The sweetest place ever- Panama

On a bit of a lark, we decided to come down to Panama for the end of this little Costa Rica adventure. Upon arrival, Megan, Liz and I all had the "why didn't we just come here" moment. We are on an island in the Bocas del Toro archipelago that has no roads and wonderful hang out cabanas built out over the ocean. You can walk over the island and go to the beach through the forest, with streaming trails of leaf cutter ants all along the path. The ants are carrying the leaves to their nest where they will cultivate fungus on them, which they eat. Pretty awesome.
There is surfing, diving, sea turtles, whatever you want, and it is crazy cheap. Everything is in dollars (Panama uses dollars, gallons and feet), and the people here speak a weird Bislama-style creole of english and who knows what. Actually, I feel a lot like I am in the peace corps right now and I frequently wonder if Naked Ben would recognize this place as being a little piece of Vanuatu.
My one, ok, fine, two complaints are that I got bitten by something nasty and now my leg is swollen and that a previously friendly crackhead tried to break into our room last night. The guy had actually been the one who brought us to the island and we figured he was just a tout. However, there was really not a commission paid and the dude kept hanging around us. He isn't scary, or at least wasn't until he came to our room at 1 am with his crackhead friend and tried to get money from us. Fortunately, the bars on the window are good and our door was locked, but the girls were shaken up so I became very firm with the guy and sent him away while preparing to use more force should it have come to it (which I doubted). In the morning, the Argentinian who runs the place, Manu, went to tell the police to be on the lookout for him, but I think there is not really any danger.
That said, Panama is sweet. I hope it is not just a matter of time until it gets overrun with tourists such as myself.

The Carribean Cost

We arrived yesterday on the Carribean Cost of Costa Rica. It has been a nice reprieve from the Catholic dominated Latin culture of the Pacific side. In general, things here in Puerto Viejo are much more laid back and there are certainly more dreadlocks and reggae. Also, these are for the locals as much for the tourists, so it is mas authentico. It rains, we eat ice cream and hang out in hammocks then go to the beach and do capoeira or stretch or just hang out.

I guess I don't have any real revelations for this post. I like hanging out and kicking back a little, learning my Nepali alphabet and living a little of the much promised good life. Some people come here from America or other countries with a lot of money. Most decide to spend their couple of weeks here and go home. They think: I like this very well, but I need to get back home to do all these important things. I wonder what would happen if we took the vacation mentalitly home with us? Certainly we would be less "productive" but would that really be so bad?

Bob Marley, "No dreadlock no cry"

I am taking a brief 2 week vacation with my friend Megan in Costa Rica. I just got here, which, it turns out, might have been contentious.
Frontier Airlines has direct service from Denver to San Jose, CR. It´s pretty darned convenient, dumping you here at 5:30 in the morning with a whole day to get the hell out of the concrete capital. However, when I was checking in to the flight, the young agent asked me if I had been there before. I told her yes, I had a few years ago. "Because you might not be granted entry into the country," she said, "because of the dreadlocks. I´m sorry- I am not trying to offend you, it´s just that Costa Rica has issued us this warning that people displaying Hippie-style clothing, hairstyles and paraphenalia will be denied access."
"Excuse me?"
"Yeah, we laughed when we read that a year and a half ago. But it says here (looking at the computer screen) that things like tie dye shirts and dreadlocks are grounds for refusal of entry into the country. Do you have a hair tie or something? You can have mine if you need it so you can put your hair back." A sweet offer, indeed!

Still, I was a bit confounded about the whole deal. I breezed through immigration (with my locks hidden under a straw hat) and have seen no fewer than 6 other dreadies in the 4 hours that I have been doing anything here. So I guess their screening process is a little less than perfect? WTF, Costa Rica, you overpriced bigotfest of a country- I can see that all those hippies are really doing way more damage to the place than the fat ass geezer americans who are destroying the shores building gated communities where the only Ticos allowed are the servants. Maybe you might reasses your priorities...

(Please note that the above post was written by a person with dreadlocks. Do not believe anything that this hippie is saying!)