Tag: panama

Boquete

Our second week in Panama was in a town called Boquete. It’s a more relaxed place than Panama City, located in the hills with much cooler weather. In my opinion the perfect climate as it was mid 20s and sunny most of the time!

Our journey there was our first taste of public transport in Panama. We’d expected a six hour bus ride to a city called David, and then a change in David to a local bus for 35 minutes. It was a Sunday and there was some kind of event near the main road about an hour in, we ended up in a traffic jam for two hours. Having left Panama City at 8:30am, we finally arrived at the hostel 11 hours later!! The nice thing was that the bus stopped for a 30 minute break for everyone to take lunch and go to the toilet, a welcome break and not something we’d seen on previous long distance bus trips in South America.

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San Blas Islands

As part of our Spanish school we got to spend two nights on the San Blas islands. There are around 365 islands in the San Blas archipelago of which around 50 are inhabited and they are owned by the Kuna people, who also own the forest along the coast here. They are celebrating 100 years of independence from Panama this year. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming.

Isla Franklin where we stayed is tiny, with around 25 tourist cabañas and a few for locals who only stay here when it’s tourist season. It’s by far the smallest island we’ve stayed on taking only a couple of minutes to walk the length of and less than 5 minutes for a complete circuit. Everything is very simple, we stayed in a small cabaña made from coconut palms with a sand floor. There are shared showers and toilets, and the power (two noisy diesel generators) is only on for a few hours in the evening. It’s a mini paradise.

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Learning Spanish in Panamá

One of the main reasons for choosing Latin America for our travels was to improve our Spanish. We found a Spanish school whereby we can travel and learn at the same time.

On Sunday evening we had our introductory talk for the Spanish school. Our teacher, Sergio, had been detained by another engagement so it came to Camila, who was assisting us for the week, to give the introduction. After a brief intro she took each of us in turn for a one to one Spanish oral test. I was a little nervous and it didn’t help that the first question she asked me was “Que has hecho en Panamá?”. This uses the preterito perfecto tense which is not one that I’ve used before. I managed to answer some more questions but I didn’t come away feeling confident. Alex seemed to fare better, but her Spanish is better than mine so I wasn’t surprised.

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Getting started in Panamá City

Our last few days at home were a bit of a blur, Alex finished work on Friday as planned. I had some extra work to finish off on Monday and Tuesday. Preparing to leave home for three months isn’t a typical experience. Last time we were leaving London permanently and it was barely managed chaos, this time has at least been a little less brutal. Even though we thought we were pretty much ready by Thursday morning, I still spent the day running around and predictably a few things didn’t get done. Our friend Terry gave us a lift to the station and we headed to London for a night in an airport hotel, before a 6:30am flight to Madrid and a connection to Panama City.

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On the road again..

We returned from South America in April 2016, and in the last nine years, a lot has changed. After living in Bristol for a year, we moved to the Cotswolds and bought a 10-year renovation project house. After two major building projects and a whole raft of smaller renovations, the house is nearly finished. In this time, we’ve also both moved companies, experienced good and bad times, but along the way we’ve made a whole new set of friends in our adopted Cotswolds home near Stroud.

It’s time for another adventure. We’ve managed to arrange a three month sabbatical after some careful planning with both of our employers. While three months is the maximum that I can take, Alex has a little longer, so is taking the lead on getting us ready so that we can travel for nearly the entire time that I’m off work.

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