Panama City!

So, after the 22 hour trek, (on the infamous TICA bus that we vowed never to voluntarily take again) which included the fiasco of a border crossing from Costa Rica to Panama starting at 4:30am and lasting 4...HOURS, we were in Panama City!!!!

Now I'm not quite sure I was particularly PUMPED or so so looking forward to Panama City, mostly because I had little idea what to even expect...but we loved it! So, it was most definitely the biggest city we had been in at that point, and really just felt like we could have been back in the states in some big city. We stayed in the area called Casco Viejo which is the old town part of the city, and it was FULL of character and pretty adorable!

It actually used to be all there was to Panama City...waaaaay back when. It sits right next to the Panama Bay, which has an amazingly clean and new exercise path/bicycle lane right along it, and on the other side of the bay is the city skyline...makes for some good views and an amazing location for a pretty great much needed run:) Our hostel actually looked right out onto this beautiful scene, which was pretty ideal for chilling and winding down at night after a day of exploring! AND the president's palace was literally right across the street from where we were staying. Funny. 

So, I actually think a large reason we enjoyed the city so much was because we didn't stand out at all! When I got to go running...I was just one of TONS of other people walking, running, riding bikes, ROLLER BLADING, and they were all dressed in for real workout clothes you would see in any gym back home (most times I have gone running I get lots of stares and quite some looks and I think ONE little part of it- there are many but I won't go into that right now- is that I'm wearing different 'special clothes' specifically to run around in, not to mention I'm even needing to intentionally set out to run around? Strange idea to most). We didn't get any weird looks or stares ever, OR hissed at by men constantly (ok, we realize it's their culture and all around here...but still...it's just flat out rude men! And not ok. And have you EVER gotten the response you hope for after doing that? I'm thinking not so much. sorry, tiny vent. :) Audrey and I have been scheming that the next time a guy does that and we're feeling super safe (likes a bunch of police nearby and in the middle of the day) maybe we should do something completely unexpected like hiss back at them or do something seriously unattractive like make a ridiculous face or open our mouth full of food or something along those lines and just see their reaction. Ok, most likely we won't do that cause we've been talking about it for forever, but it makes us feel better about the situation...just THINKING about their reaction. :) Anyways...some highlights of Panama City:

So one of our evenings there we went walking along the pedestrian pathway (cause that was just so normal to do:) doo-do-do...) and we came upon apparently THE place to be...a set of three basketball courts. On one court, there was a pretty decent soccer game going on, and then on the other two courts....basketball (kind of).

The one court was an incredible group of about ten or twelve guys and girls about our age, who were SUPER intense about the whole event, but seemed like they had never played before. Ever. :/ It was amazing to watch. They were kind of adorable. Our favorite was the girl who showed up dressed like she was going to a yoga class...with a super cute hot pink tank top, black spandex capri pants with hot pink and white stripes down the side, and her hair all done. As everyone else got started playing, she  stepped off to the side and began her  stretching/warming up exercises, got her hair done up right, and then geared up by putting on either a back support contraption or a tummy tucking contraption...we were debating back and forth between which we thought it might be. Anyways...all that to say...we watched them for QUITE awhile and they were fun to watch. The score remained zip to zip for...a loooong time.

 

THEN...we went to watch the other court for awhile which had a half court 3 on 3 game going on, it was all men who were a little older and it's was a little more serious. As Audrey and I both used to play basketball WAY back in the day, we were definitely slightly envious and wishing we could jump in...when next thing you know...one of the guys came over and asked if we wanted to join! Uuuuunfortunately we weren't dressed for it at all...and in flip flops...sad...BUT we decided we would come back the next night dressed a little more appropriately and attempt to join in. And we did. THAT was SO fun! Haha. We got there and watched for a little bit and after a couple of minutes one of the guys sitting over on another bench casually looked over and asked if we wanted to play. Playing it cool we responded, 'Uuuumm, yea. I mean, if there's room? Whenever the next game is or whatever!" He stands up and immediately stops the game. He motions us over and tells all of the men that we want to play and they need to let one of us be on each team. Haha, oh boy. Alright, here we go! I think we actually kind of surprised them. Not that either of us are INCREDIBLE...but we've at least played before! So any time we actually scored, or made a good pass, or were able to dribble...they were hilarious and made a huge deal out of it. You know the typical guys playing sports.."oooooh!!!!" and all making fun of whoever was supposed to be guarding us and what not. At one point me and this big guy on the other team were running after a loose ball...we were both being a little aggressive and not letting up...it ended up going out of bounds in the end, but near the end of the scuffle he nudged me a little harder and cause I was much smaller than him it LOOKED bad cause I kind of went flying...I was totally fine and still running and unphased by it...but the other guys started FLIPPING out! They all started yelling at the guy saying he fouled me and that wasn't ok and blah blah blah...they were all actually mad at each other and Audrey and I just kind of stood off to the side watching them yell and argue. Boys. AND just in general it was amazing hearing them all speaking in Spanish throughout the whole thing...yelling at each other, communicating what to do, encouraging each other...all of it. They talk SO fast! Especially in that setting. That was a great night:) Just playing a little bit of pickup basketball in Panama City with a friend I met playing basketball back in high school. :)

Next highlight: the panama canal!!!! It was incredible!

 

 

It's amazing what that things does, and how it works, and all that went in to creating it. I remember writing a paper on it a long time ago in school, but they had a museum at the set of locks we went to, and it was incredible to be reminded of all the history there and what an amazing feat that was and how it affects our lives today. There is at least SOMETHING in your house right now that is there only because the panama canal exists...thanks to really smart men who designed it and figured out how to do such a thing, and TONS of people who worked years and years to create amazing machines and did astonishing amounts of haaaaard labor to make it. Crazy! We saw an actual cargo ship carrying petroleum pass through the locks. It had paid 60 some THOUSAND dollars to go through.



Oh yea...and, just a side note. So Panama's money is...the Balboa. (aka...the US dollar!) Funny, huh?

Well after thoroughly enjoying life in Panama City...we set out on quite a random and unbelievable adventure to.........a place that is pretty difficult to describe but I will do my best in my next blog post:)

I miss you all back home and have to say...I feel like I have been saying this to a lot of people recently because it's something that has just for some reason seriously hit me recently and is resonating over and over again throughout these weeks...but being away from life and people back home has REALLY made me realize down deep how incredible and full and blessed my life back home is...and I have always been grateful to a degree for all of it, but being outside of it...away from it...it is magnified by a million. And I'm thankful for that and looking forward to being back home eventually and enjoying and appreciating everything about life back home completely. And you all....are what makes life so full and so good. So thanks:) 

Costa Rica

So we did not spend much time in Costa Rica because it is one expensive country and we knew that going into it (little did we know our next two countries were going to be just about as expensive!) BUT...we knew we had to do two really touristy and semi-expensive things that would be SO worth it: the canopy tour (basically ridiculous zip lines through the beautiful cloud forest) and the ATV tour. Yep. ATVs:)

But first we took a little detour to a part of Costa Rica some people had told us they really enjoyed and we had to go to. It was down on the southern peninsula of  Costa Rica, and was a part of Costa Rica Audrey had never been (yea, she's already been to CR). Well...we're not totally sure it was worth the time and money it took to get there (to Montezuma)...we were actually not quite sure why we went really, but we did our best to make it worth it:)

We stayed in this hostel that was right on the beach, which is pretty much my dream life...if I can hear the waves crashing as I fall asleep...life is GOOD. (Although once we turned the fan on you couldn't hear much of anything...but still:) We had a great evening of making our usual...cut up cucumbers and avocados with some lime drizzled on top and some kind of bread and peanut butter. This is our life:)

 

The next day we headed out for a '40-minute hike' we read about in our handy dandy lonely planet book to find the waterfall.

Well, I guess USUALLY it is a simple 40 minute hike but we like to make things difficult. One: it had rained really hard all night the night before, making the easy river crossing on the way not so easy, and two: we took the wrong path at some point. But honestly it was just the adventure we needed. After forging across the river at the point where it seemed the least deep and like a lesser current, and then ascending quite a slope on a path that apparently no one actually uses, in our sandals, trying to hold on to ANY kind of root or whatever else we could grab not to fall off the narrow path down the steep rather high up path we somehow managed to get on, we found the waterfall! It was definitely a pretty impressive waterfall...but not exactly the 'delicious swimming hole' at the bottom that lonely planet claims...or dirty brown water is just not my kind of thing. But we had fun getting there, and not quite as much fun getting back on the normal and much less exciting normal trail.

The other highlight of Montezuma was one day when we walked out of our hostel room (which was a private room, by the way! We always love that), to look up and notice there were like 8-10 monkeys just playing around and eating up in the tree right outside of our room! We spent the next 30-40 minutes just watching them and oohing and awing. Not a bad pastime.

So THEN we went to Monteverde (which took forever and was the longest most ridiculous process of catching buses and ferries and more buses, which for some reason we were completely mentally unprepared for). Quick side note: we were sitting behind this man on the final long bus ride, he was probably in his late 40s. The bus makes lots of random stops in random towns and also just in the middle of nowhere where people get off to go to who knows where or jump on and who knows where they came from. Well..at one stop, I watched this man that was sitting in front of us run off the bus, and go over across the street, and meet this woman who was holding a little baby. He grabbed the baby and the baby's bag and helped the woman across a large puddle and I thought was just assisting this woman and her baby through the rain as we were in the middle of quite a downpour. Eventually later on I realized the woman was not on the bus, he just had the baby and the baby's bag with him. Hmmm...at one point Audrey turned to me and asked, 'did he always have a baby with him?' To which I nonchalantly replied, 'no, some lady gave it to him at a bus stop about 2 hours ago.' Then realizing how absurd it was. And THEN...about 30 minutes later...we came to another bus stop, where the man took the baby and his bag, and handed both of them to this lady who was waiting on the side of the road! And casually got back on and took his seat on the bus. Quite a delivery service. Juuuust another day in Central America.

Anyways, we finally arrived to Monteverde, Costa Rica...where the incredible tours were going to take place! We were dropped off right in front of this tourist office/hostel and this guy came out and started annoying us about staying in the hostel which was on the second floor of the building. We kind of ignored him for awhile as we gathered our things and then began semi-rudely explaining we didn't need him, we had already looked up a place where we were going to stay. But one: it was pouring down rain, and two: he said we should just LOOK at the place and it did seem very clean and new and nice from the first floor looks of things. And yes indeed...it was kind of awesome. Brand new, super clean, community kitchen, free coffee, wifi, cheaper than any we had seen in the book...basically everything we ever hope for. Done:) So we apologized and said we would love to stay there for $7, thank you.

So..the tours! We did the canopy tour first where you go on a bunch of zip lines, some rather short and eventually muuuuuch longer where you fly for like at least a minute WAY up in the air over these amazing stretches of the beautiful Costa Rican landscape and rain forest. It was pretty incredible.

 

THEN...they added two new options on to the end of the the tour. The first is called the superman...which goes exactly how it sounds. You go on one of the longest and highest zip lines, but hanging so you're flying like super man on your stomach! It was pretty nuts, and because you don't need your hands to break like you do on the rest of the zip lines...they said you can have your camera out and take a video! Which I did...and yes, embarrassing...but that is me straight up giggling in the video cause it's so nuts! About that whole braking thing though...they said we wouldn't need our hands to break, but didn't cover how we WOULD break. So I was getting to the end and going however fast I was going (it felt really fast), and the guy on the platform was really not paying any attention to me, the girl flying straight at him and a tree about 5 feet behind him, and starting to wonder what part of the instruction I forgot to pay attention to or didn't understand cause it was in Spanish! So I started to try and figure out how to reach my gloved hand up and grab the rope to brake, and the guy finally looks at me and just shakes his head no as he's also shaking his finger no telling me NOT to do that. Well...ok, but I'm freaking out now and making a goofy noise and a goofy face as I FLY towards this platform at a tree wondering why everyone is so calm...and then...PHEW...there it is...the automatic break on the zip line that stops you:) I should know by now...just trust. I always get all scared and worry, and then it turns out juuuuuust fine.

Speaking of....next we did the grand finale of this crazy adventure tour...the Tarzan Swing. Dun dun dun.

 

So basically you walk out on one of those scary rope like bridges.......

to a platform where two guys are standing and they grab your carribeaner and such and start hooking you up for 'the jump.' The idea is basically you jump off this square platform, kind of like a bungee jump, and freefall for something like 200 meters, and then instead of how during a bungee jump it snaps you back up, this is more like a pendulum swing and you fly outwards.

 

Well...when I got out onto the platform I started asking the guys, 'ok, so what do I do?' Which of course they just completely ignored me and continued on just messing with lines and cables and hooking me up and scooting me forward, and I keep asking, 'ok, but what do I  DO?!' Finally they scoot me right up to the edge of the platform, where there's a closed gate about waist high holding me in, and they just keep saying, 'just bend your knees!!!' It took a lot for some reason to just bend my knees, but finally I got them to bend....and went jumping off head first!!!! Audrey was next up and still back starting to walk across the bridge and said the scream that came out of my mouth was blood.kurdling. And lasted....minutes. Hahaha. One, I didn't see anyone else go head first, not sure what made me do that. Two, yes...I definitely will admit to the fact that I let out QUITE a scream. Three, it was SO fun. Next Audrey went and let out....not a sound. I was standing at the bottom, and all I could hear was her body SWOOSH by. It was incredible. Once we gathered our shaking selves, we spent the next 5-10 minutes trying to convince a hilarious grown man from Spain that he could and should do it. He finally did and I think he screamed louder than me! Audrey got it on video:)

From there we took a bus to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, where we would catch our bus to Panama.

 

San Jose was not incredible. We had been told to stay away from it in general if at all possible, so we spent about 24 hours there. We stayed in a SUPER interesting hostel run by Quakers who also at the same time coordinate a group devoted to peace. They had a library of books ALL about peace, and various countries, and biographies of incredible people who have impacted people and communities and countries, and each room had a different display with quotes, pictures, and stories of these different people....it was pretty cool. For sure an experience.

At about 11pm Audrey and I were in the bus station getting ready for bed, brushing our teeth, taking our contacts out, and the like...quite a sight really. We then embarked on a 22 hour bus ride on a FREEZING cold bus that made it quite impossible to sleep.

But finally made it to Panama. :) 

The rest of Nicaragua....

Granada, Nicaragua was an adorable colonial town that we spent most of our days literally just meandering for hours...people watching, taking in the adorable colorful houses, finding random old abandoned buildings and hospitals that they don't even know what year they were built.

Some of the highlights were: the sunsets, being right on the HUGE Lake Nicaragua, and  the amazing phenomenon that we found there is ACTUALLY a name for, and that is just normal everyday life...to have at LEAST two people on a bike, usually three, or one person and a huge load of some sorts...and they make it look SO easy. I kid you not, one day Audrey and I were stopped dead in our tracks and shamelessly stared as a woman rode by on her bike holding over her shoulder with her 'free arm' her TINY baby that couldn't have been more than a few weeks old. We would have gotten a picture if we weren't so shocked.

 

 

 

Probably one of our favorite parts of our time there was the random art class we took! Now you're probably thinking that's a strange statement coming from me, as I don't necessarily enjoy trying to make art...mostly because I have NO artistic ability whatsoever. But thanks to Audrey REALLY being set on doing it, and the total cost being merely 100 cordobas (less than $5), it being a cozy rainy day perfect for an indoor art class, AND they had an option of doing a mosaic rather than painting...I figured why not. And it was so fun! It was about 4 or 5 hours of sitting next to a courtyard, hearing the rain POUR down, with fun music playing in the background like Ella Fitzgerald, being taught how to make a mosaic by a young female Nicaraguan artist who spoke only Spanish. Well, the 'teaching' kind of went like this (after me telling her I've never done this before), her: 'Ok, what do you want to do it of?' me: 'mmmm..I'm not sure, what are some good/easy things to make mosaics of...or do you have like a book or something?' she hands me a book and after looking through it and finding only flowers and fish and all sorts of things I would never want to spend 5 hours creating a mosaic of...I asked her if she thought I could do it of a bicycle. :) Her response as she handed me a pencil and pointed to the little square piece I was going to make the mosaic on: 'draw it. Can you draw it?' My thought...definitely not. But I said, ok...and proceeded to draw the best bike I could. She came back and actually liked it... but said it was way too small and I should erase it and draw it again...ayayay. Anyways...I drew my bike...and basically just had to ask what to do next every step of the way. She was mostly busy off to the side working on her AMAZING masterpiece of a mosaic of a city with an elaborate church in the center...I don't blame her for being distracted from helping me with my little bicycle:) But once she got me going, it was great! And it's no masterpiece...but I actually impressed the art teachers (they admitted they didn't think I was going to be able to make it look like a bicycle! Haha), and I kind of like it! It's fun.

 

NEXT we headed to Isle de Ometepe, which is basically an incredible place straight out of a fairytale but we just happened to have some bad luck with. So it's an island..in the middle of the HUGE Lake Nicaragua, made of two volcanoes. UNreal! Well, we looked through our handy lonely planet guide book and picked the town that sounded like the best to stay out of the five or so options. So when we arrived by ferry to the island with everyone else we discovered several things: the public bus does not go to that specific town, our only option of getting there was a rather expensive taxi, and apparently an island made of volcanoes in the middle of a lake CAN be HUGE! After sadly deciding to just take the public bus to whatever town it was going to, handing our big bags up to the guy in the back of the school bus and starting to be hoisted up there, a guy started yelling to us that he found three other people who wanted to go to that same town we wanted to go to, which would make taking a taxi/minibus much more affordable! So as the bus started to go and was pulling away with our backpacks, we yelled for the guy to throw them out to us, which he did, and we went over to meet our new friends...three college students from the states who were doing a semester abroad in Costa Rica and just decided to take a trip to Nicaragua. We got to know them over the next 3 hours that it took to drive across the huge island, ending with a ride on THE most ridiculous road I have ever seen...it reminded me of what John's pictures of the trail in Pennsylvania looked like. My comment to him was, 'THAT is what they make trails FOR...to get around terrain like that.' which was basically just huge rocks. Well, that is what the road was. Anyways...it was kind of fun and we laughed a lot about it....and made it to the 'town' (made up of our hostel, a convenience store, a bus stop, and about five hut style houses) just in time for the GORGEOUS sunset! After enjoying the sunset, Audrey and I ventured out in the dark with our headlamps to find some dinner that was cheaper than what our hostel was offering, but quickly realized that the hostel offered food BECAUSE there was nowhere else to get any. As we were walking back to the hostel, we started hearing an intense sound behind us like someone was running REALLY fast towards us from behind, we both kind of froze and my first thought was, 'this is it....' Only to see about a second later a huge donkey run wildly right by us! Sounds ridiculous, but it was quite frightening, haha. Yes, we almost got trampled by a crazy donkey...which proceeded to run right into the hostel area. We carefully ran towards the hostel, in areas where it would be hard for the donkey to run, so we could warn the others about the crazy donkey! We got to the hostel and found everyone sitting around pretty calmly eating their dinner, and the donkey just standing off to the side of the eating area. When we asked the hostel workers about it and explained that it almost TRAMPLED us out in the dark, they explained it was their pet donkey named Fiona. Alrighty then. So we enjoyed our expensive dinner from the hostel for awhile, which was eventually interrupted by Fiona who helped herself to one of our new friend's dinner! Once again, we had a good laugh. Then as the night progressed, we tried to enjoy sitting around, talking, reading, chilling...and found it impossible with the harmless but unbelievably irritating bugs that were swarming EVERYWHERE! They had an amazing ability to target your face and it was impossible to go more than three seconds without swatting at them. So eventually we decided to go to bed so we wouldn't have to deal with them...only to find our beds covered in them. We commiserated with two other girls who walked into their room at the same time and made the same discovery, cleaned our beds off, only to find them covered a minute later and realized since we had the fan on and it was pointed right at our beds, it was blowing the annoying little bugs right onto our beds. We weighed the risks and benefits, and decided it,unfortunately, wasn't possible to sleep without the fan on, and then remembered we had mosquito nets!!!!! So we took awhile to figure out how to hang the amazingly useful nets up for the first time, and slept like little princesses inside our nets as the bug carcasses flew right into the side of the nets. It was fun, but we decided we didn't think another night of that would be so exciting, so we made our plan to take the only bus out of that town at 8:30 the next morning. We got up and had a peaceful morning enjoying the beautiful lake before we headed out. Then as we packed up, Audrey pulled her shorts our of her backpack and shook them out as she jokingly said, 'I'm just gonna shake all the little bug carcasses out of my shorts......' as a HUGE scorpion fell out of her shorts and quickly ran away. One of our other friends was in the room at the time and saw it, and the three of us just kind of stood there stunned. We were glad we were headed out at that point. :) Again, we had heard AMAZING things about the island and I'm sure it could have been an amazing time...but we just couldn't deal with the bugs. We deal with most bugs pretty well...but those just made it miserable. And we don't prefer scorpions...generally. Don't worry, we did some thorough and careful searching of the rest of our bags and found no more scorpions. Who knows how that one got in her pants in her big backpack.

Next we headed to our last stop in Nicaragua...San Juan del Sur, a little beach town where everyone goes to surf. That's right...even we took some surf lessons! We had fun...and kept up our reputation of being a total spectacle at LEAST once in every country:) We went to Playa Ramonso with about six other Germans in our class and braved the waves! It was super hard and we definitely got ROCKED by the waves...but we did get up several times and rode the waves and loved it! It was so hard it was kind of addictive. And really I think we only caught the waves because the instructors  would push the board, and sometimes we would take so long to stand up on the board we would be all the way in by the time we stood up or still just stuck on our knees, or halfway standing up. Haha....basically we looked amazing:) But the REAL fun came when everyone decided they wanted to go back into town, and we were still addicted to trying to catch the waves, and realized we had paid for the all day board rental, and there was a beach with decent waves in the town we were staying. We switched out our huge soft top boards that are generally used for beginners (apparently for good reason), for some fiber boards that were a little smaller (aka: absolutely impossible for us to stand up on). As we got to the beach we ran into some people that were staying in our room who we had befriended, and were actually real surfers They were impressed with the boards we had...saying, 'oh it's great you don't have those HUGE soft top boards most people start with.' mmm....yea, well that's actually what we've been using all day :/ ....and our only hope for ever standing up on the board. Then we proceeded to show them JUST how special we are. We gave our best effort, actually got a few waves to take us, and had NO hope of getting ourselves UP on our super short, slippery boards...but gave quite a good bloopers show to those chilling on the beach. As soon as we got out there we realized we are REALLY not surfers when a big wave would come and we would both look up at it and say, 'oh, SHOOT!' and just duck under the water...whereas the surfers would be EXCITED to see those waves. After getting terrified and ducking under the first big wave, we come up and a surfer near us just goes, 'You guys need lessons!' Hmmm...yes, indeed. OR...just to use the surf boards as floating devices to enjoy the peaceful evening and beautiful sunset, only after using them as like boogie boards to ride the big waves flat on our stomachs! That evening is one of my favorite memories of this trip so far. Both of us just being absolutely ridiculous, trying really hard but making fools of ourselves, then embracing our lack of surfing talent but definite ability to entertain those around us, laughing uncontrollably (which is a bad idea when you are trying to go under all the waves), and then resting on the boards enjoying the sunset.

 

Then one day we decided it was time to move on...talked to some people at our hostel who had just been to Costa Rica, found out what they loved and didn't love, made a plan, and headed out the next morning for Costa Rica!