photos? what photos lady?

Its been brought to our attention that the photos link that I posted (to your right, under the heading Panama 2008) doesnt work and you need to have a password and such for a yahoo account. I am currently perplexed and unsure about how to proceed. Any suggestions about how I can link my flickr account to this blog so peeps can view my pictures are more than welcome. We are also going to be posting a new blog about our adventures recently but we are preoccupied trying to figure out how to talk to a Korean person in Korea at a Spanish speaking phone center. Its complicated, to say the least.

Much love and solutions invited!

besos!

finally got a piece of the pie

Hi everyone-

Jamey and I are movin' on up, definitely. We found a little apartment in a part of town that isnt right next door to the emergency room at the hospital in a sketchy neighborhood. Yay! Although, the hospital is convenient if we broke a bone but not convenient when the sirens blare all night during the Carnaval madness. Jamey did his research and found a place that a gringo, Eric, has bought and revamped to sell to some Panamanians. While he sets up his new place we are renting a room and paying him for the week about the same we would have to pay at the hotel/hospital emergency room that we were staying at upon arrival on Wednesday. And to top it off, it has a brand new desk for Jamey "The Writer" and a balcony that looks over the quiet street where pedestrians make their way to the Carnaval festivities.

Today we ventured up the street to find out where everyone was going and we landed in line to enter the parade for Carnaval. After the armed soldiers split us up by gender and searched us, we moseyed along the street admiring the beautiful floats and the native costumes. Each float blasted either salsa or meringue while mini-bands made up of tubas, snare drums, trombones and trumpets blared their music into the crowds. It was great! Today is the last day of Carnaval so the parades and the partying is peaking. We are trying to remain inconspicuous gringos so we dont get harrassed too badly but it seems impossible to dodge the handfuls of confetti to the face and the water guns being sprayed up your nose. Its all in good fun. Panamania.

I have attached some photos for your viewing pleasure. There are a lot of them, just to warn you, but I am trying to take a lot so I have a sample to pick from to submit to Rough Guides.

Any input would be great!

The one thing I think that I have learned about travel writing or guide book writing is that you have to be the ultimate tourist. You have no choice, you have to do everything and do it thoroughly to make sure you're getting the best and most comprehensive information. For example, last year when we were here we did some of the basic city stuff, we saw the ruins of Panama Viejo and ate at some pretty good restaurants and then we decided we had enough of the city so we left. Not so much this year. We are doing everything there is to do here and we are sometimes doing it twice becuase we forgot to write something down. Its tedious, hard work and I'm not joking. It may sound luxurious, and yes, it is a nice gig, but I haven't been to so many museums in my life and I grew up next to the Smithsonian. We do enjoy chatting with all the locals. We are using our spanish more and I can comfortably say that I understand about 80% of what they say to us. Which is good because I think Jamey catches about 20-30% so I tend to clarify the parts he missed.

We're like Starsky and Hutch or Captain and Tenille, you know, any power duo.

I will write more later this week when I can wrestle the computer from Jamey. I hope you all are staying warm this February! Happy Fat Tuesday!

Oh yeah! Check out the dude I met on our hike to the top of a forested hill in the Canal Zone. All last year I wished to see a Sloth but never found one and TA-DAAAA, a Three Toed Sloth, or I think it should be called a Three -Giant -Clawed- Eyeball- Puncturing Sloth. YAY!

Root Canal

Hi friends,

I hope this message reaches everyone well. James and I are beginning a new adventure, although shorter in time than last years adventure, but equally as exciting. For those of you who haven't heard through Susan's high pitched exclamations, Jamey has been hired as an contributor to "Rough Guides Central America on a Budget." He has been assigned to Northern Panama, a section of the country that we discovered and loved last year when we randomly decided to cross the frontera of Costa Rica. We were delighted with the people, the beautiful scenery and the remnants of the US Military. Just kidding, we dont like the US Military stuff but our history with the Noriega government is pretty interesting. Anyway, Congratulations to Jamey for getting paid to travel and write! I, on the other hand, will be accompanying him for moral support and to lap up the summer sun of the Panamanian beaches. I will also attempt to take interesting photographs and beg his editor to buy them so I can be famous too.

Our itinerary is yet to be developed (big surprise there!) but Jamey has been assigned to research the Panama City and Bocas Del Toro regions. We toured both of these places last year so we are already a bit familiar with them and know all the good stuff! Yay! We are going to be able to explore even more and to do a lot of things we didnt have time for last year. Its very exciting! We will also be blogging our adventure and attaching pictures as we go along so check in often to get the latest update.

Our date of departure will be Wednesday January 30th. We should be gone for approximately 4 weeks but it could be longer depending on how much trouble we get in or how much fun we have or how much money we don't have.

Much love to you all,

Kate and J-Dogg

home sweet home

ok folks,

in case you didn't know, after a month long stint on the Osa, James and I have hightailed it back to the good ole US of A for what some may call "jobs". I was practicing what the Chinese call "do nothing" but it turns out that doesn't pay so well. I mean it does, spiritually and physically, but as far as cold hard cash goes, not so much. So here we are and we are having some problems catching up in America. We find that the grocery stores are a little too big and have waaaaaaaay to many options. We also realize that everyone drives without honking every two seconds and we're not sure how to accept this silence. And lastly, we can speak English. Everywhere. Well that's not technically true. Miami airport we still spoke Spanish. Our brains and our bodies are trying to catch up. In a matter of 9 hours we went from the jungle of Central America to the wide open spaces of the Delta in eastern Arkansas. I don't know if that's really cool or really strange.

Anyway, we are preparing to float the Buffalo River on Saturday in Arkansas and then back to Little Rock by Monday where we fly to Dallas Texas and then on to Raleigh North Carolina. After we get to North Carolina we buy a car, get a license, play with my nephew, hand out gifts, drink Costa Rican coffee and get on the road back to, you guessed it, our favorite Massachusetts playground, Cape Cod.

If you are interested in keeping up with our goings on we will be writing about our summer the shores of Cape Cod. We can also keep you posted on the water quality of the public beaches if you so desire. Jamey can help you out on that one.

I have posted all of the rest of our pictures from Costa Rica. There are over 200. Don't feel overwhelmed. I know you may not be interested in even clicking on the link but trust me, there are some goodies in there. A feast for your eyes, if you will.

Until we meet again...

new pictures

Hey check out my new pictures I posted (link to the right) from The Panamá Canal and the rest of our time in Boquete. They are a few weeks old now but I´m doing my best to keep up. Some of them are not rotated correctly so you may have to lie sideways or hang upside down to enjoy them. The computers here refuse to let me edit them so I gave in and let them win. You can only ask so much of technology here in Puerto Jimenéz. Enjoy my friends!

where are we?

Hi Folks,

Sorry we´ve been out of the loop. Just a quickie to catch you up. Jamey and I went to Panamá for the week of Semana Santa (before Easter) and enjoyed the deserted streets, closed restaurants and shops. What we didnt know before we left is that the City shuts down for the religious holiday. No beer, no shopping, no nothin´. But they did keep the movie theaters open for the heathens. That was us. We went to the movies. Not that cultural but we did end up getting to get out a bit and see some of the surrounding parks and the old city ruins. More on that later. I also have pictures trapped on one of my memory cards. For some reason my memory card is holding them hostage. I am negotiating their release.

Currently Jamey and I have made it to our volunteering post on the Osa Peninsula in southern Costa Rica. We are in the middle of nowhere with no phone, no internet, and no transportation. We love it. We rarely get to town to check our e mail and do our business so blogs are usually out of the question. Luckily today we are in town for an earth day celebration. We are celebrating in air conditioning and using the nice computer café. We figure everday is Earth Day for us.
Our volunteer position is with a fairly new non profit called Friends of the Osa or for you spanish lovers, Amigos De Osa. You can google that online and find a really good website. They are just getting things started here on the Osa. The facilities are top notch. We get a nice bed with real mattresses and pretty mosquito nets. They just built the residential cabinas and a lab and are currently raising funds to build a dining hall for when they begin to house more volunteers and researchers. Trond Larsen is the science director. He is the contact here for the entire organization and he seems to be stretched a little thin these days. Our first meeting with Trond was about a week after he had gotten into a pretty bad ATV accident on his way to the station. He is currently going back and forth between San Jose and here to get root canals to fix the teeth he broke in the accident. It was gnarly. So he´s been a bit distracted and overwhelmed.

Jamey and I hope to bring some peace to his life by helping establish a permaculture garden and some pura vida atop of the Osa. We are currently working on making raised beds to plant veggies and devising new ways to keep the millions of ants away from the plants. Jamey and I also spend part of the days either going to the completely beautiful deserted beach that is a 10 minute walk or we chase Howler Monkeys in the trees around the property. Either way we can always find something interesting to do. We´ve come to one of the most biologically diverse places on earth (according to Nat Geo) and we are darn appreciative too.

We will write more when we get the time. Love to all of you.

sucking fumes and pounding pavement

Do you ever wonder where U.S. school buses go when they die? They go to Panamá city. Once they arrive in Panamá City, the City government passes them off to a bus driver that, in no particular order, does the following things to the bus:

1. Take out the non-working parts and replace them with second hand Mitsubishi or Toyota truck parts.
2. Rip out the exhaust and tail pipe. Attach two huge, silver intake pipes to the back emergency door of the bus. Polish pipes.
3. Get out white spray paint. Paint entire yellow bus, bright white. Proceed to paint bright colored graphics via airbrush. DO NOT leave out the lude, inappropriate, overly-busty and leggy naked women. Next to the naked lady, or on the other side of the bus, paint a picture of Pope John Paul II or Saint Francis of Assisi. Or President Martin Torrijos. Whatever works.
4. Duct tape all holes and broken metal on the interior seats. Screw long pieces of scrap metal to the ceiling of the bus, covering the remaining emergency exits, as handles for standing passengers.
5. Place flag of Panamá on rear view mirror and hang banner that says ¨Yo Soy Panamá¨
6. Install car stereo. Play very loud salsa, day and night. Or 80´s music, whatever your preference.
7. Get in bus, speed, honk, yell at people and frighten small children.

Optional: Hydrolics, silver rims, off-road tires.