To Panama Together

Usually we go down to Cancun every spring with E's office, but this year is a little different since they've started designing and developing a bunch of stuff in Panama. So instead of lounging in a classy resort we found ourselves trekking through the jungle and making friends with the locals. That is much more our style anyway, and I tried to keep the fact that I'm 6 months pregnant from slowing us down. We flew through Panama City and spent a little time there, then we arrived at Bocas Del Toro.

We stayed in Bocas Town on the main island, but got plenty of chances to visit many of the other islands of the archipelago as well as mainland Panama. The first few days there Enoch had to "work" and I tagged along one time. We took a water taxi 20 minutes to the site where they will be building a resort and some vacation homes. We were supposed to walk around and find "cool stuff" and track the coordinates on a GPS. There are hardly any trails and we were either going up or down-hill. Plus its about 90 degrees, 90 percent humidity. Lets just say that I didn't last very long, so E and I spent most of the afternoon on the beach waiting for his co-workers to finish their rounds. We saw a sloth and some cool lookin frogs but unfortunately no monkeys, although they do live around there.

The next day after Enoch finished his "work" of tromping around the other island we rented some bicycles and set out down the only road across Isla Colon(where we were staying), hoping to find the beautiful sandy beach at the other end. We got mud up to our knees and my sandal broke and after an hour of pedaling we gave up and turned around, but, man, we had the funnest time!

On Sunday we were able to go to the little Mormon branch on the mainland. We thought we were going out of our way to take a 20 minute water taxi to get there, until we realized that many of the members row their dugout canoes several miles to go to church each Sunday. We instantly fell in love with the people there. Fortunately E speaks Spanish and could translate for me. One of the sisters gave me some home-baked bread that she had brought for her own lunch. Its funny because once church is over nobody goes home. We stayed to chat for an hour and a half afterwards and everyone was still there! All the kids seemed fascinated by us, me especially, and one little girl was even brave enough to come up and pet my hair. There aren't a whole lot of blondes in that part of town!

On our last day there we were determined to go snorkeling. This time we caught a bus across the island and found the most beautiful cove. The reef there was amazing and there were tons of fish. Enoch even saw a 4 foot shark! The reef was a little shallow, though, and my belly kept scraping on the coral. What a paradise, though!

It was so nice to escape from the world for a week, but we were starting to miss our girls too so it was exciting to come home. I've just finished doing the laundry from our trip and now I need to pack everything up again already. The girls and I leave for California tomorrow!