panama

 We're back in Panama, and it's a mixed bag. Prices drop like crazy as soon as you get over the border; the quantity of trash goes directly through the roof. The air quality stays good until you get over the hills and start coming down towards David, at which point you can see precisely how disgusting the air really is. This should improve considerably as soon as we head up into the hills towards Santa Fe in our rented Toyota Yaris - what a shitpile. It takes FOREVER to get up in RPMs, and this one has a stick, so it's going to be a complete nightmare to drive.

 Today, we left Hotel Limbo in Bocas Town, Boca del Toro, Panama, and made our way across the border into Costa Rica via boat, taxi, and foot. The bridge is reminiscent of the trestle at the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz before the foot bridge was added, but with planks across the outside of the ties for foot and vehicle traffic. Few vehicles actually cross the border, most of them being tractor-trailer rigs.

My last Panamanian blog entry came shortly after our arrival in the city of Panama; since then we've been to Santiago, Las Lajas, David, and Santa Fé; we're now in Bocas city in the province of Bocas Del Toro, and about to cross the water to Bastimiento to see what it's like over there. In addition to many kilometers in buses and taxis, we put about a thousand kilometers on a rental car, and spent a fair amount of time traipsing around a handful of promising farm properties (fincas).

Today was a day of minor disappointments awash in a sea of ease. We visited the Sierra Botanical Gardens and Zoo hoping to see Panama's poisonous snakes, but they have no reptile house. We went to the causeway to find the yacht club, but the one we were looking for is nowhere to be found. We went to allegedly the best steak house in the nation, and found it lacking in all areas.

23.3 degrees centigrade and 67 percent humidity; I'm far from adjusting, but it's only our second day (and first morning) in Panama. The airport was about like any airport anywhere, and customs might as well have not existed for all the trouble we took to pass it. The weather is instantly reminiscent of the South in the summer, although it's not nearly as hot. The pervasive humidity makes up for it handily.