Lost And Found in Panama

A crazy venture that might just work. Build a hostel on a tiny farm in the middle of the cloud forest with no road and 2 hours from the nearest shop. Everything to has to be carried up a very steep, slippery path. The weather changes every few seconds - rain, wind, fog and then a bit of sun.

But its a unique wonderful experience to live for a few days, actually in a cloud forest.




You can visit nature on some of the great treks that start outside your door but nature also comes visiting you.

And if the forest gets a bit too much there is table football, games, hundreds of movies and the occasional poker tournament.



A superb experience that will be up at the top of most travellers to do list if the owner Andrew can get the final permissions to open officially. The story of the hurdles he has overcome would make a great book everything seems to have conspired to stop it happening from nightmare builder problems to a kinkaju with a bad paw

Where you have to sleep if you arrive at the Boquette during their flower and coffee fiesta


This area is the only one with a temperate climate in Panama. so they get very excited about flowers we think are ordinary




Nice dry shoes



Wet shoes

Hacked our way through the forest for 9 hours on the Quetzal Trail. Hardly saw any birds let alone a Quetzal
Some signs are less than useful when you are trying to get to town

On the way to Panama City we stayed in David a great little town with no tourists and 4 casinos

Much more than a canal

Panama is like Costa Rica but without the canopy walks. Its stunning.




Crossed over on a quiet border where the river bridge has holes big enough to fall through.

On the Panamanian side I was called into the immigration office. Expecting problems I was comfused by the big smile and hand shake by a very excited official. All was explained when he showed me his name tag - Barrett. I wonder if we are related


Made our way to Finca 60. Just one of hundreds of banana plantations each with loads of workers homes complete with company stores so they can be exploited twice. But Finca 60 has a side line running taxi boats out to the Caribbean Islands.


The Bocas de Toro archipelgo is stunning and as yet largely unspoilt. it has been described by biologists as the Galapagas of the 21 C. Unfortuantly, as usual, there is massive development pressure and ex-pat Americans and Canadians everywhere. Every island has a building plot for sale


The main town is Bocas del Toro with a nice Carebein feel







Our next stop was central Panama. we are now in Panama City trying to get a lift on a boat into Columbia. We are meeting a guy in a Subway in a couple of hours



A nose ring is not always a good idea
I really do like diving

A Costa Rican holiday

We have just had a 9 day holiday!!.

We met Steve at language school in Mexico and he suggested that he joined us, with his wife Sharon, for a holiday. It was strange for us to be travelling with other people who were on holiday but it worked brilliantly and we had a great time

Met in La Fortuna where you can see the most active volcano in the Americas - molten lava, rocks being thrown into the sky and a red glow lighting up the night sky. All we saw was cloud and rain for three days.

The Pacific and Carib coasts are beautiful and linked by some stunning roads across the mountains.





Costa Rica feels very safe and very rich compared to the rest of Central America. Even the non-tourist towns seem to have growing middle class and we didn't see the vast extremes of poverty and wealth. Just goes to show what can be achieved if you have decent Government.
A beautiful view on the Carib coast
There is a fortune to be made for someone to open a National Park here without a zip line or canopy walk. A consequence of the country´s wealth is that the touristy things can seem overly developed. But 25% of the country is national park and it has set the standard for eco tourism in Central America. We had some amazing animal sitings including a baby sloth eating leaves just above our heads and white faced monkeys, one of which climbed above me, got my attention with its sweet expression while it hit me with an very accurate stream of poo.

No friends

Sharon and Steve have gone back to work and we are in Panama now

Stuff we have learnt about the Maya (and laundry)

The Maya Civilisation has been a backdrop to our entire trip.

Omec 1200 to 400 BC. Worlds first writting system 900BC
Maya 1000BC to 1500s AD. Hieroglyph writing system, mathematics with a zero, great art and architecture
Aztecs 1200 to 1521 Great city Tenochtitlan, now the site of Mexico City. Brought to a sudden end by the Spanish invasion

Maya cities stretched from Mexico to Honduras. What we see today is just the religious and administrative centers. The actual cities were vast with typically 40,000 inhabitants

It was once thought that Maya had a unified, peaceful, enlightened civilisation. When their Hieroglypths were deciphered it was realised that the Maya where acutaly a collection of waring city states




Teotihuacan, near Mexico city. 250 to 700 AD. The Sun Pyramid from the Moon Pyramid. This city was abandoned long before the Aztecs arrived, the people had destroyed the local environment and could no longer grow enough food
Tikal, Guatamala and its dramatic jungle setting
The Maya Calender. Every 365 days they would extinquish all fires and break all potery. Every 52 years they build new temples, often over the existing ones so they got bigger and bigger. The Maya Long Count ends with the end of the world on 23 Dec 2012



Chicomoztoc. Masive mountain fortification. No one is sure what it was used for. Legend tells of an evil priest who lived their. The people asked their gods to destroy the priest and they did this 'with great heat'. Even today the Huichol people take a long detour on their annual pilgrimage to avoid the place

Copan, Honduras (420-822 AD)

Names matter. Copan was one of the important cities. It was rulled by Moon Jaquar, Snake Jaquar and Smoke Serpent, then along came Eighteen Rabbit. Guess which ruler was defeated and decapitated

Nearly all the cities collasped due to the strain they put on the environment. The temples and pyramids needed fast amounts of wood and lots of workers. They destroyed the forests and exhausted the farm land. Any additional strain, such as a drought or war with another city caused harvests to fail, social collaspe and the abandonment of the city. A lesson here for us - they must have thought the cities would last for ever

The Maya live on in the indeginous peoples. They have absorbed Christianaity into their believes. In places they have even taken over the Churches.

Part of a Maya ritual on the steps of a Catholic Church. Inside complex rituals are carried out in the aisle. They believe thier ancestors live in the nooks and crannies of the church.

There is a revival in Mexico of interest in their prehispanic culture. Teenagers find it all very cool and all the sites are full of school children who seem fascinated by what they are seeing


Human hearts ripped out of the still living body were placed in the stomach


Palenque. Stunning jungle setting and burial plave of the Jade mask


Chichen Itza 300-925AD. Now a modern wonder of the world




Tulum overlooking the sea. First Spanish to see it thought iot more beautiful than Seville



The Ball Game was central to the culture.I t always ended up human sacrifice. In some areas it was the winning team, in others the losing team. You could be sacrificed for sending the ball in a direction deemed to have annoyed the sun



'Aztecs' outside the remains of their massive temples in the middle of modern Mexico City



The Aztecs had been told to build their city where an eagle, sits on a cactus eating a snake in the middle of a lake - modern day Mexico City



The only bit of canal system left in Mcxico City that gives any idea what the Aztec city was like

When Marilyn says don´t put the blue shirt you bought in the market in the laundry, she means - when you do it will cause ALL of our clothes to turn blue or a dirty grey colour and she will get very pissed off.