Panama

When we left Vegas overwhelmed with people and american sized portions of food, we headed to panama we no plans and not a clue about panama.  In the Houston airport i bought a Central America travel book however, there was only about 30 pages dedicated to Panama which I read repeatedly on the flight.  I had learned we didn't want to head south, lots of malaria and a little too close to Columbia and all of its problems.  About 20 minutes before we landed we decided we would go to Bocas Del Toro an island up north on the Caribbean side, Amber Stackhouse recommended it and we were clueless to anything else.  At the airport we asked the taxi driver to take us to the closest hotel so we could poach their internet and figure out a plan.  The next flight to Bocas was the next morning, departing from the regional airport across town so we looked up a couple hotels and hopped in another taxi headed downtown to the Financial District, where all the tall shinny skyscrapers are (however, all these skyscrapers are empty, speculations are that they are built with drug money) and where our hotel was.  The hotel turned out to be booked so we set off by foot between the skyscrapers and the beach bound to find something with a room, coming up empty handed we asked a security guard where we could find a room, after a few minutes of sign language he put us in a cab and sent us off to Hotel Soloy, in the cab we raced off, quickly leaving the grande shinny downtown and came into a much darker and gloomier zone where we were dropped off at our hotel/casino, it was getting late and they had a room so we happy even though the rooms were dirty and they stole my phone.*  In the morning we headed to the airport only to find all the flights booked, so we bought tickets for the fallowing morning and set off following signs towards a hotel, we wondered through a swanky neighborhood for a few clicks before finding the hotel.  The hotel had one room available but we couldn't check in until 3, giving us five hours to splash in the pool before check in, sounded good.  Next morning we hope on our hour long flight taking us to Bocas, what turned out to be a tiny little town.  We walked around the town, asking hotels if they had weekly rates or if there was something cheeper around, we were used to mexico prices making panama seem very spendy.  We went to check my email and one of the places i emailed the night before was open so we now had a home.  Since then it has been raining like crazy, its not a Portland all day drizzle, it will look sunny, so you run off to the grocery store, 5 minutes later all that blue sky is gone and its raining cats and dogs, big ones.  So thats the update, lots of rain. Oh and Bocas turns out to be quite the surf spot too bad I only snorkel and boogie board.

adios, austin and nicole

staying dry, not.

surfs up

deadly rain clouds coming in

panama city its the new miami of the 1980s