Our sojourn in Santa Fe is coming to an end.

Sadly!

What a little paradise it is here: the village of Santa Fe is lost in the mountains among plantations of oranges, bananas and coffee haciendas. Our hostel is a bamboo construction with a panoramic view of the mountains.

And the perfumes: around 8pm, the smell of jasmine starts to invade the air and during the daytime, it is the smell of roasting coffee beans that moves through the valley ...

Yesterday we went for a swimm in a river, Rio Santa Maria, and had a wonderful view of the mountains. Today, we hiked to Alto Pedra...until the rain got too much and we decided to tun around. Nevertheless, we saw some toucans, lots of different butteflies, as well as cattles and horsemen; this is a cowboy paradise here! After such hikes, we like to stop at our little restaurant (!) in the village to feast on a huge meal of puerco (pork) or pollo (chicken) with rice and beans, for $2.00! So, we will enjoy the rest of the day here before starting the trip back to Panama city and then Colon tomorrow morning. We should meet our friends Pam and Bill there in the afternoon. We will start early: but we don´t need alarm clocks here. There are hundreds of cockerels "singing" every morning..beetween 3 and 7am..to be sure that EVERYBODY heard them! Our friend Karen would love this!!!! So, hasta luego amigos. We will post pictures when we are back in Kingston.

Early greetings thanks to the amazingly curly ! mattress bed of the hotel santa rita in Chitre! We arrived here in this vibrant town after a nice trip from Panama city. We admire different landscapes changing from mountain ranges to sugar cane fields. We met two german men in the bus; they had been traveling I Central America for 5 weeks now. We spent quite a bit of time with them as they also booked a room in our hotel. We had rum on our little balcony and then enjoyed absolutely delicious fish and seafood at a local restaurant (restaurant Aire Libre) to end with Duran coffeeand cake at the pastry shop around the corner of our hotel.

Another interesting and fun day. After a hefty breakfast and several cups of the excellent local Duran coffee, we embarked on a ROjos Diablos ( bus) to visit the Miraflores locks of the Panama canal. We first had to go to the huge and well organized Albrook Terminal and then to the LOCKS: 60 cents per person for this trip! 6 ships and a small 36 footer sailboat from California locked while we were there! This is a very impressive human realisation! We went bwck to the fish resto and had fish soup and a filete macho ( Marleyne)! We rode the bus one more time to get to Bella vista district which we did not find special (poor american imitation)) with the usual trendy shops. We came back to the colorful district of caledonia and strolled back to our hotel! Tomorrow long bus trip to the Pacific town of Chitre.

Hola amigos! One day already in Pan.city. we liked casco viejo which reminded us more of Havana than of Santo Domingo, we liked the colourful people: kuna indians, blacks, spanish, mulatos, everybody kind and cheerful. We ate great fish soup, drank Balboa beer, and beef brochettes, and rum of COURSE! We walked at least 12 kn and half of those km were to get to the top of mont Ancon where the huge Panama flag asserts the national identity. We saw several agoutis and one guard help us spot a very strange animal called "three-toed sloth" or " perzoso" in spanish. And Heiner saw toucans which Iwas not successful at photographing...they were just like on the box of Frootloops! Tomorrow we will visit THE canal. .. Adios!

Hola amigos!
Our itinerary for the Panama trip is ready:

Three nights in Panama city, then we will travel to the Herrera region close to the Pacific ocean where we will spend 2 nights in Chitre.

After that, we will then go further west, direction Santiago and head into the mountains to a small village called Santa Fe...we will spend three nights there in what has been described to be a pittoresque swiss style hostel called La Qhia, run by a Belgian woman and her Argentinian partner.

Well, although I am learning Spanish as fast as I can, making reservations in Spanish over Skype is ... challenging at times: yesterday, I spoke to a man at Hotel Santa Rita and I understood that his wife was in charge of the reservations. Too bad because I could understand him very well and im was proud of my Spanish!

When I phoned this afternoon, upppss, the Skype communication became really bad and I could not understand the person at the desk...Lo siento...and I had to hang up! But he had noted my name... so, when I called back 2 hours later, la senora knew exactly who I was ... Canada? Si!

Oh madre mia! Anyway, I think that I made the reservations ok...

As for the Hostal La Qhia, the woman at the desk was ...Belgian..et nous avons tout regle ca en francais! I think that my stay of 2 weeks in Dominican Republic had helped my Spanish because there were still some traces lingering when I reopened my books...

After this week on our own, we will hopefully meet our friends Pam and Bill at the Nautico Yacht Club in Colon for a 2 weeks sail on the Caribbean Sea to the San Blas islands! Then we'll have to speak Kuna...

Notre itinéraire des premiers 7 jours a Panama est prêt: 3 premières nuits a Panama Cité, les 2 autres a Chitre dans la région de Herrera près du Pacifique et puis 3 autres nuits dans un petit village - Santa Fe - perdu dans la montagne près de Santiago. Ca m’a fait suer de faire la réservation a Chitre parce que les personnes ne parlaient que l’espagnol! C’est tout un challenge de faire ca par téléphone et encore plus par Skype...surtout quand la qualité de l’appel se détériore!! Bof, je pense que j’ai quand même réussi a les faire ces réservations! Quant a l’hôtel de Santa Fe, une jolie auberge nommée La Qhia, ce fut facile puisque la proprio est belge! Je l’ai reconnue a son accent (Hola..with a French touch) et le reste fut en français! Muy facile!

Apres ce périple, nous reviendrons vers Colon ou nous espérons retrouver nos amis Pam et Bill sur Songbird pour 2 semaines de voile en mer caraibe vers les iles San Blas de Kuna Yala.

Panama - here we come!!!!

Our friends on SongBird will be leaving from Columbia to Panama.

Well, there were some good deals on flights, and we would love to see our friends again (the last time we saw them in Annapolis mid summer, on their return flight to NYC) ... so we booked a 3 weeks stay, yesterday!

Pam and Bill suggested that they would like to take us over to the San Blas Islands - we very much look forward to this experience.

Guys, see you soon!!!!