As I mentioned in my last entry, I was thankfully able to convince Lauren, Ellis and Allison to come and explore this unique country with me. In David to start, I showed them around UNACHI and Casa Esperanza introducing them to most everyone I work with. I get a lot of "Hey, there's a gringo" looks walking by myself around UNACHI, so imagine the stares we got as I toured our group of 4 gringos around (including 1 blonde). To give you a better visual, it felt kind of like a mixture between walking down the red carpet and the arrival of the martians' scene in "Mars Attacks."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMdC45S79uQ
Casa Esperanza was great as the kids there had been looking forward to my guests coming for weeks by this point. We had a blast there and they were able to see how much fun and energetic the children are. The kids just bombarded them with questions from the moment we stepped in and Lauren, Ellis and Allison, who can speak a combined 15 words or so of Spanish, would do their best at playing charades in order to understand as well as ask questions/convey information back to them.
The next day we began the most beautiful part of our trip as we headed to our private villa in Bocas del Toro. We stayed at Red Frog Beach, and anyone wanting to get an incredible combination of endless beach and rain forests, this is one place to check out.
Our next journey was to Volcan to hike a specific trail that was supposedly the most beautiful in all of Central America according to one guide book. Well, the day could be seen as successful or unsuccessful depending on how you look at it. I think it's fair to say that we all ended up seeing it as a memorable day rather than "successful or not." We spent the morning taking the bus to Cerro Punta and getting off where our bus "helper" told us the entrance to the National Park was. Weird thing about that was the fact that there was not a single sign informing us that we were in or entering a national park. Red flag. Yet we carried on blindly. After an hour or so of hiking we came to a fork that split into 3 directions. Just what we were hoping for...Walked the first one for 10 min..dead end. Walked the second one that led into the mountains until we decided that was not what the trail was supposed to be like. The third way definitely wasn't it either, but we decided to go a little ways on it anyway. We ended up spotting a tin house in the middle of nowhere with two men hanging out on the porch. Desperate and frustrated I approached them and asked about the trail. The one man said we were in the wrong area and had to go back to the main road and take a bus farther down....are we serious. Luckily this man offered to drive us back to the main road which I'm sure gave them something to talk about for the next few years. After tipping him we got on the next bus. We finally reached the bottom of the area we were looking for (as there was a sign, naturally), but still had a very long and hard uphill hike awaiting us just to get to the rangers station/beginning of the actual trail. We hadn't yet eaten our packed lunches and it was already approaching 2:00--getting late for a 5 hour hike. That's where Hitchhiking Part II comes in. The 4 of us got into the trailer of a truck heading up and, thinking we would get a short lift to help us out, it soon became clear these guys were taking us to the absolute top. This path got rockier and rockier, steeper and steeper, narrower and narrower the higher we progressed--in other words, it was getting more and more obvious that this was not a path meant for cars. After 25 or so minutes of this flying and rolling around in the back, we made it to our destination. All in all, we ended up doing a small portion of the trail which turned out to be pretty uninspiring, but as Hannah Montana puts it: It's the climb.
The last few days were spent in Panama City and we were exposed to some great restaurants and areas as well as a very unique and interesting tour to the Embera Indian Village. Amazing to see a community of people live so plainly yet seem to be so happy.
I had to leave a day early unfortunately and head to Uruguay for a Fulbright Enhancement Seminar. (I know, tough life huh?) Well, the fresh air that hit me stepping out of that airport was something I haven't felt in months...and I loved it. It's winter in Uruguay and can't exactly say I had a winter wardrobe prepared. Really didn't matter though as I was basking in the coolness knowing that soon, it would be back to the stifling humidity.
Anyways, the trip was wonderfully planned and led by the Uruguayan commission. It was a perfect balance between work and presenting, learning from a Senior English Language Fellow, sightseeing as a group all around Montevideo, as well as free time to explore on our own. As great as it all was, the last day at Estancio Siglo XX was a paradise on Earth. Green land until the eye can see, horseback riding, llamas, bottomless glass of wine, an amazing lunch, soccer field, hammocks, 70 degrees with a slight breeze. I think every one of us at some point in the day plotted a way for us to never leave. It was a fitting end to an unforgettable few weeks here in Latin America.
Happy 4th of July everyone!
Tomalo con calma.
