... In the evening, we went on the hunt for some new and better accomodation for we had been told that we could only keep our room 2 days. Fortunately, Ingrid, the owner of the Spanish school we had met in the afternoon, knew somebody who was intending to subrent her house for 2 weeks and was nice enough to take us there and introduce us to this very typical black lady. The house was OK, rather cute, but it turned out to be much beyond the budget we had planned to spend : we were asked to pay an incredible 300 US dollars for just a fortnight whereas we were not even allowed to use the kitchen to cook! Soooo, we simply thanked the señora and decided to postpone our search for our next home for another day...
And then it was already Monday morning and Stef and I felt like two little kids going back to school after a long holiday! Stef was actually rather nervous and I felt extremely curious! I met Aida, my lovely and fantastic Columbian teacher, as well as Anne, a super cool American social worker from San Francisco who had been spending a few weeks in Bocas in order to brush up her Spanish. The first lesson turned out to be a bit bitter for I realized that I had forgotten most of the things I had learnt! O, there went my high self esteem!... For his part, Stef joined the Very Very Beginners Group and had a really difficult time : well, just try and imagine how hard it is to communicate when your teacher does not speak any other language you can understand! Luckily, the other participants were precisely in the same situation and they eventually managed to have some fun together. It was not difficult anyway, since Bram and Mandy, Stef's mates, are really nice and friendly people, and Alexander, a Swiss bloke, is really funny, even though he is not aware of it :)... And by the early afternoon, after 3 hours of hard study, we were already having lunch together by the sea.
In the evening things turned out a bit unpleasantly. Somehow, it had to happen, it is actually even part of travelling, but each time, Jesus!, what a nightmare! Yeeeees, you got it right, thrills, cramps and terrrrrible bellyaches attacked! It is always when such a thing occurs that you feel extremely happy to have chosen an "expensive" hotel room with a private bathroom :)). And then something pretty disgusting happenned. And I really have to smile now :)). Huuuuh, let's say that one of my worst nighmares came true... I was still feeling so-so but I had had a good day and we wanted to eat something nice. So we decided to go and have dinner in a nice place where we thought the food was going to be "safe" and bearable for our stomachs A very nice place, indeed, but expensive and according to Bocas standard quite posh. Well, I swear I did not do it on purpose, to get attention or something, not even to be pittied, but yeah! I took a few bites of the mozzarella and tomato salad we had ordered, and before realizing that it was happenning, I was throwing up in the restaurant!!! Stef almost turned green when he saw me emptying my guts on the floor and I just wanted to disappear! The lady of the restaurant was very understanding, though. Anyway, what could she have done? I had ruined her floor and I was sitting there, in the middle of my puke, feeling dead ashamed, but still, already a tiny bit better :)) But let's face it, it had been much worse if anybody had been sitting next to me...
We went back "home" and spent the rest of the night with icecubes on our head thinking that I simply had a heat stroke. That night, when I eventually felt better, Stef got really sick and I started worrying a lot when he litterally started "boiling". Fortunately we had taken a thermometer with us and I could regularly check his temperature. We were both afraid that Stef had contracted malaria for he started shaking and had splitting headaches. He even woke up in tears in the middle of the night because of the pain... The next day Stef did not show up in school and I had to kick myself in order not to fall asleep. It eventually took a few days, lots of mineral water, boiled rice, babanas and paracetamol before Stef went back to life and we did not have to flush the toilets twice... Well, that was for the spicy moments of our stay here. What about talking about something creepy now? Does anybody out there like insects or has any kind of compassion for them? Well after reading this, you definitely won't, I swear!
Ever heard of the infamous "chitras"? They are f...... mean, they come in different sizes and colours and they bite like Hell!!!! It is a plague here, and even a speciality of the place, but even knowing that, it does not help. Every newcomer gets eaten alive day in-day out and even a 50% deet repellent which could kill anybody is not of any use to keep them away. The bite is bad but the itch is even worse for it comes out of the blue and can go on for days on end. Funny enough, the school seems to be a breeding place for the chitras, even though nobody can escape from them anywhere in town. If anybody finds a miraculous stuff to repel them without putting his life in danger, please go ahead and come and make a fortune here. You might even become a national hero!...
Now back to the accomodation, after all of these "exciting" moments, Stef and I were still looking for a cheap but nice room. Moving out and in again, we landed in the school where it was really nice to stay with Bram, Alexander and Mandy. But what a noise! The dogs were barking at night, the rooster was waking up at 5:00, the thin wooden floor and walls did not offer any kind of privacy. Still, we loved it, and it was lovely to spend the siesta time in hammocks, watching all the humming birds, butterflies, geckoes, vultures and looking at the incredibly mean fights between Issayas the Columbian cat and Elsa the second dog of the school. Compared to our former hotel the noise was, anyway, much less of a problem : before we used to sleep next door to a bakery shop, and I can tell you that this is not as nice as you think it could be! First, bear in mind that the baker wakes up very early in the morning (night?) and that the equipment he uses was, I think, pretty old and ramshackle. That was bad, really bad... One morning we woke up in alarm thinking that a train was passing by!...
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