in Bocas Del Toro...

I really wanted to watch the Giants-Panthers game, so I started wandering around town poking my head into bars and restaurants trying to find it. No such luck. Apparently football here means a bunch of white guys kicking a ball. After 45 desparate minutes I made a last ditch effort and asked a 12 year old boy if he knew anywhere that plays American Football. He said to follow him, and I did.

Several blocks later, we reached a bar called ¨Bum Fucks.¨ The boy pointed inside. My eyes lit up as I gazed upon a whole bar full of drunk gringos yelling a sweet caucophony of profanities and sexual references at a television. Even more... Right on the wall in between the Panamanian flag and a Bourbon Street sign was a huge ¨Keep Austin Weird¨sticker. I gave the boy my spare change in my pocket, and in a moment of awe stepped inside.


I only had $3 in my pocket, and I explained the situation to the bartender, but not before drinking at least $8 worth of beer. It turns out he too was from Texas. He gave me a friendly, and all too familiar head-nod as he reached below the counter, cracked open another ice-cold Balboa Cerveza and set it on the soaking-wet coaster in front of me. I knew I was home. I ended up closing the bar down with a couple of guys from the states, and then afterwards we all hung around and listened to music and shared some laughs and a few more cervezas. The good news is that I will be back in the same town the night of the UT-Ohio game!

El Valle is the town I´m in right now. It´s a very sleepy town filled with coffee farms worked by the native indians here. This town is pretty, there is just nothing here. GAP is actually cutting this destination from the trip in 2009 and I´m cool with it. One more night here, then on to Panama City for two nights, and then its back to San Jose to start it all over again! Merry Christmas to everybody! I miss everybody back home!

All my holiday cheer!

Panamaniac

Location: Bocas Del Toro, Panama
Lunch: Sesame Thai Chicken Salad in Spicy Peanut Sauce ($5)
Dinner: Calamari in red sauce, garlic butter Conch with coconut rice, salad and fries. (comp)
Weather: Perfect
Beer: Panama Lager for $0.75... and its pretty damn good.

Dude... Panama rocks! Bocas Del Toro is a small archipelago consisting of 9 large islands and several dozen cayes. The food here is delicious and cheap and there are some of the friendliest people I have ever been around. It´s definitely an island culture out here. Slow taxis, slow food and even slower service.

We chartered a boat to take us on an island tour tomorrow. It was only $15 a person and we have a boat all to ourselves for nine hours. We´re going to check out some of the other islands, do a little snorkelling and find some deserted island to stop for a quick picnic.

I wish I could get some pictures up here, but its a little sketchy in these internet cafes around here. I tried at the place in San Jose and it took about 15 minutes to upload one picture.

Our group is really small... Only six people. Two Irish, one Danish guy, a dutch girl, an English girl, and an older man from North Carolina. Really nice people but holy shit they are boring! They are very outgoing, I mean they love to go out after dinner and have a few drinks so they are not totally deadbeat. It´s just that once we get to the bar its like pulling teeth trying to get a conversation going. Thank god the tour leader that I´m training with is really cool. Angie´s been doing this for about a year now and she´s been pretty fun to hang out with. These people are supposed to be on vacation... Why are they going to let their tour leaders have more fun than them?

On another note, I´m already starting to get pretty good at hustling restaurants for free meals. This is going to come in handy.

And last, a quick recap of my last week... Lots of hammocks, very few airconditioners, drinking above a sunken ship, staring at the mountains of Panama while laying on the beach, great seafood, better reggae, doubts about the Dallas Cowboys, and plenty of starfish.

Hopefully I can post something on Christmas, but if not I wish a happy holiday to everybody in back home!

Viva Panama!

Taxis taken today: 6
Sunburn: Peeling
Ipod: Ben Harper
Dinner: Curry Chicken in coconut milk at the best Asian restaurant in Costa Rica

Well, there has been a slight change of itinerary. One of the guys that was training with me didn't make it through, so the office had to shuffle around the schedule a little bit. NOW I'm shadow training a trip that runs from Costa Rica to Panama that ends on the 30th. I'm flying back that day to San Jose to run that exact same trip by myself. I am then supposed to do that Antigua-San Jose trip, but we'll see.

Normally this sort of this is perfect fodder to complain about your job. But you know what? I really don't have shit-else to do in Central America so I might as well just go along with it. Pura Vida!

I did have to go on a wild goose-chase to get my Yellow Fever vaccine. Apparently there is only one clinic in San Jose that has it, and then you have to go to the Ministry of Health to get the card that says you got the shot. You have to get the shot 10 days before crossing the border, but with a friendly smile and a little sweet-talking in broken spanish, it is not too hard to get the doctor to back-date the card.

I've come to find out that living anywhere is just like playing a game. You just have to learn the rules. That was an example of one of those rules that works out great. Some are very annoying, for example, you cannot buy contact solution in a store. You have to actually go to a pharmacy and order it, and pay triple the price. Life here is not hard, you just have to play the game... Everybody play the gaaaaaaaame! (Sorry, I was listening to Queen earlier)

4 hour bus ride to Puerto Viejo tomorrow. Warm sunny beaches and hot senioritas... and one skinny gringo.

I kissed a monkey... and I liked it.

I finished my training on the road today. We went from San Jose to La Fortuna for a couple days. There we met up with one of our local providers, Desafio. They have the coolest office and are some of the friendliest people around. They have a ton of stuff available to do, and all GAP tour leaders get to do them all for free! Basically, whenever I get to La Fortuna I don´t have to lift a finger. I just call Desafio and they do my whole job for me, and then let me tag along on all of their badass trips. We went on a hike around the Volcano Arenal, and then relaxed in the Baldi hot springs at the base of the volcano. At the hot springs they have quite possibly the most dangerous waterslide in the world, but damn it was fun. We also visited an animal sanctuary and I made friends with a spider monkey named Jessica.

Next we went to Monteverde. Its a small town in the mountains, and to get there you have go for about three hours by van-boat-van, and its all dirt roads up through the mountains. It was such a beautiful drive. The weather there is really harsh. It is cold, windy and raining most of the year. We met up with some more of our local hotel and tour operators and took a guided tour through the cloudforest.

Next stop was Quepos/Manuel Antonio. It was nice to be back! This was the city that I lived in for about a month. As we sat and enjoyed a peaceful lunch at our hotel, a sloth slowly climbed inside the restaurant. A guy from the restaurant started hitting it with a broom to get it to leave, but he just fell asleep while being beaten with a broom. It turns out that Sloths areunbelievably strong! It took three grown men - Peter, the Hotel Mangager, and I- to get this thing out of there without hurting it.

Today was the San Jose Festival of Lights. The whole city of San Jose was decorated in Christmas lights, and then there were fireworks all across town that rivaled anything that I have seen in the world. Tuanis!

I lucked out and got a sweet schedule. I have a week off before I start my first trip here in Costa Rica. Its the exact same route that I just ran. But... I found out my next assignment! I will be done with that trip on New Year's eve, and then I have three days off before I start route training. The route that I am training on is the Volcano Trail, a 22-day trip that runs through Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and then ends in Costa Rica. The best part? I will have already finished my first trip, which means my contract has officially started... Which means I get paid to follow around another tour leader, tour ruins, go whitewater rafting, snorkel on Roatan Island, and sample as many local beers as possible.

Costa Rica... Mountain Momma...Take me home...

Location : San Jose

Breakfast: Gallo Pinto, scrambled eggs, coffee

Lunch: Mashed potatoes, stewed chicken en salsa, rice ($5.00)

Dinner: Papa Johns delivered to hotel (3 large pizzas & 3liters of pepsi for $24)

This training has been HARD! And the job is going to be even harder! If anybody asks me what a tour leader does, the answer is... YES! Today was kinda fun though. We talked about different terms and conditions and how to handle different situations with passengers. It was funny though, the tour leader manual is very professionally written and the words masterfully crafted until it gets to the section on sexual relations between tour leaders and passengers. The first bullet just has big bold letters that says ¨Do NOT fuck the passengers!¨ We talked about all situations that could result from that for a good 20-30 minutes and heard some of Carolina´s stories. passengers with other passengers, leaders with passengers, pax with locals, leaders with locals... you name it!

I found out my assignment! Well... My first assignment. The high season is just starting, so the scheduling office had to make a bit of a scramble to get all of the routes covered. I leave tomorrow for a group training trip of the route I am going to start on. It is a nine-day tour in Costa Rica that starts in San Jose then goes to the town of La Fortuna, right by the volcano Arenal. We then ride on horseback to Monteverde where there is one of the nicest rainforests in all of Central America before going south to the Central Pacific to the beaches of Manuel Antonio and then back to San Jose.

After this training trip I get 9 days off until I run it solo on December 23. I will be spending Christmas in La Fortuna and New Years in San Jose. Thankfully, a few of my friends down here will also be in San Jose for New Years so we are definitely going to get together and party like a Tico rockstar! One of my friends down here has an apartment in San Jose and was kind enough to let me stay with her during my nine days off, or we might go spend a few days on the beach.

Estoy en mi Charco

Location : San Jose

Breakfast: Omelette, gallo pinto, papaya, mango, yucca, pineapple juice and coffee. (free at hotel)
Lunch: Fried fish, beans and rice, fried plantains, salad at Soda Rodriguez (about $5)
Dinner: Steak w onions, papas, salad at Soda Isabel (2600 colones)

I´m at the host hotel in San Jose with the other guides. I already love these people! There are 8 of us total - Four Americans, one russian living in Canada, one native Canadian, one French ex-patriot living in Nicaragua, and one native Costa Rican. Our first day of training was pretty easy, so we went to the store and bought some beer and hung out in the hotel garden drinking and playing guitar until we were too loud and they told us to leave. We went to the Cafe Mundo in Barrio Aranjuez in San Jose. We proceeded to drink more. Dinner ended with all of us singing REM songs while they were trying to close the place down. I already love the people I´m here with and some of us are talking about splitting an apartment in San Jose. We´ll see.

I started training yesterday. Holy hell there is a lot to do with this job. It definitely isn´t going to be easy. Today was brutal. We trained for eight hours on just doing the accounting, and we covered about half of it. This is definitely not a job for slacking - I cannot make any small mistakes - Only major psychotic distasters.

I will find out what country I will be starting working in this Friday. I just wish Friday would hurry up and get here!

They are taking really good care of me here. I stayed two nights in a hostel for $12 a night, and only bought a couple meals the two days I was there. Other than that I haven´t spent a dime of my own money. Great success!

My best wishes to everybody back in Texas, Chicago, West Virginia... Todo el mundo!

Buenos suertes y saludos!