2 de agosto – viernes, 2013
It’s our last day in Panama. We’re in Portobelo still in our little blue cabin overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Paris signed up for a third dive this morning. Yesterday she went diving with 3 expert divers from Switzerland. Total in their group was a man and woman (mid 30s) with their 4 and a half year old little daughter Alicia, and grandparents. They stayed for two nights and left about an hour ago. We spent some time with them, shared tea, kayaked in the ocean with Raoul and Alicia (a series of about 4-5 waves dumped my kayak mostly full of water so I was paddling with 100% effort and moving about as fast as a SNAIL, but it was still a blast! Only my second time in a kayak and I’m really into it. I want to buy one when I get back!), and found a Panamanian/Vietnamese restaurant down the street where we ate dinner. Randomly enough, the restaurant we went into, the manager spoke fluent French, English, AND Spanish so the Swiss grandparents were super excited to be able to chat with him in French! 😊 And I was excited to eat veggie Pad Thai! Who would’ve thought we’d find that here on such a small coastal city? Apparently the Vietnamese man is big into sailing and he hopped into his sailboat solo and sailed from Vietnam to Panama, ended up on the coast of Portobelo where this restaurant was, and asked the owner if he needed help. The owner said business was slow and told him that he could try to improve it, so he created more of a French-Vietnamese menu and has been here ever since! I love hearing people’s stories! Everyone you meet has so many stories and a history that you know nothing about it if you don't take the time to actually TALK.
The Swiss family left today and headed out in their rental van that they are driving across Panama with. They travel for about 5 weeks every summer to different countries to go diving. They’ve done over 350 dives and Raoul has a professional camera he dives with and uploads pics of everything he sees while diving...pretty interesting. You should've SEEN his camera too - wow! That thing was a BEAST! Alicia, the 4 1/2 year old little girl, had the most fun of course looking in all the holes on the cabin grounds for crabs – they’re everywhere here! And she wanted to sit next to me on the van to the restaurant and at dinner. Today she told her parents in English with the cutest French accent, “I don’t wanT to go.” If you heard the accent you’d know why it was so cute ;)
It’s about 11:15a.m. now and I’m sitting on the cabin porch; I was laying out in the warm sunshine for a bit just looking at the ocean, but it started to rain a little. Now it’s stopped so I will probably go back to reading. Then “Miller time” is picking us up around 5:00 and we’re headed back to Panama City to go to the Albrook bus terminal to bus it on over to San Jose, Costa Rica. Our bus leaves around midnight and we’ll arrive in San Jose by 4:00pm tomorrow afternoon. We’ll cross the border first thing in the morning and then go on to the city.
Our relative plan for the next few days will be:
-1 night in the capitol city of Costa Rica - San Jose
- Our shuttle to the Arenal Volcano/La Fortuna leaves at 7:00am - it should be a 4-5 hour trip.
- Then we’ll stay in some tents at vegetarian bed & breakfast up there on top of a mountain for about 3 nights.
I'll touch base with you again soon from Costa Rica! 😋
