getting ready for Christmas, caribbean style

Bastimentos

Bastimentos is a small island about 10 minutes by water taxi from Isla Colon. We went there to visit a friend who manages an incredibly beautiful 24 hectare farm. The island is really lovely, there are no cars and the only 'road' is a concrete path about 7 foot wide by maybe 1/2 a mile long. Most people live on or just off this main street. The houses are quite tightly cluttered and almost all are wooden Caribbean style with gingerbread trim - in various states of repair. Kids played baseball, a rather narrow type of baseball, on the street. The restaurants and houses on the ocean side stand out over the water, on the other side they rise up a low hill. The islanders are a mix of indigenous natives who still live traditionally (again to a greater or lesser degree), afro-Caribbeans, Chinese (who came for the canal and settled), latinos and foreigners. It's low season here and we only saw two other tourists.
After a great fish lunch we hiked up the hill to views of beautiful beaches on the other side of the island, to visit another organic farm: up in the hill. This farm is owned by a Scottish girl and her Argentinian husband. For some odd reason there are very few Scots in this part of the world, and I had heard of this girl for a couple of years. Jeanette and Javier and their two kids are really lovely and working very hard making their farm a beautiful place to be. They have a cabin for rent with great views and Jeanette makes excellent brownies with coconut oil and deliciously light teas. She has her own line of organic coconut based oils, lotions and creams and sells home produced chocolate. And Javier is a carpenter and built their house and the cabin. Very nice. She sells online and at the new farmers' market on Isla Colon, and to shops around Panama. I'm hoping we can trade some things!

squall

Sitting eating delicious battered fish on the deck of a shabby looking restaurant standing on stilts out over the water, a few raindrops begin to fall. Not too worried, we continue to eat. The rain becomes a little more persistent so we pick up our plates and move back under semi cover and continue. Five minutes later, with steady rain we move under the tarpaulin roof. Two minutes later we, and everyone else, retreat to the bar which has a tin roof. By now the rain is falling hard and the wind has really picked up: the paper lantern lights are now banging wildly against the roof, and the Panamanian flags on the bar are behaving like proud wind socks. The lights are flickering, the rain is coming straight in, sideways. They move the TV. Now the wind which is in turns warm and cold is really blowing. The street behind us is flooding as the waves begin to schloop over the deck and hit the road between the buildings. Then the power goes. The wind feels colder, or perhaps it's because we're wet. The staff are wearing trash bags with holes torn for head and arms. They have given up on the customers and are talking loudly into their cell phones crouched down out of the rain and wind behind the bar. The only light comes from taxis which are ploughing through water on the street. In the lights of one a dog is swimming across the road. Someone in the bar lights a cigarette and the wind does strange things to the glowing ember tip, making it look as if it is 3 or 4 lights instead of one. The lightning illuminates us from time to time: grey, wet, hair plastered to heads, sodden meals, a child still eating dark pink ice-cream. We wonder how to find the hotel and try to estimate the wind speed. The farmer, who was a sailor, estimates 70 miles an hour, with gusts of 80. Coconut palm fronds are lashing buildings and each other. It looks like a newsreel.
And then slowly the wind lessens. The lanterns cease their crazy dance, the flags hang down, we can hear ourselves speak. The rain drops a little, not stopping but mellow enough for us to pay the bill by cell phone light and head out into the flooded street. The road has holes and we bump up and down, sometimes ankle deep in water, sometimes knee deep. We've been on the island 2 hours and we find our hotel by chance. Inside the dark room we discover we have no towels, no water and no fan. But it's okay, this is the Caribbean and all will be good in the morning.

trip to Bocas del Toro, Panama

Just returned from a great little trip down to Panama. The Caribbean islands of Bocas del Toro are 3 1/2 hours from here, including crossing the terrifying border between Costa Rica and Panama.

Terrifying because the Sixaola river lies between the Costa Rican and Panamanian borders. The river itself isn't so scary, though it does have alligators I hear, what is scary is the old, old, rusty, old wobbly iron and metal 200 yard bridge that spans the river. It's best not to look down as one can clearly see the river (a good 30 feet below) between the ancient wooden railroad tyes, some are rotten and there's places where the boards are missing. At one point officials laid planks perpendicular to the tyes to help support traffic. And by traffic, I'm not talking foot passengers: enormous 18 wheelers thunder across the bridge and when they do the folk on foot have to squeeze themselves against the railings (those old, old, rusty railings) to avoid being squished somewhere on a Central American no man's land. It's enough to make one want to go to Nicaragua instead.

Almost. Because after that ordeal, and an hour in a nervous taxi over a beautiful mountain landscape, and 1/2 an hour by water taxi across a marvelously calm sea, one arrives at Isla Colon, the largest and most developed of the islands.