We are feeling a bit like locals right know, having spent already three weeks on the same island in the only little town. We start to recognize everybody and vice versa. We have now a room at the main street ( one of the 4 streets here) with a balcony, where we are able to do exactly what the locals do: watching each other, tranquilo.
In the night there is this guy who has made two model planes by himself, and is walking around with it, ith the highlight of letting them fly for a short moment. And this every night the whole evening...
Furthermore there are some political discussions going on in the park (with temperament!) and just locals walking in a reeeeal slow pace, with some "running" gringo's passing them in high speed with backpacks on, or carrying surfboards.
And friday nights all the carribian woman walk around with big curling pin's (haarspelden?) in their hair, to look at their best when they are going to church (there are so many here, and different types as well, more churches then pubs actually)
At night there is this big clock with bells who ring every quarter, and it rings so loud, that at 5 or 6 o'clock it's waking us up. We have dreams of mollesting the clock, and somehow our prayers have been listened to, because know the clock stands to a still. And we are really happy with the Latino Tranquilo way of live, because it will take weeks before somebody will repair the thing....
It's also an excellent spot to study, which we are now doing for the third week. I wouldn't have thought that after 3 weeks only my Spanish would be at this level, I can actually already understand a big part of conversations, and I can get around speaking without using English. Some more months to practise, I like it. ( and Flo is already getting almost fluent now...)
There are two little islands (Caya Zapatillas) which are now used to shoot the "Surviver" program for the French tv (Robinson Island(?)) It means that there is a big TV crew in town, and a helicopter occasionaly flying over. Two teams are dropped on the islands and have to survive. But the organisation is really disorganised, with the shooting there were suddenly other backpackers on the beach, which had to be kicked of the island for the shooting,
William ( an American Dive instructor here, we got to know well) was hired to hold the underwater-cameraman, which was almost killed by a falling anker. Meanwhile there are frenchies walking around shouting in their walkie talkies asking where the others are....
We also attended a basketballmatch here, which is the most popular sport around. The teams were from the different islands, and they were pretty fanatic. For 25 cents you could enter and have a beer, and cheer with the locals, while during the game there were dogs crossing the field, and confusion about the score all the time. Tempermente!
Because our school is located on such a beautifull tropical island surrounded with other ones, we can't just think of studying alone. We went out for some little adventures, like a walk to the cave. Mandy joined us, and with the three of us we walked into jungle (on a road) in the middle of the island, meeting howler monkeys (brulapen), parrots and other beautifull birds.
And a dead snake on the middle of the road, which changed the subject of our conversation to snakes. Just talking about that, Flo suddenly screamed out loud, and started running: we had just encountered one which was alive. And Mandy was standing on top of it, which made the snake come up with his head, and making biting movements to her legs. Luckily she was wearing long pants, and didn't get hurt. Mandy was more surprised actually, but after this we looked more carefully on the road then watching the tree tops for birds....
The cave was nothing special actually, and was used as a Maria shrine, but Maria didn't help us ;-( Our digital camera broke down, it didn't react anymore to anything. We are currently mailing with the customer support of Olympus, but it looks like we have to send it in for repair. Bummer! So for the pictures on this website, it's not going to happen soon :-(
We had another day out to Bastimentos, another island here. We went with the 6 of us, Bram, Mandy, Alex, William, another really sweet American student, and us. The boatride in a oversized canoe was pretty bumpy on the big waves, sometimes we had the feeling that we would have to swim the second half.
On Bastimentos we had a long walk through the jungle, and bumped into Gina (Girl from Amsterdam, also taking Spanish lessons, and Lisa (from Alberta, fellow student as well) who had been dropped at the other end by a boat.
At red frog beach, we met some American blokes who had been studying poisonous frogs for 5 years already in Costa Rica, and they took us on a little excursion into the jungle showing us different species of frogs, orange, green, spotted etc..) A boatman told us that half an hour further there would be a little hut with a cook, but we never found it.
We met a guy living in the jungle instead, and he thaught us some survival tricks, so we ended up eating young palmtree sprouts instead of a fried fish :-)
Another excursions we took was a long boatride to Coral key ( in the middle of the Marine national park, with miles of mangrove islands, no living souls around , a breathtaking scenery! There were a few huts on poles in the water, from which we could snorkel.
There were stairs leading into the water, we stepped down into it, stuck our masks under water and were face to face with a big fat baracuda! Our heart skipped a few jumps, but he was so fat and lazy, we could swim around. The coral there was beautifill, as well as the fish around.
Friday is our last day at school, which we are going to celebrate in the shipwreckbar (a bananaboat sunk in front of the shore, and is lighted now at night). After that we are going to practise our spanish on different places in Panama. Hopefully with internet places as well, you'll hear from us.
Enjoy!
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