I'm refreshed, invigorated, giddy, brown. The last ten days have been filled with jungle hikes (over a mountain, down mud slides, along desolate shores), wave lapping (the beaches in Bocas Del Toro are some of the most pristine and wild I have ever seen. The waves play rough and slap you on the hind like a bad donkey), word devouring (I read Nicole Krauss's "Great House" and Patti Smith's inspiring memoir "Just Kids"), plantain chomping (fried and covered in some of the hottest yellow chili sauce my tongue has endured), boat sailing (in vessels sailed by captains with kind sun crisped eyes), underwater ogling (coral reefs and the fish that eat them), mud stomping (heavy rain makes for oozy goo between the toes), dice rolling (games lost), picture taking (of things both random and not- soon to be posted on the interweb), sky pouring (at night the rain dropped in deafening heaps, awakening me from lucid dreamland), sun soaking (the first few layers of my seared flesh are now part of the Atlantic Ocean), bird watching (winged creatures with speckled beaks and vibrato), bike riding (on thick, bouncy seated cruisers along wobbly jungle lined roads), Spanglish speaking (Donde esta sloths?), stranger meeting (a few foreign and domestic mammals I may or may not ever see again), monkey petting (with a boner - I believe I covered this in a previous entry), frog hopping (on our hike to Red Frog beach we saw a few poisonous wee red speckled frogs. There was also a toad that slept in our bicycle shack. I'll call her Heidi), people watching (a parade of foreign humans each night in Bocas town), hammock lazing (every morning over coffee), dream sleeping (of whales, broken (and quickly healed) appendages, old friends and frequent head nods), bare-toed wandering (the feet are the best aimless guides), desolate island perusing (I believe the word "paradisio" may have first been whispered on the small island of Zapatistas), Cev, che spooning (from the lady who knows what she's doing - at the fish market in Panama City) and funtimes having (all-around yes indeedy). Tonight for our last night, we splurged a bit to stay in the French Quarter in Panama City. The place is quite a change from our little cabana in Bocas. There are stone walls, seating for 20 rich asses, a huge balcony overlooking the city, and tiles that an ivy league hopscotcher (or Felicity) would love to press hot soles to.
