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.

To the Jungle and Back

Alison, Ben, and I started off our 5 days of fun with a mountain bike trip down what a few years ago was classified as the worlds most dangerous road according to the Inter-American Development Bank. This road had an average of more than 25 vehicles go off of it each year, with 100´s of fatalities annually. Until a few years ago, it was the main road connecting La Paz, to the lowlands. The dirt road is one lane wide for almost the entire way and has a completely sheer drop on the side. Now the road is closed thanks a new 2 lane highway that was finished a few years ago.

A great picture of it can be found here: http://www.trekker.co.il/english/bolivia/b-death-02.htm

Now, mountain biking down it is a must-do activity as almost every tourist here seems to have a shirt that reads "I survived the death road". (Sadly, 2 bikers this year didn´t survive their ride to wear their t-shirts. )

Risk aside, it really was a fun experience. We were with a group of rowdy Brazillians med students. They made the trip fun, I just wouldn´t want to be their patient after they become doctors!

For those of you interested in altitudes we started our ride at 4633 meters (15,200 feet) and ended up at about 1130 meters. The dangerous part of the road was only about 1100 meters of the ride. It was really incredible to start out in an area of only snow and rock and freezing temps and end up in a hot sticky jungle a few hours and only 63 km later.

The next day the 3 of us left La Paz for a 3 day river tour of the jungle. We first had to drive 10 hours (they told us 5) to where we got on this huge motorized canoe with 10 other tourists. We were with some crazy people, a (straight) couple from Seattle who had a construction company catering to gay people, a pot smoking 5th grade teacher from Boston, and a German couple that did so many drugs that even the 5th grade teacher was impressed.

This was an organized tour, and the guides set-up tents for us, cooked our food, the works. It poured all night the first night and the second-rate tents they had just slowed the water down before getting to us. I (Danny) got pretty sick that night too so that added to the misery.

We spent the next day and a half racing down the river (the boat had a 55 hp engine!) and going on guided nature walks. Our guides weren´t too keen on the jungle flora and fauna though. We asked what one common call we kept hearing was and one of our guides said monkey. We asked the other guy and he said tucan (a bird). They warned us about the dangers of the jungle and how easy it is to get lost. One of our guides said there are these goblins that live there that take you captive and have a big party and get you drunk so you get disoriented and can´t hear people shouting to rescue you. One of our guides said he expericed this (seriously!).

We were ready to be done after the 3rd day. The boat dropped us off in the small town of Rurrenabaque. Ben flew out to finish his MCC duties they next day and Alison and I were due to fly day after that. Unfortunately, the weather was bad and the small grass runway was closed for a day. This backed up the flights and Alison and barely made it out after sitting around for a day and a half. There were 50 or so other tourists in our predicament and we all kept cheking in the tiny airlines office in town for news. They would always say check back in an hour. We were losing hope when suddenly they came up these lists of people who were on the 4 flights that were going to get out. We were on one of the lists thank goodness... The other people were stuck there another 2 days at least.

We were happy to be back in La Paz and in our not-so-nice (but we are growing to love) Hotel Happy Days. For our last hurrah in Bolivia we spent 2 days in the pretty town of Sorata. It is situated about 1000 meters lower than La Paz, but right at the foot of 2 of Bolivias highest peaks. We went on a day hike searching for a high alpine lake we read about in a book. They really want tourists to hire a guide so there are no signs to anything and the route to the lake involves navigating a maze of trails across hillsides, rivers, and through tiny villages. When we finally got almost there we decided to turn around due to time and the fact that we were almost out of water. The views were still stunning and I hope to come back to this area some day and explore some of the higher terrain.

Tomorrow we are off to Panama, heat, and thunderstorms. I can´t wait.

Into Boliva, into the cold

Some might question the sanity of leaving a place that is warm and comfortable, to go to a place that is high, cold, and in the dead winter. At a few points in the last 2 weeks, we were some of those people.

From Peru, we crossed the border to go a little Bolivian resort town called Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca. This lake is widely regarded as the highest commercially navigable lake in the world, as it sits at over 12,500 feet (3812 m). The lake is huge, and it looks like the ocean because you can´t see the far shore from most vantages.

Copacabana is an intersting mix of Bolivian and foreign tourists. The main passtime seems to be renting a wide variety of watercraft, ranging from kayaks, wooden row boats, to pedal boats in the shape of ducks. The Bolivian Navy has their sole outpost on the edge of town. Interestingly, they also have some of these ducks on their base. We wondered what kind of training they were used for. We had a hoot watching these Navy cadets practice their various drills. It seemed like two kids with slingshots could take their base in five minutes easily.

After 3 days there, we were ready to move on to La Paz to get ready for our trip to Sajama National Park. We met my (Danny´s) dad, brother, and Ben´s friend Terren, at the wonderfully named, but .03 star hotel Happy Days in the heart of the Gringo District in La Paz. We spent a day or two haphazardly aquiring food and gear for our trip and our attempt on Nevado Sajama, the highest peak in Bolivia. When we told local Bolivains where we were going their standard response was "Ah, mucho frio!" (Translation: Much cold!).

We hired a taxi for the 5 hour drive for the modest amount of $125 round trip. The trouble was we had to fit 5 adults, the driver, 5 big backpacks, and 2 big duffle bags into a Toyota Corolla station wagon without a roof rack. We succeeded in getting everything in and getting the doors shut, but is wasn´t the most comfortable trip.

Sajama National Park is a land of desolate beauty situated in the SW corner of Bolivia right on the border with Chile. The valley floors are over 14,000 feet high the vegetation consits of sparse clumps of grass and ocassional isolated shrubby tress. The land is dry and dusty, and the wind never stops blowing. Most local families raise llamas and alpacas, who freely graze about in the broad valleys.

The park is only recently catering towards tourits. They now have rustic accomodations in the main village conisiting of a bare room with cot-like beds and cement floors. The bathroom was across the courtyard and was a small mud-walled squat-pot outhouse. This was really nice when it was -15 degrees C (10 degrees F) at night and really windy.

The park has a great deal to offer the visitor, bubbling hot springs, scenic camping, the endangered vicuña (wild relative of the llama and alpaca), and the highest peak in Bolivia (6542m, 21,463ft). We sampled a bit of them all in our stay of 6 days.

A personal highlight for me (Danny) was being able to touch the top of Sajama. Alison had been feeling under the weather and wanted nothing to with waking up at 2am in the bitter cold at 18,000 feet to try to go to the top, so she wisely stayed in her sleeping bag. I was a bit jealous of her decision because when I woke in the tent up to go to the top there was ice all over my hat which I has worn to bed (while it was on my head!). The trip to the top felt just as cold.

When we all got back to the the Sajama village, we were cold, dirty, and tired. Nothing was warm there so it felt hard to ever warm up. The never ceasing wind and dust didn´t help anything either.

Our ride back to La Paz wasn´t due for another 2 days so we killed time by heading to some of the natural hot springs nearby. This felt great on our tired bodies, but it wasn´t too fun getting out. Terren´s shorts froze in the 150 meter walk back to our jeep!

We got back into La Paz yesterday and the weather still wasn´t great. Snow had fallen here in the previous few days. I heard that neighboring Argentina is having their coldest winter in more than 80 years.

We are now seeking warmer climes and Ben, Alison, and I are heading down into the jungle in a few days on a 3 day boat trip. This should warm us up and our main concern now will be pirhannas. I guess that beats the cold and wind...