Flowers and Beaches!!

Woohooo, we made it to Panama!!! Panama City was a bit of a culture shock when we arrived. When we first got to the airport we were greeted by lots of brand new, fancy, unmarked cars which we finally figured out were taxis. It was quite the change from the taxis in Peru and Bolivia. The city feels very western in terms of the way people dress, the high rises and the food, but than there are pockets of the city that are really run down. The book we have says that 40% of people in Panama are living in poverty and half of those people are living in extreme poverty, less than a $1 US a day.

We spent one day in Panama City exploring the canal which, was really cool to see, and then exploring the old part of the city and a newer part of the city that is obviously targeting tourists. The old part of Panama City is really beautiful lots of old buildings that run right up to the edge of the street with flowers and plants on window sills and decks. Sadly, Danny and I never felt all that safe walking around the city which is too bad. There really aren't a lot of tourists around in the city, at least not that we saw.

The next day we took the bus to Boquete which I guess has been rated one of the top 5 places to retire in the world. Danny, who has turned into an old man on this trip, complete with cough, sore rear end when sitting on a hard surface for more than one minute and minimal appetite felt right at home. Boquete, like most of Panama appears to be, is this weird mix of local Panamanians and foreigners. The area is really beautiful, tons of tropical plants and treed hills all around. We stayed at the cutest place which was pretty much like a little house by a creek with views of tropical flowers out of every window. I, Alison, was ready to move in for good. Boquete also has lots of coffee farms in the area so we took a tour of one of them. So interesting!!!!! We were the only ones on the tour and we lucked out by getting a local guy that has worked with coffee for 12 years as our guide. I don't think either of us will ever look at coffee in quite the same way again.

Today we made our way to the coast and took a boat over to a small island in the Caribbean, Bocas del Torro. It ended up that our reservation was lost for the place we were supposed to stay at so the super nice owner of this hotel grabbed his wine out of the fridge so he could stay somewhere else and is letting us stay in his place which I think doubles as the honeymoon suite for the hotel.

Tomorrow we are off to an even more remote island to live it up on the beach for a few days.