This week is going to be a short post since I had to work on Saturday to make up for the Easter Week and I didn't do a whole lot this weekend. On Friday night I played soccer again with people from the company and others in town and again had a lot of fun. This time I brought a lot more water because I knew how hot it was going to be.

Saturday night was the final game of the Costa Rican soccer season and it came down to a match up between the two most popular teams in the country, Saprissa and La Liga. Saprissa is from San Jose and is the favorite in my house. La Liga is from nearby Alajuela and is almost as popular. Saprissa won the game and the championship 2-1 and everybody celebrated in Bagaces, even though San Jose is so far away. It would be similiar to the Leafs winning the Cup, assuming the Leafs win the Stanley Cup regularly. Now the next big thing in soccer is the World Cup which is greatly anticipated.

Work is going well and I am closing in on finishing the first version of the program. It is also almost rainy season here. Although it hasn't rained yet, there have been quite a few clouds and some rumbling thunder. I don't know if this is related to the rainy season or not, but I also saw my first scorpion since arriving here. The dogs were barking cautiously at it, so one of them probably got stung. I am managing to practice my Spanish by watching Costa Rican television. Simpsons and Family Guy are very popular in my house and its amazing how some of the voices sound exactly the same in Spanish. Homer sounds like the Bumble Bee Man, though, which is very amusing.

By the way, I have posted some more photos on my photo page.

I left Panama City on late on the Tuesday afternoon, so I had a good view of the Panama Canal as we crossed over the Bridge of the Americas on the way back to David. We arrived in David after dark, and I had no idea what hotel to stay in, but luckily there were a couple of other Americans on the bus. The one guy had just arrived in Panama and spoke no Spanish, but the other guy had been living here for two years working for the Peace Corps and he recommended a good cheap hotel. So me and the newly arrived guy took a taxi to the hotel. It was only $12.50 a night but it was luxurious for me. I enjoyed the air-conditioning and had my first hot shower since I arrived in Central America.

The American guy and I decided to check out the bar scene in David so we walked around to a couple of bars. Since the beer was only 50 cents a bottle and a meal only $1.50, it wasn't real expensive. The guy was 32 years old from Seattle and had just retired from professional boxing. He had a lot of interesting stories about the things that happen in pro boxing and the politics behind it. He had to retire because his last match gave him a bad concussion. However, I only noticed his boxing 'stutter' after he had a couple beers. His parents were sailing around the world but there was a family emergency, so he was flying down to watch the yacht for a month. He invited me to stop by later, but I didn't have time.

The next morning I took an old school bus to the mountain village of Boquete. It is a really beautiful town nestled in a valley. The main industries of the town are coffee growing, flower growing and tourism, so that sort of indicates how pretty it is. Also it was a nice cool change to the rest of Panama. I arrived planning on hiking and camping in the national park but I had no map so I bought a snack and sat in the park to decide what to do next. I was then approached by an extremely friendly Panamanian named Pancho who owned the hostel across the street. Since the hostel was quite nice and only $6.50 a night I decided to stay. Pancho was very helpful and he gave me a map and a whole bunch of info about what to see in the area. I met his Chilean wife and his son and he talked about how he met her playing basketball in Chile. I took an afternoon walk through some of the pretty mountain coffee plantations. In the evening Pancho had a party and I met all the other people staying in the hostel. There was two girls and a guy from Spain, a girl from Argentina and a guy from San Francisco. There was also a guy there who owned a hotel down by the beach and he invited everyone to come down and celebrate his birthday on the weekend with free drinks for everybody. Unfortunately I had to leave before then, but I enjoyed a number of glasses of rum I was offered at the party.

The next morning I woke up at 6:00 am because I planned to climb the nearby volcano and Pancho said that it clouds up in the afternoon. I took a taxi to the end of the paved road and it was an uphill climb of 15 km from there. After about 1 or 2 km of walking through farmland, I arrived at the National Park. The park protects the Baru Volcano, which is an extinct volcano and at 11, 400 feet(3475 metres) is the highest mountain in Panama. The entire mountain is covered in cloud rainforests and is full of many types of birds. I saw many new kinds of birds and was especially impressed by the number of hummingbirds, even at high altitudes. I was even buzzed by a hummingbird at the summit. I never saw the famous quetzal though, although I saw some close relatives. The views were beautiful until about 10 am when the clouds rolled in. Even so, the clouds gave the forests an interesting atmosphere. I arrived at the summit at 11 am and it was quite cold. I had to put on a sweater and a jacket while I ate lunch and waiting for the clouds to clear. Apparently, the summit is one of the few places on earth where you can see the Atlantic and the Pacific at the same time, but I never got the chance. If I come again, I will make sure to camp just below the summit so I can get to the top for an clear sunrise. It rained the entire way down, and since I was already soaked, I decided to walk the entire 25 km back to town. I was exhausted and all my stuff was soaked but I definitely would do it again if I'm ever back there.

The next day was Easter Friday, which is an extremely important day in Catholic Latin America. Easter is probably more important than Christmas here. I noticed that as the day went by, more and more well-off Panamanian tourists arrived and the town began to be crowded. I decided to walk along the town's main river. It was a pretty mountain stream and I climbed through some beautiful valleys. The outskirts of Boquete has many houses where the Guayami Indians live. The women in this tribe all wear very colorful dresses and the men usually wear a collared shirt. They reminded me of Mennonites from Ontario because they stand out when they come into town, they remain very traditional, and they mostly work as farm workers for the various farms in the area. After climbing to the end of the paved road, I took one of the local bus/van back into town to avoid getting soaked in the afternoon shower. In the evening the hostel was packed full of Pancho's relatives who were visiting him for Easter. I was the only foreign traveler left. At around 9:00 the town had a huge Easter Friday procession where thousands of people walked from one church to another following the cross. There were a number of brightly decorated floats, some being carried by local young men. I imagine that the number of people in the procession was much more than the number of people that actually live in the town. It was a very interesting experience because Easter is not nearly as important in Canada.

The next day I said goodbye to Pancho and his wife and I started to head back to Costa Rica. I wanted to avoid the Sunday rush at the border, so I planned to head back to San Jose to spend the night. By now, I was getting pretty good at the buses, so decided to take the local buses back. I took one bus back to David, then I took a bus to the Costa Rican border. I crossed back relatively easy. I was deciding the best way to return to San Jose when I was approached by a couple of kids. One was trying to sell me a ticket to San Jose for tomorrow and the other was looking for people going to San Jose to fill a minivan. I decided that the minivan trip would be interesting, especially because it was the same price as the bus and the van was air-conditioned. The driver of the minivan was a very friendly Panamanian who had lived the last 16 years in Costa Rica. He had learned English from being a taxi driver and he was eager to practice it with me while we waited for the van to fill up. Eventually, a large group showed up and after the border checks of the van and the luggage we finally got under way for the 7 hour trip. The van was crammed full, but I managed to find some space in the front seat because the driver wanted to practice english, so I got a much better view of the journey than the bus ride before. Strangely enough, my best wildlife sighting so far occured on the drive back. We reached the mountain highlands after dark and the headlights shone on a small animal on the road. It looked like a house cat, but as we got closer it was leopard colored. It seemed very confused and we had to brake before it ran off the road. The driver was very excited and said that he had only ever seen that type of 'tigre' in zoos. I later looked it up and it was probably an oncilla, also known as a tiger cat, one of the rarest cats in Costa Rica, living mostly in South America. I doubt I will be able to top that animal sighting for the rest of my trip.

That night I stayed in the same hostel in San Jose as the one at the beginning of the trip. The next morning I took a tour of the city of San Jose and was impressed by some of the buildings in the city and of the mountain views. At noon I took the bus back to Bagaces and watched many traffic jams and overheated cars on the opposite side of the road as everybody tried to return to the big city after the Easter Holiday. Panama is definitely a place I'd like to go back to, as there are so many things that I haven't seen. But now I will only have weekends to travel, but there are still plenty of places in Costa Rica that I still haven't seen.

I had no work this week because it is Semana Santa, so I decided to go to Panama. I was originally intending to go after work on Friday, but I was invited to play indoor soccer with some of the Costa Rican employees. After the soccer game there was a party for two of the employees who are leaving. My soccer playing is very rusty, but I really enjoyed playing despite the amount of sweating I did. It was extremely hot this weekend, with temperatures going to 40 degrees every day. Luckily there is little humidity but it still incredibly hot.

On Saturday there was another party so it wasn´t until noon on Sunday that I finally set off to Panama by bus. It is 3-4 hours to the capital, San Jose, which is at a higher altitude, so it was about 5-10 degrees cooler. When I arrived it was pouring rain. This was the first rain I had seen since I arrived in Costa Rica. I was planning to catch the 15 hour overnight bus to Panama City but the bus was full. I needed some money for Panama so I found a Scotiabank. Strangely, Scotiabank is the major foreign bank in Costa Rica. Panama uses American Dollars, so I took out a bunch. I left the bank and was walking down the street when I heard angry shouting behind me. I turned around and there was a group of guys, one with an aluminum bat and one with a large rock, and they were running towards me. They ran by me and chased down this bus. They started yelling at someone inside and bashing the bus. I guess they have something against buses. Later a taxi pulled up beside me and told me I was in a dangerous area and he had a good hostel to go to. I thought he was just trying to get an extra tip , but he didn´t want any money at all and the hostel was a real good value.

The next morning I found a 9 hour bus to David, Panama which is close to the Costa Rican border. The entire bus route was along the Pan-American Highway. After it leaves San Jose, it continues to rise into the mountains until it reaches the highest point on the entire Pan-American highway, right below the Cerro de la Muerte, the Mountain of Death. Apparently, in the rainy season, this highway is very dangerous, and there are a whole lot of gravestone crosses on the side of the road. The highway then quickly winds back down to sea level where it got very hot again. It followed a large river and I think I saw my first crocodile in the river. The were a lot of banana plantation and also pineapple farms near a Del Monte factory.

We arrived at the Panama border, which was very hectic. Another bus carrying a soccer team from Mexico arrived at the same time, so the line was huge. I got rejected at the border twice, once for not having a return ticket and once for not having a tourist card, but luckily the bus employees helped me out. The first thing I noticed about Panama is that the roads are way better than in Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, the Pan-American highway is two-laned and full of potholes but Panama had a much better 4 lane highway. We arrived in David just after dark and I decided to continue on to Panama City. It was another 6 hour bus ride and we arrived at about 2:30 in the morning. The bus station was huge and provided service across the country. The station was very clean and modern and there was a large mall across the street that was as fancy as any mall I have been to in Canada. After I left Panama City I saw on the news that there were huge crowds of about 200 000 people in the station at the start of Easter Weekend.

Unfortunately the only guidebook to Panama I had was a nature guide so I didn't really know where to go. Panama City is on the Pacific side so since I was at the bus station I decided to take a bus to the Atlantic along the Panama Canal. There are not too many places in the world where you can buy a $2.50 bus ticket from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The Caribbean side has a small city called Colon (Spanish for Columbus) which seemed very poor. The bus terminal was extremely rundown and was a stark contrast to the Panama City bus station. I ate some real good cheap breakfast and headed back to Panama City. The return bus also gave me a short tour of Panama City before it returned to the bus station.

The one place in Panama City that my guide mentioned was the National Metropolitan Park so I took a taxi there. The park is a chunk of preserved jungle inside the city limits and it was quite fascinating. There were huge parades of leaf cutter ants everywhere and when I passed a pond, a bunch of Jesus Christ lizards scampered across the water. There were also many different kinds of butterflies and birds and the trail ended with a great view of the city skyline, the Pacific, and the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal was also interesting. There were hundreds of huge boats congregated out in the ocean waiting to enter the canal and it looked like Panama City was under siege from a foreign navy.

Seeing that I was lacking a guidebook and since I wanted to avoid the Easter Weekend rush, I decided to head back to the western end of Panama where there is an interesting volcano. I'll talk about this next week

I don't have a lot of time to write because the office is closing early this Friday. The next week is 'Semana Santa' here which is Easter Week.

I didn't go anywhere last weekend, just around Bagaces. On Friday it was Zanda's birthday, so me and Jessica organized a surprise party for her. After we went to the local disco and were out until almost 4am. The dancing here in Bagaces is very different from Canada. Even though dance music is playing, everyone dances in a sort of aballroom dance style. There was only one short time where everybody started dancing like in a Canadian dance club. It was very interesting watching some of the more skilled dancers.

There was also a 'tope' in Bagaces, which is kind of like a rodeo. They have bullfighting, bullriding and other types of events. There are also some 'sabonero'(Costa Rican Cowboy) competitions where there are skillled horse riding competitions. There was a parade, which I missed, and a lot of fireworks. It was sort of similiar to a local country fair.