The Cockfight

The cockfight was a strange experience. We went to this Gallera place where many locals go to spend sunday afternoon watching roosters fight. It really is a whole afternoon social activity. At a first glance it might seem a bit brutal and dumb, but after having the details explained I sort of understand.

• First of all a rooster here is a precious pet. Much more than a dog or a cat, which are nothing here.
• Most men treat their roosters very well. Feeding them the best crops, having them clean, having them at home.
• Roosters have to be trained for a year before they can fight. This means 1 hour of running a day and ocassional fight with rooster boxing gloves on (harmless excercise).
• Roosters only fight twice a year (only if they survive the first fight obviously).
• All roosters have their nails cut off. For the fight they get a knife at the place where the fighting nail used to be (on the left leg only). These knives are standardized and both fighters get the same size in order for the fight to be fair.
• They do not necessarily fight till death. If both are standing after 15 minutes, it is a draw and nobody gets any money. If one falls and does not get up, the other rooster is not allowed to eat his eyes.

Now, how super humane that is!

All that being said, I only bet once on one rooster. He lost his life and I lost C$100. How unlucky (for him).

Cigar Factory

Estelí is quite famous for it’s tabaco business. We went to this local cigar factory. They make more than 40 different cigars here, most of which are exported and cannot even be sold locally.

Almost the whole process is manual. The most machinery is involved in creating the wooden boxes. For the cigars themselves, the leaves are selected manually, the cigars are rolled manually only using this manualy operated folding tool, the packaging is done manually only using scisors and iron (same as for ironing clothes). The rolling itself is done by a woman and a man. Each couple makes 500 cigars a day.

The structure of the cigar is that in the middle, there are strong a dry leaves, possibly with holes and other esthetical imperfections. These are rolled by the man. Around it all is one leave “the wrapper”. This is dry, visually perfect, rolled by the woman.

There is nothing special about Cuban cigars, except for they got good reputation, are illegal in US and cost way much more than other cigars. The Estelí factory is producing many different types of cigars, each tailored for a specific taste of target market. Strong taste for US, softer taste for Germany, smaller cigars for women (although, as our guide told us, some women like it big and I am not sure he was reffering to cigars).

What I missed
I was seriously considering but missed on other “cultural” activities offered by local tourist agencies. Like making silver jewelery. Or like cooking iguana soup. The later one reportedly includes buying live iguana at the market and killing it with a dull knife. Yummy.

All those times I have never seen the top of any volcano, never seen the full siluete of any of thouse perfect volcanic shapes. Even when I arrived to Granada, Volcan Mombacho was covered with clouds. A few days later however the clouds were gone and we went up. Not exactly a hike, as we took a pick-up, but still a trip to the top of a slightly active volcano.

Then I saw a lot more volcano shapes going from Granada to Leon and watching the volcano line from the Leon fortress.

A two day hike to Volcan Telica was my first real experience with and active volcano. The size of it. The smell of it. And most importantly the sound of it is simple incredible. It sounds like if three aeroplanes were catching each other down in the crater. Then the crater by night – all the red lava glow. All seemed like from another world.

Then a bit different experience – Cerro Negro. This is Central America’s second youngest volcano, erupting roughly every 10 years since 1850. But the ultimate tourist atraction there is sand boarding. I have seen a couple of injured people comming back from boarding, but most of them wend down sitting, doing 70km/h. I decided I have to go standing – it is snowboarder’s pride to at least try, even though it is totaly different from snowboarding and I kept falling down almost at every turn.

Anyway, the most adrenalin I got from that trip was from getting there and back. We went on a motorbike. My driver was 20 years old. Getting through Leon trafic, I was already not sure I would not die on this trip. Then the road just kept getting worse. The driver enjoyed driving on the left side, even in left turns with no visibility. The paved road changed to dirt and then to deep black sand. We were constantly sliding to either of the sides and he thought that more speed would cure all these problems. The first time we almost head hit pair of bulls pulling carriage I just wished that they did not have such long horns. I was wearing shorts and no helmet. At Cerro Negro this “profesional” driver showed me some of his scarfs and injuries, all of them from motorbike accidents, that was not reasuring either. The fact, that comming back in dark we did not have any light but still kept the same driving style did not surprise me anymore. I don’t believe I had ever before hold so hard to any other men, much less so a sweaty one. I think I got really lucky to survive this – if I ever plan to go somewhere on a moto, please remind me of this experience.

La historia de Nicaragua es horrible.

English translation:
The Nicaraguan history is horrible.

I have never thought Czech history being particularly nice and peaceful. However since 1620 there were basically no big wars or fights in the territory of Czech Republic. Sure The World War II was bad. So was 40 years of communism. But somehow after having heard the bloody history of Nicaragua a couple of times in the last few days, I am beginning to think that everything is relative.

The Nicaraguan history is basically a quick succession of wars and revolutions, contra-wars and contra-revolutions. In case you wonder, a “contra-revolution” is basically a term for revolution which comes so fast after previous revolution, that it has to define and distinguish itself from the previous bloody events by the contra- prefix.

When locals are asked if they think of Nicaraguan history as of revolutions coming every 20 years, the say “No, that is not correct. It is actually every 10 or 15 years”. That might be a bit of exaggeration. On the other hand, all the time until now there has never been a nica generation that could live the whole life peacefully in this country.

Here in Leon it is especially visible. My Spanish school afternoon activity yesterday was to walk around the town to see street paintings. I thought good, graffiti, independent street art. Quite the contrary was true. The murals are state sponsored and well preserved propaganda.

First painting was reasonably objective description of the whole history. Peaceful indigenous life, Spanish plundering, fight for independence from Spain, American plundering, fight for independence from US, fight for independence from US, civil war, revolution, contra-revolution, revolution, bright and idealistic depiction of today’s Nicaragua where children can safely play in the natural beauty. Reasonably objective within the limits of freedom of speech in this country.

Then we got to the cross-road where the massacres of 1959 happened. This is a very lively legend, especially here. It is something like if you multiply our “Day of Blood” by Jan Palach. They were students in peaceful demonstration shot by the military. There are four white crosses on the ground where the corpses have been found. Within a few hundred meters from there, there are several murals depicting the scene. Try to find 10 differences between the mural above and the real place photograph (taken more than 40 years later) bellow.

History is the past, you would think. But it is not quite so easy here. The current leading party FSLN and the current president Daniel Ortega are direct successors of this revolution. That is why the murals are so well preserved (in fact I have seen two painters restoring the painting this morning as I was walking to school). The whole country is basically painted in red and black colors, the official colors of FSLN (you can see the flag in the painting at the top, next to Nicaraguan blue and white flag).

Yesterday, as I was being told all this history while observing the murals, just a few kilometers away in Managua, Ortega was swearing presidential oath for for his third term. Third term is not allowed by Nicaraguan constitution, but somehow that does not seem to be an issue any more.

There were many guests at the ceremony among the most notable ones were Venezuelan Hugo Chaves and Iranian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. What a company. Only the Castro brothers were absent.

I’m obviously not in a position to criticize all this, as I’m a European Union citizen, citizen of the union that contains both Spain, the country responsible for a lot of blood here, and Hungary, which seems to have lost free speech guarantees in constitution just recently.

I was quite delighted that today’s activity was a visit to Museum of Rubén Darío, Nicaragua’s most famous poet. And tomorrow we’ll go to the beach. And I might skip Friday’s visit to the local colonial fortress turned into prison and torture place during last century.

Next day we climbed Volcan Concepción. Not the whole way up, but even above the tree line it was quite a hike with it’s own portion of forest, rain and wind. We were taught which plant used to be used as a natural glue (worked surprisingly well), which plant was used as natural repellent (didn’t work for me) and how you can eat termites (surprisingly tasty).

Moyogalpa is a bit of a party place. For the island standards anyway. So staying here partying was fun. Even on Christmas Day. On Cristmas Day I also rode a hired bike to Mirador del Diablo and Chaco Verde. On the way back, I saw a sign “Hay Hiello” so I stopped for the home made icream. When I understood what the home made iscream is like, it was too late for polite No. So I had the most strange thing ever: plastic bag full of half frozen something which tasted remotely like capuchino. I was told to bite the plastic bag and suck. Cost 1 Cordoba for one sack, but I politely returned the third one even though I ordered it in the beginning.

stedrodenni projuzdka po ostrove at EveryTrail

The second week I went to the other side of the island. On the bus. The buses here are as expected. Load music. Old US school bus. The fact that it is full does definitely not mean, that more people should not get on. Quite the contrary. Even better if you are travelling with an uncovered machete, a couple of long girders or a few bags of beans.

Merida was a really nice place, with wonderful access to scenic lake and view on Volcan Concepción. After a little swim and look back, the other Volcan Maderas was also easily seen. An evening there are so many lightning beetles, that I could not believe it at first. One day after sunset swimming and sitting on the shore I realized my swimming suite is strangely blinking. I got a lightning beetle inside. Now I know why lighthouse is considered a phallic symbol.

One day I went kayaking to see the caymans in Rio Isthian. Didn’t see any, but a lot of birds and it was a 3 hour roundtrip that made my shoulders sore for another day. One day I hiked to the waterfalls. 180 meters fall. Very nice, very crowded. Yes, I did take a shower in them.

De Mérida a la cascada at EveryTrail

Mainly on the influence of the books I have been reading recently (John Gowdy: “Limited Wants, Unlimited Means” and Goerge Orwell: “Coming Up for Air“) I decided I’d like to try fishing for the first time in my life. This is not a standard tourist activity here. Finally a got set up with a local family of fishermen. The asked if I could swim. When I boarded their boat I knew why. One of my responsibilities was to throw the water out of the boat, but it somehow kept coming in. We put 300m of net and 300m of rope in the water. Then we started pulling first the rope and then the net towards the shore. It is really hard work. I have blisters and torn blister all over my hands now. Then I was throwing little net in the big net surounded portion of the lake to get the fish out. You need a griff for that, so that the little net spins and spreads out. But we got about 30 fish which were sold to the locals in the following 10 minutes. Actually the demand was bigger that that.

The local food is fantastic, as anywhere in Latin America I’ve been so far. But there was a special little shop selling coconut cake. That is some good stuff, really. And costs 1 C$ for one piece (about one Kc).

After Puerto Viejo and some volcano climbing near San Jose I headed to the beaches of Peninsula Nicoya. It is a peninsula, but feels like an island. Ferry over Nicoya bay takes 90min and it is the only reasonable way to get there if you don’t have a good off-road car.

Both ways I took the last ferry and both times the sunsets were amazing. On the way there the sunset had a few storms mixed in. So much so, that the busdriver refused to go to the final destination, because of the wet roads and left us in the dark night somewhere halfway. I took the opportuniuty to visit Montezuma and got on a different bus the next mornning. As it turned out the bus driver was right. The road was seriously damaged by the storms: sometimes half of the road was washed away, sometimes land slides or fallen huge trees blocked the road. Anyway I made it to Santa Teresa finally.

First five days I stayed in a hostel owned by Barbora Seidlova‘s sister. Quite a surprise to hear Czech after a few months traveling. Then I was politely kicked out and moved to Don Jon’s, the best hostel in Santa Teresa. It took me more than 3 weeks and 60 beers to leave. I really liked the place and even more the people.

One minor problem was, that I got ear infection from the sea while surfing. The pain was bad, the doctor’s bills were worse and the fact that I was forbidden to go into the water for the time I was taking antibiotics was the worst. Then after restarting surfing, I got the same thing again. It was time to leave the shore for a while.

After a brief stop in San Jose I headed to La Fortuna/ Volcan Arenal. This is the volcano, that erupted heavily in ’68 on the day of JFK came to visit Costa Rica. Today unfortunately the volcano is calm and is not spilling lava at night. Even worse, all the time I stayed in La Fortuna, it was raining or almost raining, so I have never got to see the whole volcano, the top always being in the clouds.

But there are other things to see there. One day I set up for a ‘triathlon’: hired bike up the volcano slope, swim in strong current near 50m high waterfall, hike back to the bike, bike downhill in tropical rain (going faster than cars). Nobody was swimming there, but I still regret no swimming in the waterfall of El Nancito, so I decided never to the the same mistake again. Somehow I remembered too late the old wisdom: “it’s better to regret what we have done than to regret what we have not done”. Better late then later.

Another day we hiked up the Cerro Chato, the volcano next to Arenal. Quite a hike up in tropical forest.

Then I took the ‘Jeep-Boat-Jeep’ trip from Sleepers hostel in La Fortuna to Sleepers hostel in Monteverde. This should be very scenic with views of volcano, but due to the still awful weather I have not seen the volcano at all.

Monteverde is a place where it constantly rains. Even when the sun is shining. But after one day of wayting the impossible happened: one day of sunshine (ok, there was a rain before 8am, but what happens before breakfast does not count to me). I finnaly caught the opportunity to the the thing I came here in the first place. Unfortunately, I do not have a video of myself doing it. But this is very close to my performance, except for the minor fact, that I did not make a sound.

The whole experience was quite pleasant adrenalin fix. The hardest part was when the opened the gate. I didn’t know what to do. I asked if I should jump. They said “No, only bend your knees”. And then they pushed me. Silent “aaaaa”.

The next day I was ready to leave Costa Rica. 3 different buses to the border. Then the nightmare. First I was changing the money and the guy constantly tried to scam me. He gave me a reasonable exchange rate, but somehow even though he had calculator he insisted that 50 time 38 is 1200. Then gave me 1500. The finally we got a deal after I took my calculator and refused to pay him before I get the whole amount first. But why do you always have to watch them so carefully? Probably because of my skin color.

Then there were about 20 people insisting I have to by a form from them, because that form is required to exit Costa Rica. Partially true, it is required, but it is for free once you make it inside the building after waiting for 1 hour with the form sellers outside.

Exiting Costa Rica was easy and cheap compared to entering Nicaragua. There also a form is required and can be bought. I can not imagine, who would fall into the form selling scam for the second time in the same border,… but it looked like this form business is going on well.

Then the immigration officer did not like a bit of paper of one of my passport page missing. Little it helped to explain that it got torned out by stupid US officer on one of my visa visits to US (actually I think it was worse explaining then not explaining). 1 hour later he told me to go to the office to check what is going on with my passport investigation. Another hour later boss of the boss has arrived to briefly examine the horrible one cm2 of paper missing and finally said “for god sake, let him go”.

The problem was that by that time, all the taxis that promised $20 ride to the ferry were gone and only 2 buses were left. I got scammed like 5 times. The final touch was I got my money back from one of the guys, made him angry, payed to the second bus drive only about half of the price and got on the bus. But unfortunately the scammer got on the bus and was really upset with my behavior. A few screems later, half an hour and fortunately no more money I finally got to Rivas. I got a taxi that was speeding through carnival crowds only for me to catch the last ferry. I made it, with 5min contingency. Welcome to Ometepe, Nicaragua.

More to come later.

Panama has only one volcano – Barú. It is also the highest mountain of Panama with its 3,474m above sea level. This one has been on my todo list for quite a while.

When I arrived to Boquete, I wanted to climb it as soon as possible. There are basically two possible ways of doing it:

1. Start climbing at around midnight with a headlight. Be up for sunrise, see both oceans and run down before lunch time. Die in the afternoon.
2. Start climbing around lunch time. Camp at the top. See sunrise, see both oceans. Go down before lunch time, enjoy the afternoon.

The first evening I was the only one who wanted to climb by night. But I was not crazy enough to do it alone. The second, third and forth evenings in Boquete, I wanted to climb by night and there were always others willing to do it too, but it was raining a lot. Then I had a week of Spanish classes so I did not want to skip lessons. However by Murphy’s law, the weather was nice half of the week and some guys did it and saw both oceans.

The next weekend was the last chance to do it. I manged to get a deal no tent rental and agreed with Patrik to climb the volcano by the second method. We set off late and neither of us in a particularly good shape. We got a taxi to take us to the trail start. As we were going in the taxi I warned the driver, that he was meant to turn left to get to the Volcan. No se preocupe.

Half an hour later we were getting of the taxi at the supposed trail start. Other local guys were getting in the taxi and as we had a little chat, it turned out, that we were at the wrong place. So we got back to the taxi and the driver was trying to take a short cut to recover from his previous mistake. No se preocupe. It was a shortcut to destroy his car more than to get us where we wanted. 10 minutes later it was obvious that the car cannot get any further. We got off and the poor local guys had to push the taxi car back the way we came. It had started to rain.

from vulcan baru at EveryTrail

We hiked for about half an hour in rain to only get to the start of the trail, where everybody else who got a reasonable taxi was starting to hike up. It was already after 3pm.

By 7pm we had managed to climb to about 3000m above sea level which was about 10km from the trail start or about 13km from where the taxi left us. It was getting dark and it has been raining all the time. We decided to camp there, the place was reasonably good for camping. I set up an alarm clock for 4am, so that we can finish the remaining 4km climb early and still get the sunrise and both seas view.

At 4am the weather was still bad. We decided to rather sleep than suffer. At 8am the weather was still anything but promising. We packed the tent and headed down. It started raining really heavily in about 1 hour of descent.

By the time we reached the trail start, we were both tired and soaking wet. There was no taxi, no bus, no car anywhere in sight. According to road signs it was another 11km on the road back to Boquete.

After another half an hour, we hithed a van, possibly a covered sheep van. Got in and got a ride almost to the hostel. This was probably the most comfortable part of the whole trip. I left Boquete the next day and left this volcano unconquered.

Now, just two weeks later, I was invited by Evan to his place on the side of Volcano Barva, near San Jose, Costa Rica. The plan was to get up at 6:30 on Sunday morning and climb it before the weather gets worse in the afternoon. At 6:30 it was raining hard. We both individually decided to kill the alarm clock and sleep.

At 10:00am the weather got better, so we headed up. In taxi as far as possible, than on foot. This time we made it to the top at almost 3000m above see. There were no views on San Jose or anything else on the way up, but the forest and crater lake are nice on their own. On the way down, the clouds cleared a bit and we could even see half of San Jose. Nice 20km hike + 6km hitchhike altogether.

Volcan Barva at EveryTrail

Costa Rica has many volcanoes, some of them active, so maybe this is not the end of volcano story. More to come…

PS: unfortunately most of my photos from both treks are still on the unprocessed film. What is worse is that they apparently stooped processing slide film in the whole Central America, so I will have to wait a long time to see the pictures.

“have yet to be studied – few people outside of Chiriquí even know about their existence”

And since few people outside of Panama know about existence of Chiriquí, this place just has to be really unique and out of the gringo trail. Although I doubt it as anything that gets to Lonely Planet does get known quickly.

So first I almost froze in the bus from Santiago (as in all busses in Panama). I asked the ticket boy to stop the long distace express bus in El Nancito (read: in the middle of nowhere) and I explicitly said I had no idea where that is, so he has to remember to stop there. It worked perfectly. I got of the bus in 2 jackets still shaking from the cold, but outside it was about 30°C and raining. I changed to swimming suite and started hiking the 3km up. After about 2km I saw a Mirador – a newly constructed shelter with beautiful view, if only I was not in clouds with about zero visibility.

One more kilometer and I was in the town. I imagined the carvings to be behind the town on some kind of big rock. Wrong. They actually made a museum inside the town and the rocks are series of relatively small volcanic boulders in the museum garden. They are nice and interesting though.

By the time I have seen all rocks it started raining really hard. Just to kill time hoping the rain would stop, I read all the material inside the museum. I also examined the book of visitors: all panamenians, one mexican about a month ago and one US gringo about 6 months ago. So maybe 2 paragraphs in Lonely Planet are not enough to make place famous after all.

The rain did not want to stop. So I asked in the museum, if there is any bus going back to civilization. No. If there is any restaurant or hotel in the town, where I could stay. No. It was 4 pm already – big trouble. 4 calls later Cesar, the guy working in the museum, managed to find me a bed in the town. Perfect.

I had to wait for the museum to close at 5pm. Then Cesar took me to the accommodation. I have never ever stayed in place like this. It was basically a room at the back court of a house owned by a local old man. He kicked the chicken from the door, opened the door and there it was – two beads and nothing more. I could use his bathroom inside the house, just there was a small problem, that there was no water and that he locked the house when he went to sleep – but I maneged to pee in his garden, no problem.

I also asked Cesar where can I eat. He told me to come over to his place at 7, so I did. He was not there and his wife told me he was at the neighbors’s and that it I can join them there and I could see the animals. Nice.

So I went to see the neighbor’s property. Quite a cultural experience of its own. And I saw the animals and also how to cut holes in lamb’s head so that the horns can grow better.

Then we went to another house where older women was cooking dinner for about a dozen guys. I got a plate too. Perfect. Rice and Pasta. In the whole town there was nobody who would speak any English. One guy said “Goodbye” after the dinner and everybody was laughing at him, that he is the local English translator, although that was likely the only word he knew. After the dinner I got invited to Cesar’s house for a cup of something. Something I could not understand what it was. It was a desert, served hot in a cup like pudding, but with a taste somewhere between rice and corn flakes.

In the morning finaly it stopped raining. A again asked Cesar for the directions to waterfalls. The waterfalls are so unknown, that they are not even in Lonely Planet. Cesar very correctly assessed that if he would not come with me there would not be any chance I could find the waterfalls myself. So we set up for a half an hour hike in the cow meadows just to find the most hidden and beautiful waterfalls ever.

On the return to the town I stopped for breakfast at the old lady’s house. I got fried flour tortillas and liver (no idea what kind of animal’s liver it was). Delicios, although I would normally not consider liver for breakfast. I have learned from Cesar, that the lady is not cooking out of altruism, but that she sort of represents the town’s restaurant. So after the breakfast I asked for la cuenta. 15minutes counting of how much I ate at the dinner and breakfast I was presented with the final price. $2.45 altogether. Best value ever. Yes I tipped (and yes, more than 5 cents).

Then it was time to pay for the accommodation. $4. The cheapest I have ever paid in Panama, although here the price was just right. I also asked how many tourists the man is having in the room. The answer was that there was a mad Russian about half a year ago, who bought horse in Panama City and was passing by. He considered to stay, but did not stay in the end. So I might have been the first tourist staying this year. He gets some seasonal workers to stay sometimes though.

Cesar and his friend were leaving to Santa Felix so I joined them for the 3km hike down and bus back on Interamericana.

This post will hopefully get updated with more photos once I find a place to develop my films.

Dnes to bude male historicke okenko. Kdysi se me jeden mexican v USA ptal, kdy je v Cechach ‘Independence Day’. Prislo mi to jako hodne divna otazka, jako kdyby v kazde zemi mel byt independence day. Jenze on skoro v kazde byvale kolonii independace day je. A protoze cela amerika byly kolonie, tak vsude maji oslavy nezavislosti.

Panama to ma jeste o trochu slozitejsi. Vcera (3. listopadu) oslavili prvni den nezavislosti – oddeleni od Kolumbie. Dneska je svatek vlajky (takova mala oslava nezavislosti). Desateho maji “Grito de Independencia” – oslavu prvniko povstani za nezavislost. A konecne 28. listopadu maji den nezavislosti na Spanelsku (tenhle asi slavi spolecne s Kolumbii). Vsechno v listopadu, ale samozrejme v jine roky.

Je s podivem, ze nemaji den nezavislosti Kanalu na USA. Asi proto, ze nevychazi na listopad. Anebo proto, ze uz nikdy nebudou na USA skutecne nezavisli, ani kdyby hodne chteli.

Vsechny svatky samozrejme znamenaji, ze se v listopadu skoro nepracuje. Kazdy den musi byt oslaven pochody a bubnovanim. A na bubnovani je potreba poradne trenovat. Takze rijen i listopad se v centru mest pres den a obcas ani v noci neda spat. Minulou nedeli jsem se odpoledne vratil z neuspesneho vystupu na Vulcan Baru (blog post comming), chtel jsem se konecne vyspat, ale neslo to. Neslo nic, ani divat se na televizi, protoze pod okny trenovali bubnovani.

No a dneska bubnovali naostro. Jsem sice par stovek kilometru jinde, ale bubny zni zase jako bubny. A zase primo pod okny hostelu. Aspon jsem to mohl sledovat z balkonu. Kdyz se mi nechce spat, tak je to vlastne docela prijemna hudba (i kdyz nevim, jak se mi podarilo to nahrat na muj lowcost telefon).

More than two weeks at Playa Venao were not expected. I meant to stay like for a week at max. But once I got the first lesson of surf and started feeling like at home at Eco Venao, the time started to go really fast. That place is just like a newly discovered paradize. For learning surfers for sure.

The beach is simply perfect. I even got to see a whale. Not to close, but not to far either.

I arrived just a day after a catamaran has crashed on the beach and as I was leaving the thing has been mostly disassempled and pulled out of sight.

I think that in 5 years it is going to be a real riviera of Panama. The real estate frenzy has already started. If I had a few hundred thousend dollars for investment, this place would be high on the list.

I spent over a week in Panama City (not that it would be that much interesting, just I got food poisoning much sooner than expected), over 2 weeks in Playa Venao (not that it would be enough to learn surfing) and slowly made it through some interresting places all the way to the mountains in the west – Boquete. Some of the stories I still have to write down here.

Anyway 31 days of fun passed really quickly. But there are a few more months ahead :-)

It is a time to check the budget too. I have spent a total of 22 000 CZK ($1200). This includes all of my expenditures here (and the beer, etc.), but does neither include flight to Latin America nor insurance. Panama is supposed to be one of the more expensive countries on my way (although not as much as Costa Rica) so this is not too bad. Even when I add what I’m loosing on the difference between the mortgage I’m paying and rent I’m receiving, it is still less than what I would have spent at home for the same time (including housing, the beer, etc.).