Break out the booty wax, it´s a Saturday night in Boquete!

After recovering from Kuna Yala, Panamá City, and Gamboa, a group of us decided to head to Boquete for our free days. (Yes, the last three excursions were for school.) We hiked out of El Copé on Tuesday, March 2nd and caught a bus to the entrada at the Pan-American highway. We figured that it would be easy to catch a bus from there to Davíd, and then to Boquete. We were wrong. After sitting at the stop for over two hours, Nancy, Maeve, Denyse, Kelly, Andrea and I were quite frustrated at the lack of available buses. So we hopped on over to the gas station, bought a bottle of Abuelo, and started our vacation early. One hour later we were in much better spirits, and then, as if from nowhere, a glorious double decker bus for Davíd opened its doors for us, and we jumped in. We went up top, walked to the back to sit down, and miraculously three other students from our group were sitting right next to us. From then on out we knew it was going to be a good trip. We had about 5 hours until David, but it turned out to be a very good bus ride indeed.

Because of the late start we didn´t arrive in Davíd until around 10pm, and by then all the buses for Boquete had stopped running. Sadly, I was the best spanish speaker out of our group so I poorly attempted to arrange a ride with another bus driver, but he wouldn´t accept anything less than $70 to drive us about 45 minutes. Luckily I found another guy who offered to take us for $36 and we were on our way. To further show our lack of planning, we didn´t have the names of any places to stay in Boquete, so upon arrival we walked around the town looking for places open past 11. Once again, as if from nowhere, someone else from our group spotted us walking from his hotel patio and told us what places were available to stay. We had to split up, so Denyse, Maeve and I got dorm beds at an awesome little hostel named Mamallena and everyone else got a hotel room. Around 1 am as I was climbing to my bunk, the guy sleeping below me kindly asked "Are you coming or going?" I said I was coming and he said "Well, welcome then." And went back to sleep. I knew I was going to love this place.

The next morning around 8, Maeve, Denyse, Paul, Ethan, and I helped ourselves to the all you can make and eat pancake breakfast offered at Mamallena, as we discussed what activites we should partake in. We decided to grab some sandwich stuff and head to the nearby hotsprings at Caldera. After a short bus ride we got off, read the sign that we thought meant ´hot springs this way´ and started what would be over an hour long hike through the mountains. While it was very pretty, it was exhausting and hot and we saw no water. We ended up turning around and realized that they were off a trail about 100 yards from where we started, but with absolutely no sign or distinction. At that point we were much too hot for hot springs, so we just swam in the river and waited for our bus to come back. Quite interesting though. That night we all went to bed pretty early, after eating at an awesome Lebonese place.

The next morning I left at 7am with a small group from the hostel to go rafting on the Chiriquí Viejo! It was awesome. I met people from Holland, Southside Chicago, and North Carolina, and our guide Freddie was of course Panamanian. The stretch was about 10.5 miles and had 40-50 class II-IV rapids. Freddie even let me guide some of it. The stretch was also incredibly beautiful; it was all rainforest with tons of birds and a few monkeys. Very awesome time, but it reallly made me miss rafting with my west coast homies :(

That night was also incredible. Our whole group had separated that day to hike the volcano Barú, do zipline tours, or of course raft, so we all met up for dinner. We ate delicious pizza at La Huaca, and then made bananas foster back at the hostel to share with other guests. Right after we headed to the only bar in town-- Zanzibar-- and had a rockin good time at our first Panamanian bar. After such a wonderful stay, sadly we had to catch a 6:30 bus in the morning to Davíd, then to Santiago, then to the Entrada, then to El Copé, and then hike back to La MICA. Oh well, totally worth it.

After getting back on Friday we had three days for classes and volunteer work at La MICA before heading to Santa Marta on Monday. More to come about that later..