The Isthmus

2011-05-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

Dar la vuelta....

2011-01-27T15:12:00.001-08:00

Which means, more or less, make the loop, do the round-trip, return home.

I've done a bunch of vueltas in the past couple decades. The office I've worked out of for the past two years was actually my bedroom back in 1996, odd as that sounds. The same mottled vinyl fold-out couch is still there, but now it is surrounded with filing cabinets and desks. We just did a loop that took us from South Dakota to Washington to Arizona and back to South Dakota. A subset of that vuelta was a vuelta in Costa Rica, five weeks making a loop that brought us across the continental divide a few times, along the Pacific coast, and back to the airport. Some fire assignments are endless with loop after loop- mapping the edge of a fire, patrolling the edge to make sure it hasn't slopped out, round and round, day after day.

Now we are "home", though how long the Whitney Preserve will have that designation is up in the air. It is good to be here now, and with a little more time to live before the all-consuming fire season cranks up.

In retrospect, the Costa Rica trip was fine, but the difficult riding made it less enjoyable than some previous trips. I still love bike touring, and think it is a great way to see and really experience a country, but am very aware that it isn't ideal for all countries. Still, considering Costa Rica was Plan C, it went fine.

I keep thinking of putting pics on here, but not right now, got to take advantage of the day's final dose of caffeine coursing through my veins to clean up stuff left chaotic by the unpacking. Well, ok, just one.

"Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing." George Sheenan

The stuff that works

2011-01-21T15:58:00.000-08:00

We are done, and have been in Tucson for a week. Smooth travel from Costa Rica home, even considering a late flight that caused us to miss our connection in DFW. American Airlines staff were prompt and helpful with getting us on a slightly later flight, which was fine, actually allowed us to have some good bbq for lunch. Anyway, good to be back in the USA.
Riding up Mt. Lemmon today, I was thinking about how great it is to have really good gear that doesn't let us down. White Industries hubs are indestructible, so far, and easily serviced. Schwalbe Marathon XR tires have long had a legendary status for their durability, and based on the beating we gave them in Costa Rica, it is entirely valid. Our '90s vintage Specialized Deja-2 frame has survived thousands of miles of rough riding, along with more abusive forms of travel- in boats, under buses, on top of buses, in airplanes, on top of tiny taxis. Avid BB7 brakes are flawless, they always work well (as long as you don't melt them down with ultra-steep, long hills), and never break. I could go on, but those are the real superstars of the parts list.

¿Paradise?

2010-12-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

It is hard to not like Costa Rica. But somehow I´m doing it. You hear it over and over, how great it is, how beautiful, how sustainable, blah blah. It is flat-out not good for bike touring. Unless you like pushing your bike up wickedly steep hills, with trucks and motor bikes regularly dusting you out. If the road isn´t like that, it is crazy busy and scary with buses and trucks. Have only had a couple days where the riding was actually enjoyable, which is sad. It is also expensive. I guess travelling in SE Asia has spoiled me forever. I see the $90 a night bungalows here and think, ¨wow, those would´ve been maybe $15 in Thailand¨. The food is not great, not terrible, but moderately expensive, too. I haven´t had one memorable meal yet, really, and that is a sad thing, since enjoyment of food is a big motivator for bike touring for me. Massive steaks in Argentina, wonderful seafood stew in Chile, everything in Thailand, those are burned in my memory, and all I can say here is that I´m not going to eat any peanut butter or rice & beans for quite a while after we get home.
That complaining aside, we are having as good of a time as we can. Hard to be too disappointed with spending the holidays on beautiful beaches, even if the rides to said beaches are wiping us out. Our interactions with everyone have been friendly, never any hassles or harassment. I´m not really sure what I´m looking for with travel these days, but I feel like we are not really finding it on this trip. Am I jaded, grumpy, or just getting too old to fully embrace serious physical suffering? I´ll think about it, and let you know. And pics to follow, too.

The hard parts

2010-12-14T08:32:00.000-08:00

The hard parts of bike touring often fade in my memory from one trip to the next. Then I have to get slapped by reality every new trip.
Our first day of the tour we rode 9 hours, climbed over 5000 ft., got rained on, dumped on actually, and descended a road scary and damaged enough that it was technically closed, though plenty of traffic was still using it. Since then we´ve had a few more days of rain, and much easier riding, though it has mostly been very tiring. It is hard to go from riding an unloaded bike a couple hours to a loaded bike many hours. What a surprise!
Anyway, it has been beautiful, and we´ve had a good time, and as so often is the case, its the little things that make our days- a store owner offering us free excellent coffee, for example. Now we are off for some more rugged riding around a volcano and a big lake, then on to what are apparently some of the worst dirt roads in the country, the only way to get to the Monteverde area. I´ll be sure to put some good pics up soon, though it has been hard to get many with all the rain. Oh, and our clothes are already getting moldy and stinky, despite daily washings. Fun!

Thanks, NPR

2010-12-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

So- serendipity takes over. Driving down to Tucson, just 5 days before our departure for Bogota, we hear a story on NPR about how La Nina has blasted Colombia with heavy rains, flooding and triggering landslides in almost all of the country. Further research upon arrival in AZ showed that not only has it been bad, but the forecasts say it'll stay bad, if not get worse, during what is usually the dry season of December-March.
So, long and frustrating story short, we changed plans. Now we are off to Costa Rica next week. The folks at American Airlines were friendly and fairly helpful, waiving a portion of the fees that such a change can bring on. Now we are getting some brief research in, but it helps that we've both been there, Karinne twice and me once. That one trip for me was great- climbed the highest peak in Central America one day, and learned to surf the next. I've heard it isn't that great for biking, with narrow roads and sometimes heavy traffic, but we'll deal with that as we go, and try to stay on side roads when possible.
My next update may well be from San Jose.

Estamos a punto de salir....

2010-11-22T08:24:00.000-08:00

"We are on the verge of leaving...." to translate.
A few more days here visiting Seattle, then off to Tucson briefly, then Colombia for six weeks.
The tandem needs some work, our bags need to be packed, and we have really no plan at all for where to go and what to see in Colombia. So pretty much business as usual for such a trip. Our first bike tour, though southern Mexico, was too poorly thought-out; we ran into problems with equipment and route selection from day one. Not to mention us both having regular flu, which for me was followed up by some sort of intestinal parasite. Since then we've gotten much better, though still there are always surprises with bike stuff and health.
As I write, the snow is falling hard outside, unusual for this time of year so close to Puget Sound. I may still get out and cruise a bit on my road bike, but much more and that'll be impossible. It has been good to be in such a bike-friendly city for the past week, though the sensory overload of riding fast in traffic is something I'd forgotten about.
I am having some issues with the camera, but when I get it sorted out new pics will be forthcoming.....

Best Season

2010-10-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

I am done for the season. Mostly, probably. This year's work took us to the Ozarks, the Yukon, the Grand Canyon, the Rockies, the Badlands, the Plains. It ended with a good trip to Rocky Mountain National Park and Grand Tetons National Park, where we were blessed with perfect fall weather and scenery so intense that it felt like we were on some perception-enhancing drugs for much of the time there.

I titled this entry "Best Season" because the Fall is my favorite, but then I got to thinking about my fire seasons so far, and this may have been my best season overall. Saying that with any certainty will take a bit more reflection, but it is a solid contender. No really incredible assignments, but plenty of enjoyable ones. Good cohesion on the crew as well, which is such a huge thing with the amount of time we spend together.

So now I get a couple welcome weeks off at home. These will be spent reading, caffeinating, biking, running, hanging out with wife & dog, catching up on various projects. Then a roadtrip to Washington, then Arizona, then Colombia, and suddenly I'll be back at work. Well, not too suddenly, with all that I do time does pass quickly, but with a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment.

The season passes

2010-09-08T12:54:00.000-07:00

But always only when the next is arriving.

Fire season is done. We went to Arizona twice, Alaska, Colorado. Almost went to Wyoming and Idaho. Some good times, some boring times, but overall as good as can be hoped for with such a slow season. I'll post pics soon.

Now, we are getting ready to burn at Jewel Cave, Devil's Tower, Wind Cave, and Badlands. It'll be fine, but already everyones' minds are on the off-season, when we make up for all that time in the woods and on the road.

I just bought tickets to Colombia. We'll drag the tandem along again, have a great trip through stunning terrain, meet crazy and friendly people, and come back with funny tans and excellent memories. We are incredibly lucky to be able to have this adventurous lifestyle, and I love every minute of it. Well, some I'd happily skip, like food poisoning on the plane, or watching the driving rain turn to sleet as we bike along miles from shelter, but mostly, it is great.

I'll probably update a bit more when I have more energy (ie caffeine coursing through my veins), but this'll do for now.

Windy spring

2010-05-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

Why is a steady wind so demoralizing? I guess it shuts down a lot of the things I want to do this time of year: prescribed fire, long bike rides, camping. I'm not talking a breeze- this is the High Plains, and when it gets cranking, it is stiff. Sustained 20mph, gusts to 30, days on end. Lawn furniture and garbage cans tipped over, trees shedding branches, grit sandblasting along dirt roads. That is why I'm home this weekend, way too strong to burn in SD, ND, NE. It is giving me time to unpack, since we just moved to the Whitney Preserve, a Nature Conservancy property that Karinne is now the assistant manager of. Beautiful area, though a good chunk of it got nuked by the Alabaugh Canyon fire a couple years ago. In fact, the house we are living in is in Alabaugh Canyon, and probably only survived because it didn't burn as hot in the spring-moistened valley. The ridges immediately north have abandoned foundations of houses that did burn, and quite a few new houses built with the insurance money from them.

So thanks to the alternating heavy wind and rain, our fire crew is stuck prepping- running brushcutters and chainsaws, getting cranky from the wind and lack of overtime. Things are rapidly greening up, so spring burn season may end without getting any further burning done. Bummer. Everyone is hoping for a busier season than last year, when we sat around the office for far too long, but who knows what will develop. We try to keep busy, keep a good attitude, but we all like being active on a fire. It doesn't help that our career advancement hinges on experience that can only be gained on fire assignments, and that mostly we rely on the larger overtime paychecks to make a decent living wage.

In the meantime, getting all moved in to the new house, trying to get in better shape, and enjoying spending time with the wife and dog are the priorities. I'm trying to do more sprint workouts, quite hard for me since I'm definitely not a sprinter, but good exercise. The tandem is down for repairs, but I should get the part this week, so when the weather finally cooperates we can get out for some rides around the Hills and Wyoming.

Custer winter

2010-02-10T20:11:00.000-08:00

Winter in Custer, SD. Not a pretty sight. Not enough snow for the typical western winter pursuits of snowshoeing, skiing, etc. Too much snow for real biking. Well, let me qualifiy that. Real biking without some serious measures. Booties, goretex, fleece, wool, studded snowtires, hot water in the water bottles (freezes slower than the drinking tube of a camelbak), and most importantly, doggie coat on the doggie. Java was born and bred in the never-chilly climate of Panama, and she has short hair, which doesn't do her much good below about 20 degrees farenheit. So off we go these unemployed days, me bundled up in many layers, and Java with her coat, mostly relying on a incredible metabolism to keep her warm. We ran yesterday when it was 13 degrees, rode today at 28 degrees, and she was just fine. Amazing.
I should really bring the camera and get some shots of us out in the cold, but that seems like a bad idea. Every minute spent dawdling is a minute closer to frostbite. My physiology has cursed me with a propensity for sweating and poor circulation in my hands and feet, so needless to say, winter is never really my friend. At best we have a standoff- the cold doesn't hurt me too badly as long as I don't tease it too much.
But soon, soon, soon- I start work. And I hope this season is much busier than that last. I realize that I have a difficult time explaining just how incredible my job can be; I often come up short explaining what I do and how . I get paid to do things that surpass fun, surpass wild, surpass crazy. On a good day, and I have lots of good days, I'm out in the woods, doing dangerous and engaging things for a fairly meager salary from the government, hooting with pleasure, gloating on how lucky I am. Ok, fair enough, time for bed. 10:00 pm is late in the Dakotas, eh?

The pleasures of being home

2010-01-15T14:24:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Custer, South Dakota yesterday afternoon, after an easy drive north. The weather can be so foul on that stretch of road, especially on I-25 in Wyoming, with blasting wind and snow, yet it was calm and sunny as we were immersed in a great, appropriate book on CD. "The Horse Boy" was excellent, an almost unreal tale of a father's quest to help his son's autism by taking him to shamans in Mongolia. That sounds crazy, but it makes more sense in the story, and it was a good match for the starkness of southeastern Wyoming.
Now we are home, and have some time for relaxing. Drinking coffee, brewing beer, walking the dog, riding a studded-tire equipped mountain bike on the icy roads, reading, and relaxing. It is heaven. I love the road, but I love being home, too. They just have to be in the correct proportions.
A lot of the gear from the trip is splayed out all over the living room floor, so I think I'll take advantage of my high level of caffeination and get to work sorting it out and storing it. When will we next use our panniers? Our tent? I don't know, but summer isn't that far away, so I hope we can squeeze in a trip then.

Back in the USA

2010-01-01T08:25:00.000-08:00

I almost pulled it off. I almost finished a trip without getting sick. But something I ate, not sure if it was the beef empanada, or the razorclams with parmesan, or even the hotdogs I had for lunch, was ladden with nasty bacteria. So I managed to vomit on both flights back. What fun!
Still, it is just good to be back. The road treated us incredibly well, and it was a nearly perfect trip, despite the weather and other challenges. I'm already thinking of the next trip, be it Peru or the Barranca del Cobre in northern Mexico.
I also made a list of things that worked and things that I'd change, so that I can fix that for the next trip. I'd like a bigger tent, as well as thicker sleeping pads. While the tires we used worked pretty well, I think I'd shell out the big bucks and get the Schwable Marathons next time. Karinne is thinking of trying out the Brooks saddle again, since the vast majority of other riders we encountered had them and swore by them. I am tempted to put on an xtrabike attachment and just put all our gear in the back, especially for rough-road riding.
Other than those minor changes, our gear held up well and didn't weigh us down too much. I can't say enough good things about Marmot precip stuff, it is light and kept us dry during some fairly amazing downpours. Smartwool was also our friend, warmth without stinkiness, even after days or weeks of wear.
Ok, I think I'm off to wash our laundry. Not having to do it in a sink by hand is such a wonderful luxury.

Northbound

2009-12-29T10:27:00.000-08:00

Our last full day in Santiago. We have recovered a bit, but are still tired, and it may take a few days more of semi-normalcy in the US to feel energetic. I keep meaning to write more on here about the trip, especially the crazy change we made for the last week of it, but finding time and energy has been difficult.

We had planned to spend our last few days, including Christmas, hiking in Cerro Castillo National Park. When the forecast went from bad (cold & rainy) to worse (cold & rainy & windy & snowy), we changed our tickets to head north that same day. Suddenly we had to rush, having only a few hours to toss our bags on the bike and ride the 55km to the airport. A sidewall blew out on our rear tire just minutes into the race, but we did a full-on NASCAR pit crew move and had the tire and tube replaced in under 10 minutes. A wicked strong tailwind actually let us arrive over an hour earlier than we needed to, amazing how it pushed us along.

Our change in plans left us in the Santiago airport after dark, so we had two options: riding off on busy highways and roads in the dark, hoping to find somewhere to stay or camp, or getting transport to a hotel or something. To make a long, painful story short, our plan to get dropped in a small town a few minutes (hypothetically) north of the airport and find a place there went terribly wrong, as the van driver first got lost (for hours) and then wouldn´t drop us in the town, claiming it wasn´t safe, and finally leaving us at an expensive hotel in Santiago, which is exactly what we had wanted to avoid in the first place. Things went better the next day, and we had a good time riding north along the coast, eating seafood and enjoying the ocean views and warm, sunny weather.

Now, off to pack the bags, strategizing how to distribute the weight to avoid extra fees.

All downhill from here....

2009-12-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

But the road is gravel, and we have a headwind. Well, not really. Sometimes the Carretera Austral felt that way. It was challenging, but very rewarding. Some mechanical problems, but not many. No physical problems, which is a real blessing. Even when problems seemed to loom, there was always something that solved them easily. No ATM for 500 km? Well, I happened to have $80 in dollars that helped us along. That is running out? Well, the Swiss cyclists are willing to buy our otherwise useless Argentine pesos. Bottom brackets dying? The awesome bike shop guys will stay open till 8pm on a saturday to fix it cheaply. And so on. The weather and the road weren´t always our friends, but they were never our enemies, either. There was always a bright side of it- we used way less sunscreen than we may have otherwise, and didn´t sweat nearly as much as we would have had it been warmer.
Mostly the miles passed easily, with us engaged in conversation, commenting ad nauseum on how beautiful the scenery was, how many incredible waterfalls there were, etc. We stopped frequently for coffee breaks, lunch breaks, water filtering breaks. We felt no time constraints, since we always had plenty of time to reach our destination, and with 16 hours of daylight no matter how late we left we still could go quite a ways before dusk. With only one road to follow for most of our trip, getting lost was never a problem- if we were actually on a road, it was always the right road. Considering the pounding of the washboarded gravel roads, only three flat tires and a worn-out drivetrain was getting off very easily.
Everywhere we went, the people were great, both locals and tourists. Comparing this trip to my tours in Thailand, it is remarkable how much richer an experience it is when we can speak the language. I could really go for some Thai food right now, though.
Well, I´m off to have my afternoon coffee & pastry break (a thing they call a donut, but it isn´t, but still tasty), then time to fix the spare inner tubes and rotate the tires. Our Swiss friends, Tom and Janine, are heading out today, so we may not see them again, since we ride around the same speed and they will have a 1.5 day headstart. It has been great riding with them for most of the Carretera, we´ve had some excellent conversations over coffee at weird roadside campsites, or sheltering up at bus stops against the wind and rain while having food breaks. They quit their jobs and are riding until their savings run out, in maybe two years. That brings up a funny thing about vacations: while two months is amazingly long by American standards, it is a relatively short trip compared to the many bicycle tourists we´ve run into on the road. Many of them are cycling six months, nine months, a year, three years. Funny that. Two months feels just about right to us, we´ll finish while we are still having fun, but won´t feel like we missed out or rushed back.

45 degrees south

2009-12-19T07:20:00.000-08:00

The end of the road for us- Coyhaique, Chile. We have a flight booked from here back to Santiago in just over a week. We arrived here a bit earlier than expected, with a bike that is suffering from all those kilometers of rough, rough gravel. It was an epic ride. Spectacular scenery at every turn, some wet and nasty weather, but mostly good for riding, nice people, and many hours in the saddle. We kept commenting on how great of a trip we were having, and it is true, but it is also hard for me to describe that in words right now. It doesn´t help that I´m tired and a little sick, but mostly it just hasn´t really sunk in or been fully processed.
Now we are weighing our options. The weather forecast is particularly bad, so the 3 day trek in a nearby national park we had planned may be unpleasant. For being the equivalent of June in the US, the weather is abnormally bad; many people walking around outside right now are wearing jackets or even parkas. We have some thoughts of bumping back our flight and heading to Santiago earlier, since it is sunny and 80 degrees there now. I´m not sure. Cake & coffee may help us with this decision.

Predictable Unpredictability

2009-12-10T06:34:00.000-08:00

That was Karinne´s term for the mileages listed on our maps, and on the road signs. All are just off. Sometimes you see a sign that says 30 km to the next town, then a few more km towards that town, there is another that says 31 km. Fortunately our bike computer broke on day 1, so we don´t know anyway, nor are we constantly reminded just how slow we are going.

Slowness is actually good on these wicked gravel roads. They call it ripio, and we´ve covered hundreds of miles of it, and we have almost pure ripio ahead of us for the next couple weeks. I´ve come to understand it- you can´t fight it, you just have to flow with it. This usually entails going much slower than we maybe could, since that minimizes the jarring and skidding. But that is what is needed, so that is what we do.

We haven´t run into as many bike tourers over the last week as we had for a while, I guess we´ve gotten off of the famous Ruta 40, a 5000 km long road stretching from the northwest corner of Argentina all the way south. Much of it is gravel, but spectacular, and a popular riding option.

We will miss Argentina, it has treated us well. The food, the people, the scenery, all have been far better than we could have hoped. It feels like our trip is winding down, and it is, which is someways sad and in some ways good.

Breweries everywhere

2009-12-06T07:03:00.001-08:00

The campground has a brewery. The rustic backcountry huts we spent a couple nights at brew their own beers. The farmers market has at least 4 breweries selling their wares. This is great.

The coffee situation is bleak, but whatever.

Still, this trip is proving incredible. Having travelled a fair bit, we have gotten used to some hassles, some scams, some misinformation. But we haven´t run into any of that. Just nice people, everywhere we go. The only hassle has been the sometimes unfriendly weather, including some gusts the other day that almost knocked us over, or brought us to a dead stop almost instantly. But the weather is just the weather, and we fortunately have good rain gear, and just enough warm stuff to make it not uncomfortable.

Weather & muscles.....

2009-11-29T03:56:00.000-08:00

have conspired to give us an unexpected rest day. Rain and windchills around freezing, winds whipping the trees outside around violently as I type this, plus muscles that could use a true, no biking or hiking rest day, so here we sit. Its ok, we have the time. I did a rough estimate of days left versus mileage to get to Coihayque, Chile in time for our flight back to Santiago, and we only have to average around 30-40 km a day, or around 20-25 miles.
We are running into more and more bike tourers. Yesterday we crossed paths with a French guy, Italian, Irish, Argentine, Australia, and Switzerland riders. We stop and talk to most of them. Some real characters for sure. Our big pink tandem is notable, since it is unusual, and therefore many hear about it before we run into them.
Ok, got to go do a couple things, mostly finishing my coffee, so more later.

words fail

2009-11-28T09:23:00.000-08:00

Absolutely beautiful riding for the last week or so, despite some rain and mud. Words are really not sufficient, so I´ll put up some photos.

The only real downside of the last couple days is how terrible the coffee is. When I get excited because the big market may have Nescafe, which is soooo much better than the national brands of instant coffee, which are in turn better than the best $2 cup of coffee I´ve had in a cafe or restaurant all week, well, that is bleak. But the food is great, and the pastries too.

We hoped to go hiking high in the mountains near Bariloche, but the weather is switching back to rain and below freezing windchills. Strong, strong winds are forecast, too. So I may do more updating on here than expected. The bad weather is poorly represented by our photos, since I usually bury the camera in a drybag on the rainy days. But it has poured, and it will pour again, and maybe snow too.

We are off to look for bivy sacks, warm gloves for Karinne, and maybe other things to help out with the grim weather. Our raingear is great, though, I´m forever sold on Marmot Precip stuff.

Despite my complaints about coffee and weather, I´m having a tremendous time, and am thrilled every day.

In Patagonia

2009-11-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

We arrived in San Martin de los Andes yesterday, and it is nice. Ski-mtn. bike town, totally tourism supported. Good baked goods, excellent meat. Those things are really important for us.

Crossing the pass was hard- rough road, steep grades, lots of road construction. Still, we made it over, and we missed almost all the rain. Gorgeous views of Volcan Lanin, tallest peak in Patagonia, groves of wild monkey-puzzle trees, beautiful clear rivers full of trout. Even had a tailwind pushing us down into Argentina. We covered 10km in 20 minutes, incredible, the same distance took us hours the day before.

I´m a bit tired now, did a solo ride up on some dirt roads in the nearby national park this morning, and the hills kind of kicked my ass. There is so much to write about, so many cool pics to share, but I´m just not motivated. Maybe this evening.

We have been hanging out and chatting with the guys from www.ridingthespine.com. They have taken 3 years to ride down here from Alaska, riding as much singletrack and backroads as possible. In Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, etc. the backroads are amazingly poor for riding, but somehow they´ve done it, and remain somewhat sane. I admire their effort, as much as I´m glad we aren´t doing the same.

I never thought I´d go to Patagonia. But here we are, cold but happy, having a great time. I´m excited that we have more than a month to go. Too bad the computer is so slow, I can´t get it to upload pics, but once again, maybe tonight.

Spring? Maybe soon......

2009-11-17T05:06:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Villarrica, a town on a beautiful lake in the shadow of an active volcano yesterday. And we haven´t seen the volcano since- too much rain between us and it. So today we do internet stuff and maybe shop for warm woolen things to help us survive the cold, wet spring that El Niño has brought to this area.

Our loop through wine country out to the coast went well, good scenery, challenging roads, etc. The beach at Pichilemu was pretty, though far too cold for swimming. It was windy most of the time, though warm. As we got back to the Interamericana, a check on the forecast for Patagonian towns seemed to indicate good weather. So we hopped a bus and buzzed several hundred kilometers south, to start our ride through the Lakes District into Argentina, and finally over to the Carretera Austral. But now the crap weather may have us pinned down a bit, though I have hopes for a rain shadow on the east side of the Andes.

Overall, we are having a good time, though accomadations, even low-end, are too expensive. That and the weather are really our only complaints. The food is good, Chileans are fun, our spanish is sufficient, and the riding has been challenging but enjoyable. Roads are surprisingly well-signed, and even directions from locals are shockingly accurate. Well, except for that one bridge, but that was our fault- the lady was right, there was a bridge where we wanted to cross a big river, but she didn´t mention that it was still under construction, and only the Dukes of Hazzard could make it across. Fortunately there was a guy with a rowboat, so that saved the day. Oh, and the coffee is horrible horrible horrible. But that is ok for now.

Chilly in Chile

2009-11-17T04:40:00.000-08:00

Santiago, Chile, no problems

2009-11-05T15:07:00.000-08:00

The flight went fine, the ride into the city on the big highway went fine, getting to the hostel through the wicked maze of one way streets went fine. We must have had the Virgen de Guadelupe watching over us. I could almost feel her presence..... Oh, wait, there she was for real.
I´m a little loopy, way jetlagged, as you may be able to tell. The ride I dreaded the most on this trip wasn´t too bad. Now we have a couple days in Santiago, which is on first impression a really interesting city. The weather is a touch cooler and wetter than expected, so we may stay farther north at the beginning of this trip than we´d first thought. We may head straight to wine country, in fact. Yeah, rough, I know.

The jitters

2009-11-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

We leave in 3 days, and the pre-trip jitters are kicking in just a bit. Still, it is to a much lesser degree than previous trips. We've done it before- the bike, the gear, the clothes are all knowns. We speak decent Spanish, and Chile is a developed country, with a proven tourist infrastructure.
Still, there is the unknown, and that is the fun part. Roads go from just being lines on a map to stretches of pavement and dirt that are sometimes totally forgetable, other times regretable, and often burned forever into our memories as epic, gorgeous, wonderful bike touring. Dropping down the Sierras in southern Mexico to the coast from 10,000 ft. to sea level, or freezing on Orcas Island, getting into Pai in northern Thailand well after dark, the scene illuminated by the full moon and brush fires on the hillsides above town- those are indelible. Those are things you never get travelling by bus or car.
We are going to take more breaks during the day and cook more often for ourselves. We are going to take days off when we need it, and even when we don't. We are going to believe directions and info on road conditions, and be annoyed when seemingly knowledgeable locals turn out to be wildly wrong (this is inevitable, and we never seem to fully learn our lesson). We are going to push the bike up roads that turn out to be steeper and gnarlier than expected (also inevitable, and apparently unlearnable). And we are going to eat so, so much food.

The road south

2009-10-17T18:04:00.000-07:00

The road: the Careterra Austral, in english, the Southern Highway, an ambitious name for something that is often poorly-graded gravel backroad.
The bike: the Specialized Deja-two, aka "La Pequena", aka the big, pink tandem. This thing is a two-person parade on 26" wheels. I will continue the tradition of giving children or old men rides on the back while Karinne checks out accomodations; the kids love it, the parents not so much, the old men are scared shitless.
The music: Currently I have the Kills, the Cloud Cult, the Mountain Goats on heavy rotation. For a band as potentially hippie-pretentious as the Cloud Cult, holy crap, they pull it off somehow. I have somehow missed them playing nearby twice, to my regret. "For the moment I can see way better than I've ever seen" CC. Amen.
The gear: the lightest we can manage. We hauled too much stuff across southern Mexico, and we don't want to do that again. Still, things add up. I've stolen Karinne's kitchen scale to weigh such silly things as shoes, water filters, and even shorts.
The plan: gloriously vague. We'll fly to Santiago, spend a couple days there, and catch a bus south. Then we'll ride around a bunch. Honestly that is the extent of the current plan.
On a completely different topic, Java the dog turned 21 dog years yesterday. She got no booze, but some venison chunks, which disappeared amazingly quickly.

Migratory Patterns

2009-10-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” – Paul Theroux

I've finally started to read up on Chile, since we'll be leaving in just a few weeks. It may be cooler, temperature-wise, than any of the other bike tours we've done, save our honeymoon on the San Juan Islands, which was often freezing. Lots of blogs have pics of people in rain jackets, looking wind-chapped, but still smiling. Still, that is probably better than the heat I've dealt with in SE Asia- 100 plus degrees, drinking twelve liters of water a day. My solo tours were borderline masochistic at times, but I was in much better shape then. I also realized I've been absurdly lucky with avoiding rain- in over eight months of bike touring, I've been rained on 4 times. That is going to change.

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber

I'm putting a larger memory card in my camera and I'm going to take even more photos on this trip. The tandem has new brake pads, a new drivetrain, and new tires. We focused on cutting weight down to a bare minimum, so there may be some slight compromises of comfort, but it should pay off. We rode over the Sierra Madre mountains in southern Mexico, and way up into the mountains of Oaxaca, on our first tour. We had too much stuff, and suffered more than those wicked 5000 ft. climbs really required. I also managed to melt some disc brake pads on that tour, so the descents have been toned down with breaks to allow cooling. Karinne likes this mellower approach to the downhills, too.

Snow is a four-letter word

2009-10-08T20:15:00.000-07:00

And snow is forecast. Again. Even though it is still only early October. Oh, and -15 windchills. Now I remember why I like going way south during the winter. We burned piles at Mt. Rushmore today, and it was fun, better than being in the office. One of my coworkers is down with the swine flu, he said he felt like he'd been worked over with a baseball bat. Hope it doesn't spread.

Vamos a Chile

2009-10-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

Karinne is done with work for the season, and I have just three weeks left. Then we are off for a two-month bike tour in Chile. I am looking forward to it immensely. The road calls, and we'll reply with the click of gears shifting and fat tires buzzing against the pavement and crunching against the gravel.

Pics, with words to come......

2009-09-19T06:37:00.000-07:00

Too quiet

2009-07-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

It is July 23rd, 2009.
Our wildland fire module (formerly known as Black Hills Fire Use Module) has not been to a fire since a prescribed burn at the end of May.
This is unheard of. At least it is a beautiful summer, and everyone is taking advantage of their time- hiking, boating, drinking, etc.
I'll put some pics up on here sometime soon. If we don't go on a fire. Ha. Ha. Ha.

And so begins the 2009 fire season

2009-04-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

With snow. Actually, we got started down in the Ozarks with a month of prescribed fire and a few small wildfires. Now we are back in Custer, with snow on the ground, a broke-down truck, and no clue as to where we are heading next.

The Ozarks were fun. I guess it is a crazy tourist area in the summer, but it was quiet while we were there. Very rednecky, reminds me a lot of the country where I grew up. Putting in fire line with a leaf blower was strange, but it definitely lets your mind wander more than with a chainsaw.

I'll get some pics on here soon, but for now, here is the crew. Yabba-dabba-do indeed.

Back to work, fools!

2009-02-21T13:51:00.000-08:00

I'm back at work after being furloughed since early November. It is strange to be starting when there is snow on the ground, and temps still getting down in the single digits. But we'll be heading down to the Ozarks to burn and do initial attack on wildfires, maybe as soon as next weekend. I look forward to it, we should have a good time and get back in the groove.

Non-traditional

2008-12-27T20:51:00.001-08:00

Visiting friends and family, I'm reminded again and again how odd our lifestyle is. We talk to people who are grateful they don't have to work until after New Years- I don't have to work until mid-February. They go to the office at 8, return home after 4:30. I too go to the office at 8, but may not return home for 18 days or more. During those work days away, it isn't unusual for me to help set hundreds of acres of forest or grassland on fire, cut down hundreds of trees, and cook most of my meals over an open fire. My office is the public lands of around half of the country; that is very cool. I can see a time coming when the road time and sheer grinding physicality of it gets old, but for now it is fun.

Si, se puede!

2008-12-18T10:52:00.000-08:00

Update!

2008-12-18T10:51:00.000-08:00

It is snowing in Seattle, and everyone is freaking out. It doesn’t snow often enough for people to deal well with it here. I’m finally recovered from a cold, and antsy to get out, even if it means a slippery run through the snow hiding the ice (left over from the previous snow). If the weather bums me out, I look at the forecast for Custer, SD, and at least we aren’t back there yet.
So, much time has passed since an update. To summarize: we moved to Custer, I started work with the Black Hills Fire Use Module, burned some in ND and SD, rented a house, got furloughed till february, hung out a bit, then hit the road. We’re doing a big triangle, visiting friends and family in CO, AZ, CA, and now WA. Soon, back to Custer, then to Houghton for me to finally defend my MS coffee research.
It has been fun to be on the road for pleasure rather than work. We camped on the Pacific, rode the tandem through Saguaro national park, drank beer at the Pike Brewery, had great espresso and baked goods in at least 5 states, and made it to Seattle before this unusually nasty weather set in.
I'll add some pics shortly.

And the sun sets on fire season

2008-09-07T07:21:00.001-07:00

It was a long, short season. Long because I've logged 700 hours of overtime since mid-May. Those that came on just before me are at 850 hours for the season, since they got to go burn at Yosemite. For me, that equals about 35 hours of overtime a week, which is a lot. Still, it has felt short, since it never really felt like fire season got rolling. California burned, but nowhere else did much. The fire use we just got back from in Oregon was quiet & cold. We got snowed on June 13th, and saw some flurries again on August 31st. Now we are looking at a lull until we start getting ordered for prescribed fires. I may not be able to go if we don't leave soon, since I need to start in the Black Hills at the end of September.

Still, the quiet has been welcome- I got the first real long weekend of the year, so we went over to Red Lodge, MT, and camped/hiked/biked in snow & rain sprinkles. It was fun anyway.

A brief sojourn in the Park

2008-08-15T08:26:00.000-07:00

I've worked at Yellowstone since april, but have only spent a few days actually in the park- our job has been far more likely to bring us to California this year. So when we were out in Cali and heard rumours of a fire making thousand acre runs in Yellowstone, we figured that was where we would end up next. Sure enough, we did, just in time for the fire to really lay down and mostly go out. Still, we got five days of good work in on it, mostly pulling hose from the firelines and from around structures at Fishing Bridge, rehabbing line, and general clean-up. It was gorgeous out there, and every day brought National Geographic moments- the moon coming out from behind a cloud as a bison ambles by and a flock of Canada geese fly overhead. Sunrises & sunsets over Yellowstone Lake, each spectacular and unique.

Now it seems like fire season is dying down, a really odd situation for mid-August. We'll get out again soon enough, but many crews and resources are just sitting around. Since we aren't very well paid, most folks depend on some overtime to make ends meet, especially those of us who are laid-off during the winter, and this may not pan out for many this year.

And finally, it seems almost definite that Karinne, Java, and I will be moving soon to the Black Hills of South Dakota. I got a permanent job on the Black Hills Fire Use Module, and will be starting as soon as the slow gears of government hiring can crank my paperwork through the system. It'll be a longer season there, with more prescribed fire, which is what I like. The Hills were my first experience with living in the West, way back in '96, and I've liked them ever since.

California Stars

2008-08-05T17:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I look through these pics I take on fire assignments and lament that they are not very representative of the work we do. I'm often only pulling out my camera when there is some down time. When we are chasing a spot fire, lighting off hillsides during burnout operations, or even just hauling heavy loads up and down ridiculous slopes, the camera mostly stays nestled deep in my pack. It also stays there when we are stretched out on the ground, wrapped in space blankets, trying to catch a quick nap at 3AM, or when we are putting in huge amounts of highway and dirt road time (we have covered over 10,000 miles since I started here in mid-April). I often marvel at how strange and unpredictable my job can be, especially when I think of the jobs that most other 33-year-olds hold down here in the U.S.A. For example, the other day the radio crackled to life at around 3AM, saying the winds that'd kept us from lighting off a burnout since 6PM had died down. We woke up the few that were sleeping, grabbed drip torches, and ended up igniting a hillside until around 8AM. While snapping out of a fitful half-unconscious state was hard, it was still a good shift of work, especially once it got light out. The local newspapers had opinion columns by people angry about how much control efforts focused on burnouts (the smoke aggravated them, especially since most of these fires had been burning over a month). But really, in such steep, rocky terrain, there is no other option, and I have little sympathy for people who live in the American west but don't want to deal with the realities of the ecosystem, namely the need for and pervasiveness of fire for months on end during the summer. Ok, I'm going to step down off my soapbox, crack open a beer, and make dinner.

2 weeks of the living dead

2008-08-04T17:47:00.000-07:00

Two weeks of night shift on the Iron Complex in CA just wrapped up for us. It was a good assignment, though somewhat surreal. Sleeping in trailers with 41 other firefighters. Trying to figure out if it is lunch time at midnight or 1 am. Wolfing down breakfast and trying to get to bed as quick as possible. Burning off of close to ten miles of roads. Protecting pot plantations and buddhist temples. Being thanked by numerous strangers just for being out there. I didn't get many pics, just because it was, well, dark, but whatever. It sounds likely that we'll be in yellowstone for the next fire assignment, since there is a fire ripping pretty good in the park now.

The wait

2008-07-15T21:19:00.000-07:00

We are in that limbo between fire assignments- lots of rumours about where we may go next and when, but nothing solid. We have done almost everything we can here in the office, including washing the trucks, cleaning the chainsaws, restocking miscellaneous stuff, etc. It reinforces just how weird of a lifestyle/job this is- how many people can take off for up to 18 or so days on the road with just a few minutes notice about where they are going? We try to assure that we'll leave by making plans with the few friends outside of fire we have, almost certain that we'll be making calls from the road apologizing for being on our way to AZ/CA/CO/NM/etc. In the meantime, we get antsy and grumpy, tired of trying to make sitting around bullshitting seem enough like work that the bosses don't find crappy jobs to keep us slightly busier. I drink too much coffee just because I can and force myself to calmness when asked, "are you looking for something to do?" Clearly I am, it is just well disguised as sitting down for five minutes to drink my coffee. When the work day is finally done, we crack open beers and speculate about where we will be off to and when.

Fire on the North Rim

2008-07-11T17:43:00.000-07:00

I just got back today from the Walla Valley Fire, on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. It was a good roll, I got to play crew boss trainee, we saw some ripping fire (for the first few days at least), and it was an absolutely gorgeous setting. I'll try to write more this weekend, but for now, enjoy the pics.

The Beetle Incident

2008-06-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

Just some pics from the latest work roadtrip. We camped out in Rocky Mountain NP for two weeks, cutting down beetle-killed trees near picnic areas, houses, etc. The cold weather continued, as is evidenced by the snowy pics, but it seems like summer is finally arriving in the Rockies. Oh, and we dominated the Whiskeytown Fire Use Module in the Corndog Challenge. I personally ate 10 corndogs in about 45 minutes. I would not recommend doing this, but good judgement hasn't always been my strong point.

Not in Panama anymore, Java....

2008-05-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

There isn't much I can say about these photos. I work with a bunch of guys who, well, the pics up above should sum it up. We went to California when it was in the 90's, flew up to the Honeybee WFU, did some work, got blasted by a gritty windstorm, woke up to snow, waited a day, woke up to even more snow, and got out of there. Highlights were grabbing pounds and pounds of meat left behind by a neighboring hotshot crew, trying to set up tents in 50 mph gusts in the dark, and the view from the crest of the Sierras down into the Owens Valley. Tomorrow we are heading down to Rocky Mountain NP to do some project work and possibly be closer to the next fire assignment or prescribed burn that needs our overwhelmingly professional help.
Karinne is at work today, but I have the day off, so Java the dog and I are going to head up the trail behind the house to see how far we can get up into the Absoroka wilderness before we get into thick snow. Spring has flirted with this chunk of the country, but we keep getting slapped with weakening remnants of winter- cold wind, snow, etc. Maybe by the time we return it'll be summer.

A journey is like marriage...

2008-05-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.- John Steinbeck

Ah, springtime in the Rockies. The second of may and I'm still getting snowed on. Soon enough, I'll be complaining about the heat. But it is truly beautiful here now- kind of stark, lots of browns and greys, but green things are making a valiant effort to pop out of the ground.
I'm living in the Yellowstone river valley, just north of the park. This is Montana for sure- driving is a challenge with deer, elk, bison, tourists on the roads, seemingly oblivious to the 70mph speed limit. The wife and the dog will be out here in a couple days, which will be great. Ok, I'll try to slap some pictures on this thing soon.

"Once more, the world was spinning in greased grooves" Steinbeck

2008-03-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

For some reason, blogger.com still pops up in Spanish, so I get to see such options as, "vista previa", "ayuda", and "salir".
I'm sitting in rainy Seattle, rocking out to John in the Morning on KEXP, possibly the best DJ on the best radio station in the world. There can't be a sharper contrast from the Panamanian DJs, who endlessly chatter, interrupt songs, play stupid sound effects and canned laughter, and drive me to fantasies about torturing them. Anyway, that is long gone. We've only been back in the U.S.A. for three weeks, but Panama feels really far away. So far, the "goods" about being back far outweight the "bads", which is as it should be. Maybe the only bad that seems noteworthy is leash laws, but Java seems to be adjusting well, and loves squirrels and rabbits.
My bike frame cracked, probably in Panama, but I didn't notice it until I was working on it here. Despite that, I'm going to try to go car-free as long as possible. One Honda and several bikes should be plenty of transportation for two people, and my job should keep me on the road most of the coming fire season, so it doesn't make much sense to buy a car and let it sit.
I might not have mentioned it, but all travel went smoothly- flying to PA, driving to WA, etc. Dog and humans don't like lots of time cramped in the car or plane, but what can you do? Ridiculous gas prices hurt on the cross-country drive, but the weather is not ideal for a cross-country tandem bike ride right now.
Ok, off to make more coffee! I've found myself buying coffee and beer faster than I can drink either, since the sheer range and quality of choices makes me feel like a kid in a toy store.

"The mountains call, and I must go" John Muir

2008-03-04T11:05:00.000-08:00

Well, that isn't quite why we are leaving, but suffice it to say that we are leaving Panama, this friday. Not a super-complicated or super-secret reason why, but still it is one that I don't feel like sharing on such a public record. We are a little sad, little happy, but mostly it hasn't totally sunk in yet; it may not until that airplane door opens in Harrisburg, PA friday evening and we catch a whiff of chilly east coast spring air.
Paperwork, exams, and interviews at the office are the priority now, as is getting our act together so we can drag ourselves, a dog, a bike, and a sack of rocks to the airport with minimum stress on friday morning. I will try to include some pics from our last chunk of time here, which was hot and dusty, but productive and often bittersweet.

Go West, says Java!

2008-01-22T14:33:00.000-08:00

Sorry, not much updating going on around here. This week we are in Boquete getting my big ol’ sack of coffee samples tested (“cupped”, in the parlance of the coffee world). It is a time consuming process, but we can only help with limited steps of the process, and today we can’t. It is hard to believe that in three more days I’ll have the bulk of the data that I need to finish my thesis research. Woohoo! The feeling of elation is tempered by the feeling of “bhlleck”, which is the sound that my stomach is making. It seems like somewhere we picked up a parasite/amoeba/bug that is partying in both Karinne’s and my intestinal tracts. We will see how that goes. Fortunately this town has lots of clean toilets with ample toilet paper, which can be a rarity in this country.
We had our regional meeting last week, then visited our friend Stephanie who lives up in the Comarca Ngobe-Bugle, where she works with coffee among other things. Very pretty up there, and very different from where we are culturally. Panama is a small country, but reveals a surprising range of culture and traditions in sometimes neighboring areas. We burned pine needles at one point, and it made me homesick for the West.
My parents visited for a while over the holidays, and it was a good visit. It is interesting to see this country that we have become familiar with in the eyes of family straight off the plane. It is also funny to see how living on $10/day has changed our views of what exactly $10 amounts to. We visited parts of the country we hadn’t been to yet, and it also emphasized just how little time we have left here.

This is the year we leave Panama

2008-01-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

A fellow volunteer said this, and it caught me off guard. 2008 has seemed far away often, as can happen, until you find yourself changing 7s to 8s as you write dates for a few weeks. This is the year of the election inundation, the year when I do not want to even see tv news. 2007 felt like a year when we didn´t accomplish much, and I hope to reverse this in 2008.
My parents are here visiting, and it has been fun touring around the country, playing tour guides. I will try to put some pics from this roadtrip on here shortly.

still more pictures

2007-12-11T07:57:00.000-08:00

pics again

2007-12-11T07:42:00.000-08:00

Cock Fights and Binge Drinking- it MUST be Mother’s Day!

Karinne and I escaped the chaos of Mother’s Day, easily one of the biggest holidays here, by passing it in Panama City. Most people were heading out of the city to visit their families, so it was fairly quiet and calm in the city, which is unusual. And yeah, the holiday is marked by the usual binge drinking, cock fights, dances, massive meal cooking; the usual things for holidays here. I enjoy them for the spectacle- stumbling drunks especially. But mostly I am not too interested. One nice thing is that people will often bring food over to share; we had rice with pig head the other day, and it was delicious.

The phone company came to fix the phone the other day, and I was very happy. Recently the three nearest phones have been down, in fact, they haven’t really worked at all in recent years. So he came, fixed it, left, and I made a phone call. I’m glad I did- the phone worked less than two hours. Now, back to the hour plus hike down the road to make a phone call.

I am done with the harvesting and processing of coffee for my thesis research. This is a relief, since it was kind of a race against man and nature to get enough harvested before the coffee was all picked or over-ripe. Overall, things went smoothly, and most of the time the work was very enjoyable and satisfying. The 13 mile roundtrip hike to the farm got a little old, especially the long hill right before I got home exhausted, but it got me in good shape for sure. I got a lot of help from our volunteer neighbor Darlene, and of course from Karinne, too. Our dog Java accompanied me every time, and would bark threateningly and scare locals who had the nerve to walk on the train through the farm; I always enjoy this, since I know she would never bite anyone. I guess I should be more understanding of what I think is an unreasonable fear of dogs that locals have. But mostly I find it hilarious when grown men and women freak out and shrink in terror from our small, friendly dog.

As I may have mentioned, there are a ton of holidays in November until mid-December. These holidays are always accompanied by dances. We went to a dance up in Barretas, near where I harvest coffee, a couple weeks ago. It was great- still very muddy, many entertaining drunks who kept falling down, sorta fighting (they were too drunk to really distinguish fighting from hugging), cock fighting, bored band, the works. The mud was the best, since the drunks just could not stay upright. One guy must have fallen 25 or thirty times just while we were watching, he must have been so sore the next day.

I completely forget what time of the year it is, then I hear Christmas music on the radio, and it feels like a slap back into reality. We went by the start of the big, national Christmas parade the other day, and it was weird- scorching sun, yet people sitting on the floats bundled up in Christmas costumes looking very uncomfortable. Why can’t they just acknowledge reality and have Christmas tank-tops instead of sweaters and scarves?

Not much work going on up in our site right now, mostly because the coffee harvest has wrapped up, and people are taking a break around the holiday. Though we are helping to organize a sewing class, looking into getting solar panels for the school, and trying to get the public phone replaced with one that’d be more reliable, so I guess we are doing stuff. I’m also trying to get people to prune their coffee trees, since I’ve come to the conclusion that pruning is the easiest and most effective way they can improve their farms. I’m even trying to talk people out of more labor-intensive things they mention, since I know that the easier and quicker a job is, the more likely it’ll get done instead of just be talked about ad nauseum.

Karinne is stuck in the city for physical therapy for a few more days, but I’ll be heading back to our site tomorrow. We are lucky to have a good dog-sitter right across the street, so Java can run around while we are away. Too many people keep dogs tied up here.

Pics, I hope

2007-12-11T07:19:00.000-08:00

How do you say winter of discontent in Spanish?

2007-11-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess now I can ignore that title question, since it may be that winter is over. We´ve had two weeks of little rain, plenty of sun, and nice breezes. This helps my morale quite a bit, since good weather makes for easier coffee harvesting and better coffee drying. The long days of hiking up to the coffee finca, harvesting and depulping coffee, and hiking back (usually 5-6 hours of walking with about the same of harvesting) are so much easier when I´m not soaked by a cold rain. And on days when I´m not going up the hill to that farm, I feel better about looking for work with other locals, since it is less likely that plans will fall through with pouring rain at daybreak.
Plus, we are out for thanksgiving! We arrived up in the cool highlands of western Panama a day early to eat good food, enjoy the cold, and take a hot shower. Tomorrow we will eat piles of classic thanksgiving fare and hang out with the majority of volunteers in this country.
I´d like to write about the work party the other day- suffice it to say they emphasize the party part. A family made about 10 gallons of corn beer to pay relatives and myself for hours of cutting down brush under the hot sun. The payment comes as you work, so these guys get progressively very drunk and belligerent while working with a machete on rough terrain. I largely abstained, since I didn´t want to cut off my own toes or anything. Then they got very obnoxious, as the quite drunk often do, and so we left a little early. I made prospective work plans with about 4 of them, but I´m betting they´ll have been too drunk to remember.
Finally, a road report. Even though the road to our new site is not bad, they are grading it and smoothing it out anyway, and it is sweet. Trucks can get up the formerly muddy spots without slowing down, and I can even ride my bicycle! Not having such a nightmarish transport situation is really really nice.

More complaining about the weather, but still no pics.....

2007-11-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned, the wet season is here. A typical day brings bright sun in the morning, clouds gathering by 10 AM, and heavy rains kicking in anywhere from 10:30 AM to 2:00 PM. Once they start, they may not stop until after dark. Basically, going anywhere in the afternoon means getting soaked and slipping and sliding in the mud.

So that is the weather. It is amazingly depressing, largely because unlike in the U. S., you can’t escape it. There is no jumping in the car and going to a movie. There is no reading a good book and listening to music loud enough that you need to look out the window every so often to see if the rain has stopped. No- you sit under your porch, with the wind occasionally blowing rain in, feeling damp and bored. I’m tired of reading, but that is one of the few options available when it is raining so hard that the tin roof makes a roar that can’t really be talked over. So we read, and make coffee and tea, and try not to fall when we have to go out to the latrine or use the sink, since they are both a treacherous though short walk through the mud away. If you want to go anywhere, you put on the rubber boots, grab the umbrella, and expect to fall in the mud, or at least get quite wet. Going inside is not really a better option, since it is dark without any electricity even in the middle of the day, and still damp; in fact, many of our clothes, shoes, etc. have mold growing on them, and it stinks.

On top of this, now is when I have to harvest coffee weekly to do my thesis research. The farm I’m getting coffee from is a beautiful, well-managed one that produces tons of coffee. Problem is, it is about a three-hour walk one-way from our house. So my harvest days often start with the alarm at 4 or 4:30 AM, getting going by five, and walking the first hour in the dark. If I really hustle I can get up there and be picking by 8 AM, then hopefully be done by 1 or 2 PM. Mostly though, I end up doing some initial processing and not hitting the trail until 3 PM. If my load isn’t too heavy, I have actually taken to jogging most of the downhills on the way home, and the other day I made it back in exactly 2 hours.

But that doesn’t mean I’m done. I have to check the coffee’s fermentation every two hours starting after 10 hours, so I’m stuck getting up through the night frequently; when it is done, I end up washing it, which takes about 15 minutes a sample. Needless to say, the next day I’m trashed.

Associated with this is the lack of understanding of the locals. They wonder why on earth I keep going way up there to harvest coffee, when there is some much closer. Well, because there isn’t a coffee depulper anywhere closer, which I need. They also think that the solar coffee dryer I built is a coffee nursery, and that I’m trying to grow thousands of coffee plants. I’ve repeatedly told MANY locals that it is not, it is truly just for drying coffee, like I told them, but still, they don’t get it. So when I don’t have thousands of coffee trees growing soon, they’ll think I’m a real failure, even if I do manage to get a masters’ thesis out of it. Ah, such is life.

Still, despite my complaining, the coffee research is going well, and will be relevant. Karinne is also making progress, despite the miserable weather for fieldwork. The people in our new community are enthusiastic to have us there, so I feel bad that my coffee work is sucking up a lot of time for the next few weeks.

We live a life devoid of excitement. I truly can’t say there is anything exciting that we have done in the past several months, if not longer. We have work that can be satisfying, but never, ever exciting. We talk to people, hike around, do work, get rained on, go to the city, visit other volunteers. Often fun, diverting, entertaining, rewarding, but not exciting. This contrasts sharply with my work & life back in the States. Even an average day of work on a fire crew was exciting, since it often involved dangerous work with chainsaws. And the good days, wow, loaded- trees torching out, helicopters buzzing by, etc. When I wasn’t working, I was often mountain biking or snowboarding, and those things are really exciting. This is proving hard for me to deal with, since it seems like something I basically need, and as time goes by, I miss it more and more. Well, they say that Peace Corps is a good time to get to know yourself, and I already knew I was an addict to this kind of thing, and, lo and behold, I know that even more now. Drinking lots of coffee is fun, but still, not doing it for me. I am jonesin’!

Sorry about the sad lack of pics, K has the camera, and she is off working on her thesis fieldwork, so maybe next time.

The joys of errands

2007-11-07T05:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I bought canned peas. It doesn´t sound very exciting, but since vegetables are not available at all in our town, there will be some night, after a week or more in-site, when they will be heavenly. Yup, I get excited about canned peas.
I´d written up a longish update for here while sitting with our laptop at our regional leader´s house yesterday, but now the computer here won´t recognize the fauxpod, so I can´t pull the file and paste it in. I will later today, or maybe when we come down the hill again for thanksgiving in a couple weeks. Suffice it to say that time is flying by, November is largely booked up with coffee stuff, and that sort of busy schedule may continue with some luck. It makes me tired but happy to be doing good hard work.
So I promise, more words, and hopefully even pictures later.

Season of mold

2007-11-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the depths of ¨winter¨, more accurately known as the rainy season. Torrential downpours, ubiquitous mud, almost everything stinking of mold. But it is also the coffee harvest, which has mostly been monopolizing my time and keeping me up the hill in our site rather than down in town checking email or updating this blog. Ok, right now I´m off to look for lunch, but i will do my best to write more later today.

New province, new outlook

2007-10-05T14:49:00.000-07:00

Pics- Karinne and her new truck, a view out towards the Caribbean, Karinne and her child labor, the new house, hammock safely in place

“At a loss for words”
I think of great things to write about when we are up in our new site, Las Sabanas. But then I don’t write about them while we are up there, since we have no power, and hence no laptop time. Then when we get to town, we get busy, and my head fills up, pushing out the things that seemed funny, poignant, or at least marginally interesting. Oh well.
Anyway, we are already in the thick of it in the new site. While it is only around 15 miles as the crow flies from our old site, it took 28 hours to move from one to the other. I could go into it, but it frustrated me enough at the time, and I don’t want to inflict it on you. Suffice it to say, the Peace Corps experience involves a lot of waiting around for things to happen, and sometimes that goes double for interactions with the PC office. I will mention the best part, which was getting the truck stuck thirty feet from our new house and spending over an hour winching it forwards for absolutely no reason, except it would’ve not been acceptable to simply back up a little bit and call it good. Ah, machismo, is there any situation it CAN’T make worse?
But on the topic of transport, it is so very much better now. We can walk down the hill 30 minutes and catch a truck with no more than two hours wait, almost any time of the day between 5AM and 4PM. Then an hour in the truck, short wait, an hour in a bus, and we are in the regional capitol of Penonome. Sometimes we can even catch a truck going in front of our house, though the timing is anyone’s guess.

“Your dog, are you selling it?”
Yeah, that is what some guy said. He was driving along the street, stopped, stuck his head out the window, and proposed to buy our dog. The weird thing is that other people have said the same thing. It isn’t because she has “for sale” painted in neon on her side (she doesn’t), but simply because we feed her enough healthy food and give her a few vaccines, so she looks way better than almost any other dog around. The funny thing is that any dog here could be nice looking, too, with just some food and care. But somehow that is crazy. Many even doubt that our dog was actually born here in Panama, since such a pretty dog must have come from the U.S. Ah, yeah.

“Jenny- she sure walked a lot”
Peace Corps volunteers spend two years in often remote communities, living rustically with the people. Yet when we leave, most people only seem to remember things that seem somewhat inconsequential to us, and that we may not imagine would be our main legacy. Case in point- Jenny. She was an environmental education volunteer in our new town until 2004; for two years she lived, ate, talked, gossiped, worked with the people here almost every day. But what people seem to remember are odd things. For example, she climbed a local big mountain. And she walked a lot, and was a vegetarian, so she didn’t eat ANYTHING. Beyond that, it is murky. No one says they learned a lot from her, or that she was a good person. Not that they didn’t, or she isn’t, but that just isn’t what pops first into their minds.
On that theme, people in Chitra will remember the following: That husband of Karina sure ran a lot. He didn’t speak any Spanish. What was his name again? That is it.

“Life in a small country”
This morning really drove home how small Panama is. We had our regional meeting yesterday up in Omar Torrijos National Park, and stayed the night in a cabin up in the mountains. This morning we hiked up to a vista where you can see both the Caribbean and the Pacific on a clear day, and it was indeed clear enough to see them. Truly gorgeous views, nice park, even monkeys as curious to see us as we were to see them. The park isn’t that far from where we live, so we may visit it often.
Today we mostly did errands, including visiting the new big supermarket, called Super 99. This was their grand opening, and they had free samples of coffee and a brass band marching loops around the aisles; it was plenty of fun. We like this supermarket a lot since it has whole wheat pasta and other things that are a welcome change from beans and rice.

News-worthy trip out

2007-09-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

So, we just arrived in Santiago, after a 4 hour truck ride, and the driver was only 30 minutes late! This is noteworthy, since this is how it is supposed to be, and really hasn´t (6, 11, 6 hours, respectively, for my last three trips). Still, I´m tired, and its hot, so I´ll likely write more tomorrow. And stay tuned, significant and needed changes may be afoot down here, so I´ll write about those too. Maybe some pics, too.

The North

2007-08-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

“Everybody knows this is nowhere”
As I mentioned, the vacation to Alaska was wonderful. Lots of seafood, fun fishing, incredible scenery, hoppy beer, and of course, plenty of good coffee. We circumnavigated Admiralty Island in southeast Alaska over about a week, with stops for hot springs, salmon fishing, crab pot setting, and just plain enjoying the great scenery. The weather was good to great most of the time, only a little rain, and it felt chilly but not uncomfortable for us. I particularly liked running up there, I wasn’t bathing in my own sweat within 15 minutes like I tend to down here in Panama. Though I guess the downside is the potential for an encounter with a brown bear, but whatever. We ate so very well: King salmon and black cod sashimi, king crab melts, and seafood stew were highlights. And beer! As I’ve mentioned, Panamanian beer just makes me sad, so having good brews put a smile on my face. Another thing that was surprising was the near-constant presence of wildlife. Humpback whales were often within sight; seals, sea lions, brown bear, bald eagles, and jumping salmon were common.
Maybe the nicest thing was just being away- away from the bugs, away from cultural and social challenges around every corner, away from the routine. My only real responsibilities were keeping an eye on the downriggers when we were fishing and making coffee.
Upon our return, the Panama International Marathon loomed. We left Seattle Friday night, and arrived after two moderate flights and a layover on Saturday afternoon, very tired and not used to the heat and humidity. Still, got decent rest before the alarm went off at 4 AM Sunday. I actually enjoyed the marathon; it was nice to have a challenge, and the feeling of accomplishment. The latter has been lacking over the past year, and the former, well, we’ve had plenty, and of kinds we would not have had without joining the Peace Corps, so they have been valuable. I finished in 4:03, and the hard-won lessons of pacing myself from mountain bike racing helped me out a lot. A beautiful moment occurred shortly after the start. The course brought us through Panama Viejo, a series of ruins hundreds of years old. A decaying tower lined up with a huge condo tower under construction in the distance as the sun came up, and nothing could’ve better illustrated the changes this country, particularly the capital, is undergoing.
Now we are back, and it is raining torrents. Oh, I forgot to mention that we had to hike out when we left for our vacation. Six hours, numerous creek crossings, and a fair bit of disorientation led us to a town where we were able to hitch a ride with the fish truck down to Santiago. Since the normal truck left early, it was either that or wait another day, and we made the right choice. Coming back took almost six hours in the truck, including a little while repairing the leaf springs with a block of wood.
It has not been a good week for technology here. Our cell phone, which got enough of a signal to check messages from a hill five minutes away, now no longer works at all. It was on the analog system that they’ve finally shut down. Now, we have a new cell phone, smaller and sleeker, but it doesn’t even get a nip of signal from way high up in the hills, where we used to get a full signal. It’ll only work when we are out of site. This would be less of a hassle if the closest, second closest, and third closest public phones weren’t all broken, as well. We need to call our boss in a couple days, and it looks likely that we’ll have to hike 2 hours one-way to find a phone that may work. And finally, our refrigerator is broken, likely due to surges in the power that resulted from somebody doing some welding. So no more cold drinks, nor any perishables that’ll last more than a couple days. Yeah, I know that most PC volunteers don’t have refrigeration, but it is a nice thing to have, and those that don’t can’t tell me that they haven’t craved ice in their Tang after a long, sweaty work day. So now we are more isolated, and with a more limited diet. Hooray.
I went running today for the first time since the marathon last week, and my legs were still a bit sore. That amazes me, though I guess it shouldn’t. I think I would be interested in doing another marathon, but maybe trail running next time. I wonder if there will be one in Costa Rica, maybe early next year?

¨Clearly, everyone here IS taking crazy pills¨
Before we left on our vacation, we heard that the World Bank may be giving $30,000 to the local farmers’ association for whatever projects they wanted to do. We thought of this as possibly a good opportunity for them to work on a medium-sized project together, and for us to help them stay accountable and focused. Well, that isn’t looking likely. It sounds like they are getting the money, but rather than work together, which is a real difficulty for locals, they plan on having all their members come up with individual projects, then doling out the funds to each of them. Any of the traditional things I associate with a project, such as budgets, accountability, planning, and evaluation will be basically impossible. Lots of equipment that could be shared will be bought by multiple individuals so that they don’t have to even interact. Resentment will be created by perceived or real unfairness as to how the money is spread out. So it is more like a hand-out than project funding, which is sad; these folks could really benefit and learn from having to plan and run a project, since they’ve never done that on even a limited scale before.
While our boss was here, we set up a meeting with the president of the producers’ association to talk about this World Bank project. And not too surprisingly, he blew it off; which is something of an accomplishment, since it was at his house. It is becoming increasingly clear that they don’t want our help with anything, which is a bummer, since we have real skills in areas they need help, like planning and organizing and delegating.
On a related note, these same farmers are being pushed to join in a project to build big greenhouses and grow tomatoes during the wet season. I don’t like this for a bunch of reasons, but a big one is that tomatoes are relatively delicate, our road is a disaster, and nobody wants to buy bruised, smashed tomatoes. So I hope to track down the people who are running this and grill them over why they think it is a good fit for Chitra. Same thing with whoever is pushing organic certification for the coffee. It sounds great, I mean, who can disagree with organic coffee? Well, I can. First off, a lot of the coffee here doesn’t have the quality to sell in the specialty market, so the organic label is irrelevant (for getting a better price) if you have crappy coffee. Second, it is prohibitively expensive for individual farmers, and as mentioned above, the dysfunctional association is not capable of pulling it off either. Finally, it takes a bunch of paperwork and record keeping, and a significant percentage of these guys can’t even read, much less jump into basic accounting.
These things reinforce the importance of carefully considering local desires and conditions before coming up with projects, and I’m pleased that the Peace Corps is aware of this and emphasizes it. It may mean that the projects we end up pursuing aren’t as grand or exciting sounding, but they have a better chance of working, which is all that matters. Still, these other projects are distracting and may divert people’s attention from our more modest and simpler projects, since they seem to forget about all the big fancy projects that have come and failed over the past 30 years, despite the decaying buildings and useless infrastructure related to them that litter the landscape.
“Le aviso”
Which, in english, means, “I’ll let you know”. I think I’ve mentioned this phrase before, but it seems to be the phrase we hear most often, especially from some people, so I’m going to talk about it some more. For example, the father of the family we lived with for three months when we arrived here is a huge, huge fan of it. We have not done any work with him since December of last year. We talk to him at least weekly, and almost always the conversation veers (thanks to our steering) towards work. He mentions something he wants to do, we say we want to help him and when would work for him? And of course, “I’ll let you know”.
So this week we almost fell over in shock. He actually set a day, Thursday, for us to help him plant a rice paddy. This is hard, messy work , but we were very enthusiastic. But come Wednesday afternoon, it got called off. He sent a guy who often works for him over to tell us not to bother to show up, that, yup, he would let us know. At least he warned us, its much more common to just let us or other helpers show up, then tell them plans have changed. Ok, sounds good, dude, we’ll be ready, as always. I don’t find it very demoralizing any more, just sort of sad; he’s a nice guy, but not good at planning or organization, and we have a lot to offer in those categories. But he, like many people here, can’t seem to swallow his pride enough to admit that he doesn’t know everything, and that he might learn something from working with us (as we are so keenly aware that we can learn a lot from the locals).
Anyway, on to sunnier topics. I got stung on the hand by something I didn’t even see today, and eight hours later, it still hurts quite a bit. The guy we were working with told me that if it was a caterpillar, which is likely, you can reduce the pain by finding the guilty insect and smooshing it on the bite. His farm is just riddled with insects; we spent most of the morning swatting away spider webs as we pruned his coffee, and we often get chomped on by chiggers there as well. These critters seem to target us gringos, which is a good source of entertainment for the locals- us jumping around and scratching while they are unfazed and unmolested. I just tell them that everyone knows that we are delicious.

Our boss, the program director for sustainable agriculture, visited us for a day earlier this week. She had a typical adventure getting up here, and apparently an even sportier time getting out. Showing up at the terminal at 3:15AM, she quickly verified (with two women, one of whom arrived at 1AM, the other at 2AM) that the truck hadn’t arrived yet. Waiting with fifteen people soon turned into a group effort to call the drivers and see who was supposed to come. Well, they found out nobody was coming: none of the drivers planned on making the trip, even the one we had talked to and had said to us, very specifically, “yes, I’m leaving Tuesday morning at 4AM”. Still, she was able to catch up with a driver who was bringing cargo at the end of the pavement, and ride up with him; this leg lasted about 7 hours. Her visit went well, and was very useful to us.
Thinking she’d go with the driver who told us he was leaving at 6AM the next day, we set our alarms for 5AM. At 4AM, a neighbor banged on our door, telling us that someone else was going instead, and would be by in 30 minutes. He ended up picking her up at 5AM, and we went back to sleep briefly before heading out to prune coffee.
Later that afternoon, rumors of a wreck sifted back to Chitra. It sounds like the truck she went in rolled, maybe a couple times. Fortunately, we heard nobody was hurt. Since the phones are still broken, we have no way of getting in touch with her to find out what happened until we head out in 5 days. The trip in and out of this town is the only thing I unambiguously hate about this place. We’d heard that they were going to send some trainees our way in a couple weeks for the “volunteer visit”, but I wonder if they’ll cancel that based on our boss’s adventures.
So, we are now down in Santiago, and yup, truck did roll, twice. Big hassle, don´t know how everyone got away unscathed. We had our own adventure coming out- longest trip yet, 11 hours between leaving our house and arriving in Santiago (a trip of 50 road miles). Left our house in a downpour at 4am, waited 3 hours. The 4am truck was 3.5 hours late, but the 6am truck was only 1 hour late, so we went with the ¨second¨ truck. Got to the river, and it was too high to cross. Three trucks sat on the far side, and when we arrived one of the drivers waded in to see if it was shallow enough. Nope, up to his neck, and with a strong enough current that he could hardly stand. Waited and waited, finally barrelled across, then waited some more, since they were fixing one of the other trucks, and throwing parts and tools back and forth across the river. Took off finally, got maybe 5 miles down the paved road, and a rear axle bearing blew out, so we were stuck waiting again. Gave up and walked for an hour, then got a short ride to the nearest town, where we finally had some food, and found another truck to take us to Santiago. It was no fun. Next blog I´ll include the pics of the trucks crossing, up to their hoods in water.

¨Poo-phobia¨
Well, I guess the only other thing to report on was making semi-fertilizer with a farmer. I call it semi-fertilizer, since it is missing the critical ingredient of horse or cow manure. He clearly finds having to collect poop for this mix distasteful, so he was trying to get out of it; as we are chopping stuff up and mixing it, we kept telling him he needed manure, to which he responded by going off and collecting various tree leaves. Oh, and he also apparently is afraid of toads, since he sort of freaked out when we uncovered a couple in some organic waste. He said he may be able to get a bag of chicken manure from the school, and we said, for about the tenth time, that he really needs at least five bags of horse or cow manure. This should be easy, since his house is semi-surrounded by cow pasture. We plan on swinging by his house in about a week to see if he got the poop; I think it is about a 25% chance he’ll have it. Still, at least we got it started, which is a big deal, he has been talking to us about making this for at least 3 months.
Other than that, not much work going on, beyond my little farming projects, like planting native trees and coffee in the scrubby, unused plot of land behind our house. I find this very satisfying, even when I’m getting chewed up by bugs and sweating profusely under the hot tropical sun.

Off the road again

2007-08-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

Another short entry, once again, without pics. Errands are such a pain, they´ve really sucked up this day. We are back in Santiago, getting ready to head back up the hill tomorrow morning at 3:30 AM. As I said, Alaska was wonderful, but its good to be back, too, which is a relief. Coming back and hating it would be hard to deal with.
I ran the Panama marathon, and it was fun and hard. My legs are still sore two days later. I´d figured I´d finish in about 4 hours, and yup, it was 4:03. I now look forward to not feeling obligated to training for something, but I enjoyed it enough that I may run some other race sometime in the future.
Next time, more pictures, and more ruminations.

Still having problems with where to put the TP

2007-08-02T17:12:00.000-07:00

We've been in the States for a bit over a week and a half, and I'm still looking to the side of the toilet for the wastebasket to dispose of my toilet paper. Other than that, it feels good and natural to be back here. We spent a week on Karinne's dad's boat, fishing for salmon and viewing awesome scenery during a trip around southeast Alaska. Now we are in Seattle, and doing a bunch of errands (ie stocking up on Trader Joe's stuff and splurging at REI) before heading back down to Panama, arriving just in time for me to run a marathon. It has been a wonderful visit- tons of great seafood, stunning scenery, good beer, fun fishing, and so on.
I'll try to write up a more complete review, but mostly I want to put on a bunch of pictures, since they'll speak for themselves.

Travelling

2007-06-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

Well, not much new to really report. Karinne is wrapping up a fieldtrip to volcanoes in Costa Rica today. I am up in Boquete helping a bit with coffee training for the new group, getting info and making connections for the coffee guys in our site, and doing a bit of work on my own coffee research project.
It is cold here, and sprinking rain, very strange, and welcome actually. I went all day yesterday without sweating, which is an incredible accomplishment. I also got as whacked out on coffee as I have anytime recently, and it was fun, but not really worth it. Though I was drinking the local Geisha, likely the stuff that got second in the best of Panama competition, and also the coffee that got third, and Los Lajones... I just could not stop untill I had trouble focusing my eyes.
We are off to Bocas del Toro tomorrow, to have a brief vacation and visit a couple other volunteers. I look forward to it.
I actually almost didnt make it out here on time, since the driver sunday, who last time was two hours late, showed up 25 minutes early, and I was, hmmmm, indisposed. Fortunately he remembered I had told him I was going, and paused in front of the house, otherwise he would have just flown by, leaving me behind. Ah, yeah.

Funny faces! Oh, the humanity.....

2007-06-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

I need to do a fair bit of school related computer stuff, but darn, it is hard to be motivated. Most of it involves background stuff- previous research, info regarding Panama´s agriculture, etc. Some is great, I can just find a webpage and download it for later reading. Other things are a struggle, at best. Especially since every internet cafe here seems to have uncomfortable chairs.

Fear of puppies, tigers, and gringos

2007-06-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

8AM in the morning, and already Santiago is sweltering. We got in yesterday after an average truck ride that somehow included both mud flying everywhere and my nose getting clogged with dust. I never really feel like I´ve recovered from the ride until we go to Cheesecake Plus, a gringa-owned oasis. Imagine that great little bakery-cafe that you love, then plop it in an ugly strip mall in this ugly city, and the contrast is almost overwhelming.
Karinne has headed to a conference in Costa Rica, so I´m heading back up to our town alone tomorrow. I will spend the next week replying to the question, "y Karina?". I think that I will come up with crazy replies, regarding UFOs and spies, since that´ll make almost as much sense as a geology conference.
Ok, I wrote a bunch of stuff during rainy afternoons in our site, so that´ll follow. PIctures may have to wait, since I need to get out of this stuffy little internet cafe.
¨Run, Forest, run!"
There is a marathon is Panama City in August, and I want to run it. I’ve never done any sort of running race before, and the last bike race I did was five years ago. Here in the mountains of Veraguas, there is precious little flat ground for running, and the nearest pavement is two hours away by truck. Plus, the rainy season has started. So my average run is characterized by slippery mud, steep hills, laughing locals, lots of elevation gain, and buckets of sweat. I have to slow down to a walk to navigate the treacherous hills, and pause frequently to scrape the mud off the soles of my shoes with a stick. Such fun! Actually, I am enjoying it- I’m getting in better shape, providing free entertainment for our neighbors, and sleeping better. Since we still aren’t doing much agricultural work (beyond talking with farmers about things we can do with them, and them saying “sure, I’ll let you know”, which means the same as “the check is in the mail”), it gives me something to do.
We organized a meeting this past week, and it was more successful than I could’ve hoped. About 20 local coffee farmers showed up, we talked, but more importantly, we got them talking to each other, which is something that does not happen nearly enough here. It was somewhat stressful, since there were many parts that could’ve gone wrong, but it all clicked, and I’m quite pleased. We talked about simple ways they can improve the quality of their coffee during the coming harvest, and also about how we are looking for a better price for said quality coffee. People here are not satisfied with the price they receive for their coffee, and it truly is low. But they don’t want to improve their quality until there is a better price for quality coffee, which there will never be until they improve their quality, and so on and so on. So we are trying to get just a few to break out of that cycle with a small part of their harvest this year, produce a few hundred pounds of good stuff, and sell it for more. Sounds simple, we’ll see how it goes.
It’s raining hard now, but not dumping. We are hoping for a lull, since we had plans to go “pasear”ing. This is Spanish for basically visiting with people at their houses, and it’s a common diversion here. We have found ourselves dreading it somewhat, for reasons too complicated to talk about here. On face value, it seems like a mellow activity, just going and chatting, and it can be. But it can also be loaded with lopsided rules. For example, if we’ve gone to the regional capital (as we do every three or so weeks), we MUST visit our host family within a day of returning. They always ask when we got back, and the same day is best, yesterday is ok, but the day before, oooh, we’ve been BAD. After this, the mood of the visit is definitely tenser, and it is obvious that we are in dutch. This mood is amplified if we haven’t been visiting at least twice a week. Of course, this is the same family that has visited us here at our house four times over the last seven months, but that isn’t relevant- these rules apply only to us.
Another funny aspect is when we look for someone to talk about work and they aren’t home. We may stop by and not find them, but talk to their family or neighbor. Maybe later that day, maybe another day, we’ll stop by again, and sometimes still not find them. In my mind, some sort of social protocol may be triggered at that point, and they may actually come to our house to see what we want. That is not the case. For example, I wanted to harvest some coffee with our Peace Corps-deemed “counterpart”, so I went by his house. And kept going by his house, early in the morning, in the evening; five times I visited over a week before he walked the five minutes to our house to see what I wanted. That visit marked one of the maybe half-dozen times he’s come to visit us in the ten months we’ve lived here.
I’ll mention the primary reason for my frustration with visiting: we end up talking about doing work with people, and they often say, “yeah, sounds good, I’ll let you know when.” Then we don’t hear from them. Sometimes they just don’t really want to do it, which I can accept, other times they just go and do it themselves without letting us know, which I find frustrating. I am here to work, and I’m straightforward and honest, so this whole thing, repeated many times, really rubs me wrong. We’ve talked to our counterpart about this, and he says, “oh, the people of Loma Llana, they don’t want to work with Peace Corps, nor do the people of Media Luna, nor…..”, and lists most local neighborhoods and communities. Interestingly, we’ve asked to work with him a bunch, which in the 10+ months we’ve been here has resulted in about six work days. Maybe I just need to scale back my expectations and accept that we talk about work much more than we actually do work.
Some of our most memorable interactions with locals are also the most unexpected. K and I were walking down the road the other day, and we ran into a guy from a local community that briefly had another Peace Corps volunteer, who left after three months. First, he asked us if we were interested in a gold mine. I understood the words, but it was such an unexpected question that I had to ask him to repeat it. Well, he really meant gold mine. So we told him, no, we’re here to work with people on agricultural stuff. “Oh, so you want to buy land”. No, really, we don’t, we just want to help people with agriculture. Finally, he seemed to hear us. Then he chatted briefly about the terrible state of the road to his town, but rapidly went into how we really, really needed to repent. Like, now. Well, Jesus may have been on our side at that moment, since we arrived at the turn-off for his town, and we continued on down the road, having just another day in Chitra.

As I may have mentioned, the rainy season has definitely arrived. Most afternoons are characterized by hours of downpouring rain. Often it is too loud on our tin roof to even talk, so we sit and read, or sleep, or just stare out at the rain. Our carrots in the garden are swelling and cracking with all the moisture, and fungi are attacking many other plants. The rivers are often ripping as well; our favorite swimming hole had an intimidating current leading towards a wicked rapid last time we visited. Most of the trails have turned to mud, meaning adventurous walking and always getting dirty. The flip side is that the hills are green and lush, and there hasn’t been a sign of slash & burn agriculture for over a month.
We are tired a lot here. This past week, I’ve been absolutely crashing out after lunch most days, often napping for an hour or more in the hammock. The other day I slept right through the kid from the middle school coming around selling cheese, even though the transaction took place about ten feet from my head. Nights are rife with intense dreams that result from the potent anti-malarial medication we have to take every week. I’ve even woken up a few times recently with no clue as to where I actually am; it takes a couple minutes to figure it out. What adventure!
Speaking Spanish is still often exhausting, so when we even just chat with people for a couple hours, I’m toast. I guess related to this is the amount I sweat, especially when running and working. I get back from an hour or hour and a half run and my shoes are soaked. It is gross, but also kind of funny, especially watching locals react to the soaked gringo running up the muddy hill.
The small hydro-electric plant that provides power for less than a hundred houses in the central part of our district went down for about a week, and it was such a change. Our fridge didn’t work, our house was dark, and there wasn’t the usual background pulse of music from the neighbors. Each time this happens, I’m surprised at what a difference electric power makes- dark, rainy afternoons seem worse, night falls far too early, and even the simple lack of music is kind of depressing. We hadn’t been aware of this problem, so we brought up perishables from town the last time we returned, and had to eat most of them rapidly. So now even though we have power, we are eating a lot of beans and rice instead of the more gringo-oriented foods we like for variety. It’s ok, since we are heading back down the hill later this week, but it gets boring and unappetizing quickly. I find myself craving greasy meat, bacon, fried chicken, even sausage.
The rains also means that all vegetation is growing like it got a steroid injection. This means frequent “limpiar”ing, which translates literally to “cleaning”, but generally refers to cutting down any and all unwanted vegetation (which is really anything that isn’t food or ornamental) with a machete. I now appreciate the power and ease of a lawn mower and weed whacker; even a small “lawn” is a sweaty, blister-inducing hassle. I definitely ascribe to a more live & let live approach, and prefer more vegetation to less, but some of it has to go, especially right in front of the house. Some get tired of constant cutting, and spray their lawns with herbicide. Just seeing this makes me sad and overwhelmed. I mean, how are we going to successfully get people doing organic, sustainable agriculture when in their minds some weeds near their house, which don’t threaten their crops or livelihood at all, warrant a dose of a nasty chemical that is probably illegal in the U.S.? And really, is herbicide really more evil than the squadrons of weed whackers and lawn mowers that are employed daily in the U.S.? Who knows?

I guess June may mark the real end of two local agricultural work groups- the producers’ association and the collective farm. The collective farm had been on the decline since before we got here; in fact, it had likely dropped below the minimum membership over a year ago. We worked with our counterpart a few days at the farm, since he was one of the main guys involved in organizing it, but each time it seemed to be something weird or dumb, like pulling up rice that hadn’t been watered properly, and therefore hadn’t produced any grain, so we didn’t pursue working there. Dozens if not hundreds of these collective farms have been established over the past decade, and we have yet to hear of one that has survived beyond the initial period when the NGO supporting it keeps bringing fertilizer, chickens, pigs, equipment, etc. Some of the tales we hear are almost comic- the technicians bring chickens and pigs and instructions on how to breed them and sell the extras for a profit. When the technicians leave, the farmers eat the chickens and pigs. Later, when the technicians return, they are shocked to hear about this, and scold the farmers. Then they give them more chickens and pigs, which the farmers then eat. Duh!
We had been trying to be more involved in the producers’ association, since it was started while we were here, and we felt like it had potential. Well, actually, that isn’t right, it had been started several years ago, and failed, so they restarted it. It hasn’t been officially declared dead by the people in charge, but I see the signs- there hasn’t been a meeting in two months, none are planned, the president was trying to resign, and while the vice-president means well, he has no real leadership or organizational skills. They never pulled off any of their planned projects, mostly because they were poorly motivated and never really planned out, and they were whatever popped into the president’s head, rather than anything the membership came up with and was supportive of. We tried to get the president to go to a Peace Corps training on how to come up with and organize projects, but he bailed at the last minute, and said vice-president came instead. He didn’t really get anything out of it, spending most of the time spacing out, and was mostly anxious to be allowed to leave, so much so that he bailed on the last part of it.
I’m bummed that this went this way, but the bright side is that I won’t have to sit through any more of their meetings. These things were awful- held at a pavilion with no chairs, so everyone sits either on the stage part or around the outside edge. They generally would start 1.5 to 2.5 hours late, and sometimes go on for up to 4 hours. The sheer number of digressions and interruptions was amazing, and many times the meeting would essentially stop and people would chat about whatever in small groups. Every time someone new showed up, they’d greet everyone loudly, and then have to go around and shake everyone’s hand and chat a bit; you can imagine how this derailed the process. The secretary prides herself on having a big voice and an acid tongue; she would lash out at anyone she could make fun of, and they’d often turn red and just shut up, and likely not be seen at the next meeting. The meetings never really ended, they just sort of fell apart, with people leaving in disgust at having wasted a Saturday morning and not having decided anything or planned anything, beyond maybe when the next meeting would be. We would often return home feeling shell-shocked at the length and uselessness of each meeting.
K got “marked” by a hyper little male dog I refer to as “Lipstick” for obvious reasons. She was just standing in the store, chatting with the owner, and the little rascal trotted up, peed on her leg, and looked surprised to be chased out with thrown rocks. That was today’s weird event. Yesterday’s was having a drunk guy decide to sleep on our porch, then having to get him and his shoes out to the road, so he could continue to stumble back home. I hope he made it, it looked like he had fallen numerous times already, not hard to do when black-out drunk in the dark and mud.

Only pics today

2007-05-12T14:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I lied, here is a short anecdote from yesterday. We went to the grocery store, and ended up with cocktails! Yup, free samples of good aged rum, mixed into strong drinks by the lady giving out free samples in the booze section. Funny standing in the checkout line, drinks in hand, already feeling buzzed. Ah, Panama!

Today text, tomorrow, pictures!

2007-05-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

"Eatin' pig head and roastin' coffee"
This afternoon is marked by the first real aguacero, or long, heavy rainstorm, in quite a while. I keep looking out to see how our road is doing, since a lot of water gets funneled down it. By the end of the last rainy season, trucks couldn't pass by below us, and it is only a matter of time before that comes again. The best part is the role our neighbors play in the roads destruction. The grader and tractor came through about a month ago, leveling out the road and deepening the ditches on both sides. Ideally, the water will flow down these, leaving the middle of the road uneroded and driveable. But- the people don't like having ditches that they have to jump across or even take a long step across in front of their houses. So they fill them in with dirt and rock. This either diverts the water into a new trench down the middle of the road, or blows out the fill, or both. Our neighbor across the street is one of Chitra's most thoughtful and creative guys, but he did this same thing. And he also does a quality job with every type of work (unlike most locals), so his fill is staying put, and the water is digging a ditch down the middle of the road. Brilliant. Still, I went over there to visit a few times this afternoon, since he was roasting 150 lbs. of coffee in 50 lbs. batches to bring and sell in grocery stores in Panama. It was kinda fun, and his wife gave me rice with pig head, which was actually quite tasty; though I couldn't bring myself to eat the pieces with hair still on them. Just another day at the office.
"Hey, at least it isn't crack!"
I have to admit to an addiction, and it's all our regional leaders' fault. Battlestar Galactica. I haven't had a tv in years, and I haven't gotten sucked into any shows in at least that long, but they had to go and loan us the first two seasons on DVD. We close the door, pull the drapes, and watch an episode or two most every night. I suppose that we'd have gotten into any show that they would give us, since the nights are pretty slow up here. The funniest part is that it is basically a telenovela, the spanish-language soap operas that are so popular here, except with more shooting and a little less bad acting.
"Cat thieves"
Our cat has been stolen. Well, at least it has disappeared. Its been about a week now, and I don't have much hope for him to come wandering back. Neighbors assure us that it isn't uncommon for cats to just be grabbed by people who have problems with rats or mice, or who want to sell them to those that do. Since a new post that I put in for our fence also got stolen, I'm inclined to believe them. Apparently anything that isn't nailed down is fair game, and as soon as you bring up this topic, people here really get rolling with tales of theft and burglary. People break into houses, or steal produce from fields that aren't right next to houses. A collective farm nearby failed due to people just going and helping themselves to the crops at night. It makes me sad, frustrated, and pissed. We are here, giving our sweat and time and effort, but that isn't enough, they have to steal our friggin' cat.
"Ok, gringo, let me tell you how it is....."
I may have mentioned it before, but a funny thing that keeps coming up is the assurance that, "oh, Spanish is much easier to learn than English". Many, many people have said this to us. The implication seems to be that even though we are idiots who don't know how to plant beans, we are learning Spanish, therefore it must be easier than English. Additionally, even though the kids here have English classes every year of their education, the most they can seem to remember is "Good Morning!", said with great enthusiasm during all times of the day, especially evening. Actually, I need to give some people more credit than that- there was the drunk guy who wanted me to speak English then replied, "Yes! My friend!", to whatever I said, even when I started saying nasty things about him. I try to tell these folks that any second language is harder than the first, regardless of what it is, but they rarely seem swayed.
"Prestame su foco"
Another thing that keeps coming up is flashlight envy. More than anything else, people want flashlights or headlamps like ours. When we were still living with our host family, the dad would tell Karinne to go get hers to let him use it, even when he had his own flashlight in his hands. The flashlights they can get here are $1.25, and not even worth that. They break quickly, give poor light, and suck up batteries. But everyone has one. So even this morning, a neighbor who saw me walking up the road last night asked me to bring one back the next time I go back to the U.S. I always say sure, but I'm not going back till I'm done here, which they don't seem to believe. I think the cost of a good flashlight would shock them, but in reality, it can be more economical. I bought a Petzl headlamp in 1996, and used it for 10 years before passing it on to our host family here in Chitra. It cost $30, but if you divide that by 10, it comes to $3/year. Now, those crappy flashlights may last 3 months; so you end up spending $5/year. But nobody here really thinks that way. Spending more for quality really isn't an option when you barely ever have more than a few dollars on hand.
"Hay que limpiar"
Today was a planned clean-up of the fairgrounds. The place was a disaster after the fair last month- broken beer bottles, tons of trash, etc. Since everyone here just throws their garbage on the ground, the whole town is trashy anyway, but this well exceeded that background level of mess. So we went down, but nobody else from the producers' association showed up. I was not surprised. Locals will spend hours cutting grass that is 3-inches high down to half an inch, which is called cleaning, but then not see the irony to eat some cookies and throw the wrapper on the freshly "cleaned" ground. We resisted the urge to just jump in and clean up the garbage ourselves; that isn't what we are here for. Even if one 5-year-old kid had shown up to help, we would've jumped in gung-ho, but if no local can make the effort, we won't either.
Instead of picking up broken glass, I went and fixed the aqueduct. The aforementioned dump of rain yesterday messed it up, so we had no water from yesterday evening until this morning. One of our neighbors had gotten a head start on me for heading up; he said he'd fixed it, but as we headed back down, pulling apart PVC pipes to vent the air bubbles, there really wasn't much water coming down. He split, I kept going down and checking, and there was no water at all before even the first storage tank. So back up I went, fixed it, getting soaked in the process (great fun trying to push together 2" pipes with good pressure alone), and now we have water. Once again, I think I've mentioned the rush to get things done without a thought about doing a job well; this approach is omnipresent here. It is amusing that I'm becoming quite the aqueduct expert; especially valued is the fact that I'll suck up the $3 for a can of glue occasionally, which no one else in this neighborhood seems to be willing to do. It blows my mind- spending hours sometimes to dig up a busted tube, then replacing it with another busted tube, and not gluing it, but just shoving it together. I counted 32 separate sections of PVC pipe cobbled together to make an elevated crossing over the road just next door; it is maybe 25 feet long.
"I miss the honky-tonks, Dairy Queens, and 7-11's" Talking Heads
This blog entry has seemed to become "vent on cultural differences" central, but this stuff is what makes it hard to get any work done, and also makes me appreciate how effectively and logically we often get work done in the U.S. The flipside is that people here have very relaxed lives; most guys only work 5-6 hours a day (women work longer almost always), people spend a lot of time with their families, chatting, visiting, etc. Nobody is starving, and even people in their 70's and 80's are still spry and healthy. With all this in mind, I'm trying to get better at just throwing my hands up, smiling, and saying "Que va?". Then I go home and work on my own projects, like raising coffee seedlings, or go biking and hiking, to help burn off my extra energy. We go hiking a bunch, and each time we seem to find something unexpected- an isolated waterfall, a stunning view. The sad part is that those beautiful views have been marred in the last month or so by columns of smoke from people doing very destructive slash & burn agriculture, or sometimes even just getting drunk and lighting off dry hillsides for kicks.
"Casi un año"
It is getting close to a year that we have been down here in Panama. I'll have to think hard about whether it has been worth it, especially compared to what else I may be doing, but I think it has been. Things like this are hard to objectively evaluate when you are "aqui en la lucha". Still, it is funny to think about the things we've done and haven't done, things we've had and haven't, and so on. I haven't had a great beer (some decent ones) in that time, but I have had good coffee that I've harvested, processed, roasted, and brewed. I've learned that while Panamanian food is overall pretty crappy, there are some things I like, and we've also been able to hone our improvisational cooking skills. No day is predictable, which suits me just fine. Maybe the biggest thing I didn't expect was the realization that while people are just people, and inherently the same on some level, cultural differences can be amazingly deep and inexplicable and frustrating. As others have said, you really have to live in a different culture as more than a tourist to come to fully appreciate the positive aspects of your own culture.
"The quality conundrum"
We are having a hard time explaining coffee quality to local coffee producers. In the states, we've become aware & educated over the past couple decades that some coffee is worth paying $10.00 a pound for. Really, though, this is only true for a small small portion of the population- most still drink Folger's. Even those who go to coffee shops and shell out $3 for a drink often get flavored syrups dumped in to cover up the taste of coffee.
Here, people drink tons of coffee, but don't like the taste of coffee. So they throw in tons of sugar, often 2-4 heaping tablespoons per small cup. Therefore, trying to explain that coffee can have a variety of tastes is like trying to tell someone who has only ever drank Budweiser that beer can have a wide range of flavors; it is a tough sell at best, and the reality is that nobody here really believes us. So when we say that if they process their coffee better, it'll have a better taste, and then people will pay more money for it, well, they don't really buy it. They'd be happy to get more money, but they are not really believing that coffee can vary that much in quality based on the processing, so on some level they are reluctant to put in the extra care and work. The coffee still looks nice, even if it wasn't dried well and tastes like a cup of wet paper bag, so isn't that good enough for a higher price? We're trying to figure out ways around this problem, any suggestions?
"Best Birthday Ever"
So I entered my 32nd year with a high fever, diarrhea, and pain. Karinne and I had attended the collective birthday party for myself and 3 other volunteers (May 4-7, funny coincidence) and had a really good time- drinking chicha fuerte (fermented corn drink), eating rice & chicken, dancing, and hanging out with some folks we hadn't seen in a while, and met some new people. Especially fun was the fact that it was not gringo-centric, many locals were partying just as hard if not harder, playing drums, dancing, falling drunk down the hill, and so on. This was at Darlene's site, which is maybe twenty-five miles from here as the crow flies, but takes about 8 hours to drive to, since there are no direct roads. Party highlights included the guy with the huge sombrero and rubber boots getting drunk and dancing like a maniac all night, unexpected noises from a tent followed by awkward explanations for said noises, and the ridiculous profusion of digital cameras making the whole thing seem like a press conference. At some point we picked up some bacteria that also liked to party, and it had its own fiesta in both Karinne's and my intestinal tracts. Fortunately it really only kicked in hard once we'd arrived back in the local provincial capital, and we were able to get to a doctor by the second day of suffering. That was very fortunate, since I was running to the bathroom every 20-30 minutes, and any sort of travel would've been a nightmare. Two days later and we are both feeling much better, but still not back to normal. At least at this point 32 can only get better, I hope.

Mountains & Ocean

2007-03-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

We just got back a few days ago from our first real vacation in a while, a long week in Costa Rica. Went up Cerro Chirripo, tallest peak in Central America, and learned to surf at Dominical. Ate good food, learned that the Panamanian bus system is generally superior to the CR one, took one of the coldest showers of my life (water at 12,000 ft is chilly, amazingly), and brought home that favorite souveneir- intestinal woes.
But to back up, the Chitra fair was the three days before we headed out to CR. It was fun enough, lots of drunk drunk drunk guys wandering around, some dancing (yes, we danced, and hopefully well enough to shut up the locals who think Americans only dance to ¨rock¨), some beautiful produce for sale, and a crazy number of trucks driving around. On an average day, maybe two pick ups go by our house, on the feria days, it was dozens. Two other volunteers, Jessica and Adam, came up for the feria, we brought them to the good swimming hole and introduced them around. The road department also graded the road right before the feria, so I got to spend the two mornings before it fixing the aqueducts under the road that got torn up and busted.
But back to the vacation. We saw some great wildlife- monkeys, quetzales, parakeets, coatis, toucans, etc. We also had some of the best thai food we´ve had outside of thailand, though it was expensive, as everything was in Costa Rica. Also weird to be in a place where gringos outnumber the locals. The hike up and down Chirripo took two days, including getting up at 3:15AM the second day to get up to the peak for the sunrise. It was one of the hardest hikes I´ve done, covering about 45km and 10,000 vertical feet of climbing. The topography up top looks much more like something in California or Nevada, since it has been glacially carved. Then, we took our sore legs down to the beach. I took a surfing lesson from a burned out old surfer named Bob, he also owned a dog named Bob. Got up and rode my first wave, and it was a lot of fun. After two days of surfing, my arms were almost as sore as my legs, and I had a wonderful rash from the surfboard. We camped at a somewhat crowded surf camp, and the time flew on by.
Finally, we stopped at a beautiful botanical garden & preserve on the way back to Panama. It had amazing diversity in a relatively small area. Now we are back, after marathon bus rides, in Santiago, doing paperwork for the Peace Corps and sweating profusely.
Tomorrow we head back up the hill to chitra; this has been our longest absence since we arrived, and it will be hard to go back in some ways. I have to admit, I´m frustrated by the lack of desire to try new things people have, and the terribly awkward and unorganized and fruitless way people do go about things when they are motivated. All these guys think they always know what they are doing, and just lunge into the work, often duplicating or undoing the work of others. There is rarely any attempt to create a consensus on the best plan before work begins, and quick and dirty prevails over careful and quality every single time, even when there is plenty of time for the latter approach. I cringe and shake my head a lot. It seems overwhelming, but I guess I can make a start of it. A break has been good, but it also makes it hard to go back there and struggle. Well, I guess I signed on for unexpected challenges that I have no experience with solving, and I guess that is what I´m getting. More than anything though, the resigned and fatalistic attitude bugs me, especially how everything is someone else´s fault, and just how vocal they are about assigning that blame over and over.
Well, I don´t want to end on a sour note, so I´ll tell about spotting quetzales at the ¨quetzal bench¨in the Chirripo National Park. We´d been hiking for hours, descending through numerous ecotones, finally getting down into the cloud forest. We took a break, sitting on the quetzal bench, when a flash of color made us jump up and look down the ridge. Sure enough three quetzales were making their way along, and I can now understand why they were considered holy by the Mayans, such incredible colors. I feel lucky to have seen them. In fact, something happens almost every day that makes me feel lucky to be here.
And yes, that is a hot dog sitting on our cat´s face. Usually he is addicted to these things, and will beeline for the kitchen when we pull one out. But somehow he slept through having one propped on his head. It was funnier if you were there.

Adorable Kitty Shots! Oh, god I´m cheesy....

2007-01-16T09:41:00.000-08:00

These days our lives here are a weird mix of routine and the unexpected. Unexpected things include losing the whole evening yesterday to painstakingly picking dozens of ticks off of each other, or waking up at 3am to the noise of a drunk guy from down the road chopping down brush and grass along the trail next to our house, or even spending good chunks of the last couple days fixing the aqueduct for our neighborhood, which is not only falling to pieces on its own, but was a prime target for a swipe with a drunk's machete.

Routine stuff includes dealing with the pets, their frustratingly slow housebreaking (so much easier with concrete floors, I can't imagine doing it with carpet), working on the garden and house, and not really "working" so much. Now when I say working, I mean out doing sweaty labor in the fields with local farmers. This is because agricultural work is kind of in a lull right now, and also because we are trying hard to move away from just being considered free, unskilled labor and towards being more a source of information and advice and only sometimes labor. This lull is being taken advantage of by the farmers around here; many have family from the city up visiting and/or are drinking heavily, then often stumbling around. Some of these guys are amazing, we see them drunk at 7am, 2pm, 11pm; I couldn't even do that in college. It is a rare day when we don't see or talk to at least one stumbling drunk. Yesterday when I was out running, I spooked one who had a big bottle of fermented corn juice in one hand and a machete in the other. The drunk with machete always makes me nervous; he may not be able to walk ok, but he's been using a machete since he was five years old, and I'm worried that he may react quickly and instinctively to being surprised, and I may find myself bleeding. So I give the drunks a wide, wide berth.

Our morale has been up and down recently. Its hard to be down here for the holidays, and thanks to the aforementioned lull we are often wondering about our purpose here. Even just the fixing of the aqueduct is hard, since things like that really reveal how unwilling people are to cooperate and chip in to fix a shared and important resource. Even though we didn't have running water in our neighborhood for four days, it was hard to get anybody to spend a couple hours going to fix it with me; everyone seems to think it should be someone else's job, that they've done enough recently themselves, or who knows? Especially annoying for me is that many people seem overly willing to complain about the lack of water loudly and frequently, often pointing the finger at someone else.

I'd really hoped that we'd have established a more give & take thing by now, meaning people who want to work with us actually seeking us out, rather than waiting for us to show up at their house then making snide comments on how we've "abandoned" them recently. I don't mind going out and talking to people, but this seemingly one-sided effort is hard to deal with. We also get plenty of people telling us they want to do this or that project, that they'll let us know when they are ready for our help, and then never hearing from them again about it. Or they'll bring it up a couple months later, and act like we've dropped the ball. I want to help people, and work with them, but I am not going to nag, nor am I going to do all of the work for them while they go off and do something else. So we will see......

We are increasingly aware of just how much wrong information we're given by people here, and we aren't sure why. This is a long story and a big weird topic, but to summarize, it has been hard to believe a lot of what we are told by anyone here, and that is depressing. They tell us something that sounds factual with such authority that we would tend to believe it, except for the fact that we are catching on and hold back from believing too quickly. Sometimes its easy, and whatever is said is so outrageous that we have no problem writing it off. For example, we were told that the previous volunteer here got a migraine headache from roasting coffee and going out in the rain afterward. Well, ok, maybe. But when asked when he got the headache, the story-teller said it was two months later; yes, two full months after said roasting and getting wet in the rain episode. So there goes the credibility. If we want some semblance of the truth, we have to ask many people, and begin to piece it together for ourselves, especially if its anything controversial or dealing with historical problems here. People seem very unwilling to say they don't know something; they'd rather speculate wildly and say it with authority. I have to admit though that sometimes I think the person we're talking to just doesn't understand what we're saying or doesn't understand what we want to know, thus they give information they think we want.

Still, I'm feeling better about being here than I was just a couple weeks ago. I like having the increased self-determination that working on my own projects brings; I can go out and make organic fertilizer or weed the garden on my own schedule, without waiting for anyone. The coffee stuff I'm working on is coming along, and is still very interesting for me. The pets are a blast much more often than they are pains. And when all else fails, we have about 10 different coffee samples from around here, and I can easily spend some time roasting and comparing tastes.

Last night was freezing. It has been very windy here, with frequent squalls blown over the Continental Divide. Last night it dropped into the 60's, which for here is frigid. Along with 100% humidity and the rain, I actually had to wear a wool shirt and socks to stay comfortable. During the day, the weather is weird. It can be brightly sunny, with cloudbursts of solid rain, and strong winds all at the same time. This makes for killer rainbows, in fact, we see at least a few stunners every day.

Today is another meeting of the agricultural producers association. These meetings are a source of frustration and optimism for us: frustration since they seem to focus on everything but agriculture, particularly ways to get free money or stuff from the government. Optimism because it is really the only group of farmers who show any desire to work together on things here. Well, this whole topic is a long story, so instead, I'll talk about something else.

One of the more interesting social differences is privacy. It seems fairly normal for people, especially children, to feel completely comfortable with just walking into our house for a look around. We've done our best to emphasize that this is not acceptable, but it still happens a bit. I guess in some of the indigenous areas this is much, much worse; I think I'd have trouble dealing with that well. As it is, I've yelled at some kids a bit, and even physically blocked them as they were running into our house.

Java the dog is growing rapidly, and much much better looking than almost any other dog in Chitra. We were visiting with an older couple yesterday, and the woman asked how we keep our dog so healthy-looking. The guy replied to his wife before we could, saying that we actually feed it and give it medicine when it needs it. This is truly in contrast to how people here treat dogs; many are sickeningly skinny, infested with parasites, and scary to even touch. Many folks seem to think that dogs can get by on just a bit of white rice every day, that they can scrounge for the rest. These dogs are not friendly or playful, they have been hungry all their lives and that has driven it out of them. As I think I've mentioned, six of the eight puppies from Java's litter are dead now, since the mama dog's owner seems not to believe in actually feeding or giving medicine to his dogs. When we got Java, she had a huge belly from a worm infestation; he even remarked on this, but wouldn't spend the $0.20 for a dose of medicine just up the road at the store that would get rid of the worms. Of course, many locals don't often take much better care of themselves- that same guy has a big, festering sore on his arm, open and dirty; we told him he should go to the health center just a little farther up the road and get it looked at for free, but he didn't even want to bother to do that. I just don't get this stuff. If people here were more religious, I'd write it off to that peculiar brand of Catholic fatalism, but there really isn't even that.

Anyway, in other news, we got a fridge. We'd shopped around quite a bit, but couldn't find one that was the right size for the right price. But our friends in Santiago got a bigger fridge, so we bought their old one, and it is great. Cold Tang, veggies that stay fresh longer, even mayo and cheese are now possible. Panamanian beer is bad, but it is palatable when cold, so this is a real boon.

I need to talk about our amazingly wonderful New Year's Eve dinner. We hadn't really realized how much would be closed then, so we struck out going to our favorite restaurant in Santiago. Our limited options rapidly decayed to "chicken" burgers at a roadside burger stand. Now this place generally has ok burgers considering what they are: paper-thin, cheap, and fast. But the chicken burgers; well, they seem to be pureed chicken, pressed into a millimeters-thin patty, and served on an oversized bun. That was all they had, and we were actually grateful just to get some food. I had two, then we went and burned an effigy of several politicians, drank a bunch of gin & tonics, shot bottle rockets at the kids down the street, and actually had a pretty damn fun New Year's Eve. Considering all the fireworks and alcohol involved, we didn't even see anyone lose fingers, which was an accomplishment. Hopefully it won't be too hard to download some pictures of the fun to this blog, we've dealt with some reticent computers in internet cafes lately.

And what would this blog be without an update on road conditions? We've been hearing since we got here that they were going to begin paving the road right around now. Just the other day, we heard that it won't begin until August. So I'll be really shocked if it happens at all while we are here. Maybe in the run-up to the next election, but that isn't till 2009. Until then, the road remains "tan feo", quite ugly. The ruts that were once muddy solidified to concrete-like consistency, making for an incredibly bumpy ride. We've gotten really lucky with our last few trips. For example, we wanted to leave Chitra last time on tuesday. We found out that the only chiva was going to leave at 6am, but the school's truck would leave at 7:30am. Well, we debated, but ended up going with the school truck. The chiva left at 6:30, we left at 8:30, and still caught them in just over an hour. Since there was only one chiva that day, it had almost 20 people in it, and they had broken one of the leaf springs for the rear axle (the other was, and still is, also broken, but tied together with some rope). Therefore they had to drive very, very slowly and probably took about 6 hours to get to town. We are heading out in two days, and I'm already dreading it.

And onward to 2007......

2007-01-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

Apologies, no pics, which is a shame: our little dog and cat are both very photogenic and we´ve gotten some good pics for sure. They both still are having trouble with this housebreaking thing and with not chewing everything, but still, we are endlessly entertained. Java the dog loves attacking Bongo the cat, and vice-versa.
We are also burned out on computer time, since we had a bunch of paperwork to complete today for the end of this quarter. So therefore, no real writing. And truthfully, not much is going on that has been super-exciting, just living, working, relaxing, etc. Just like real life. Well, more next time.

And one chunk of legal butt-covering...

2006-12-08T08:20:00.000-08:00

This blog is solely the creation of Noah Daniels and Karinne Knutsen, who do not represent or speak for the Peace Corps in any way. So there.

Brevity is the soul of wit

2006-12-08T08:10:00.000-08:00

Howdy all, first off, happy holidays. Today is mother´s day, which is very similar in popularity and events to the American Thanksgiving. Hence, many businesses are closed. Still, we were able to pick up vaccines for our new dog and cat, which is good. They are named Java and Bongo, respectively. Bongo is a feisty little guy, more than willing to attack dogs much bigger than him. Java is sickly, and not really ours yet- we have yet to get him from the guy who owns his mom.
Anyway, had PC training this week, and it was ok, too much sitting though. Highlights were going swimming in the Pacific at night, and watching the sun rise over the Pacific in the morning while running, an odd concept brought about by Panama´s east-west orientation and convoluted coast. Tomorrow, back up to the mountains, and more coffee work. Yeeha! Sorry for the lack of pics, the computer is acting up.

Coffee! Yea! Too bad it wears off so quick....

2006-11-19T05:46:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about the weird skewed prices and shopping experiences in this country. We go into a grocery store in Santiago, and it looks almost exactly like a grocery store in the U.S. The only differences are much larger sections devoted to hot dogs, rice, and beans. We got very excited this time: a little searching brought us to whole wheat pasta, a welcome addition to the pasta & soy protein chunk meal that is a standard already. Especially when it gets washed down by a fine box of Clos, the upscale volunteer's good friend. Clos is box wine, but it comes in a box like soymilk does in the U.S., and costs about $1.80/liter. It is surprisingly drinkable, and considering the other drinking options are terrible lagers and liquors that double as paint stripping chemicals, it is very welcome. But back to the prices. This country really lacks a manufacturing base, so many foods are imported, giving many of the foods U.S. prices.

One thing that fortunately is not at U.S. prices is coffee. You can get good stuff from the highlands of western Panama for around $2.20-$2.70 a pound (roast, ground, packaged commercially). The local stuff here in Chitra goes for $1.50 a pound, but we don't buy it. If you don't drink good coffee or really care anything about it, you should stop reading right not. Ok, for the bored or slightly interested, I have to first admit that I truly am addicted to good coffee. So even though Panama produces some fine coffee, and even though our community could (details to follow) produce excellent stuff, the last 5 months of living with a host family have been hard and frustrating (from my addiction point of view). But today, hallelujah, all is good and well here in Chitra! Because today, we made our very own coffee. And whe extra work? It ends up being a vicious circle- mediocre coffee leads to low prices, and low prices lead back to mediocre coffee. My big goal here is to help just a couple producers break out of that cycle, start focusing on quality, and find a buyer who will pay more for that quality. Once that happens, ideally others will hear about the better price and be interested in getting on the bandwagon. Down the road, as the coffee from this area becomes known, it'll open up other market paths, possibly through organic certification or formation of an operational cooperative.

Not only do they not process the coffee well, but they roast and brew it in a way that focuses on maximizing the volume of coffee you get per bean. Which is fine, since even though they get a low price, they still get cash, and if they can sell more while still having enough for themselves, well, go for it. But good lord, it is crap. In my opinion. First, they roast the living shit out of the coffee. It looks and smells like charcoal. Then they grind it very finely, and boil the living shit out of the grinds, using just enough to give the water a faint coffee taste. The resulting beverage is finally sweetened with obscene amounts of sugar, sometimes completely covering up the taste of the coffee. Now, I'm harshly critical of all this, and I won't apologize, since as I said, I like good coffee. I think an important part of my job here is to educate people and make it clear that the coffee that is exported to specialty coffee roasters in the U.S. and Europe is prepared very differently, so the poor processing that is totally masked by the brewing process here is much more apparent and undesirable in those markets. But damn it, my Spanish is still crappy, so getting this across is very challenging.

Anyway, suffice it to say that the coffee we roasted in our wok, ground, and brewed in a french press today was very encouraging. It would not be out of place in any good coffee shop I've been to in the U.S.- nice and earthy, a dark roast does it justice, and this was without the several months of resting that improves the flavor. I'll be experimenting with different varietals, soil types, processing strictness, roasts, and brewing techniques over the next couple months at least. I'm also going to work on getting some of the local stuff tested, to see if it meets the taste criteria for export quality.

Finally, Karinne and I want to help organize a Peace Corps Panama Coffee Challenge. Our idea is still in development, but it involves volunteers in coffee producing areas working with local producers to produce a small quantity of well-processed coffee. This coffee can then be tested, or "cupped" as the expression goes, to see which meet the criteria for export. This cupping can be a publicized event, ideally sponsored by a U.S. or European roaster, who would agree to pay a fair price for small batches of the coffee that meets a certain quality standard. We are lucky enough to have a PCV who's title is "Coffee Coordinator" who is very knowledgeable and enthusiatic (fellow addict) and who may play a big role in setting this up. We will see!

Now the coffee is wearing off, and dinner is calling. Not as much rain today, except for in the kitchen, where the faucets I installed yesterday got shot off the pipe by high water pressure, spraying maybe ten gallons of water all over before I got it shoved back on. Ah, the fun of home improvements will maybe never end........ The roof still leaks, the sink (all 150 lbs. of concrete of it) is still sitting on our front porch, waiting for cement to install it with, and mosquitoes are amazingly proficient at finding their way into the house at night. Still, it is home, and it feels good to have a place to call home. Where we can make gringo coffee and food in peace. Or at least relative peace, if you discount the nosy kids and the loud dueling roosters.

So, a few people have wondered what our and locals' average day is like here. We usually get up early-ish, maybe 6 or 6:30, which is late by local standards, since many here are up at 5am. This is especially true for the women, who mostly cook over a fogon, which is three large rocks, often on a sturdy table, which they can balance a pot and put burning wood underneath. Since it often takes a while to get the fire going and breakfast cooking, the women may get up a bit earlier than the men. When the men are up early, they're often sharpening their machetes or doing other things to prepare for the workday. We often have a simple breakfast of leftovers or cereal with powdered milk if we are going out to work with someone, and maybe something more elaborate if we aren't. Many locals have a breakfast of yuca (casava) with a fried egg, or something similar. Food is usually wolfed down amazingly fast, often I've just started a meal by the time any Panamanian we are eating with is done. Then, work begins. These days its harvesting coffee, planting beans, planting corn, or something similar. Many people here work from about 6 or 7 am to around 2 or 3 pm without any food, and sometimes without any water either. Which brings up another interesting point: how little water people drink here. It is crazy from my perspective, but people will often work all day without drinking anything. We'll work side by side with someone all day, and they don't have to go to the bathroom even once. I've been told that many people have kidney problems related to this later in life around here.

Anyway, work all day, then go back, eat lunch, which is often rice or maybe rice and a fried egg, or maybe a stew of beans and rice. Rice is huge, if you haven't caught on. When we were living with our host family, it was a big pile of rice, twice a day, like clockwork. Sometimes there is more work, but usually its around the house; things like sharpening the machete, processing the coffee, or maybe harvesting some things for dinner from a nearby farm plot. Dinner depends a lot on the family, and whether they have electricity. Without electricity, many people will go to bed soon after dark, around 7pm, so they may eat dinner pretty early, maybe 5pm or so. Sometimes there are only two meals a day, breakfast and a late lunch/early dinner around 3 or 4pm. I honestly don't know how people here work as hard as they do on as little food as they eat, and some even manage to have a healthy gut. This schedule is usually followed for 6 days a week. As I think I've said, women may work in the fields sometimes, but men don't seem to ever do housework like laundry or cooking or cleaning. In fact, it has caused a stir when people see me washing our clothes or something like that. Many people hire help for things like harvesting coffee or cutting brush; the going rate is $3/day and lunch, with the workday running from maybe 7am to around 2 or 3pm.
Sundays are for going to church, visiting family and friends, relaxing, or maybe focusing on work around the house. For many men, Sundays are also for getting really, really drunk. Drinking starts early so that they can pass out by mid-afternoon and recover enough to be up early working the next morning. This transitions well to......

"Fucked-up thing of the week"
Well, since we seem to see something that is genuinely fucked-up about once a week, I'll report duly on this week's thing. Now, when I say fucked-up, I mean something that is genuinely wrong; and not just culturally different, but straight-up wrong. For example, 28-year-old men "marrying" 12-year-old girls is wrong (and this happens around here). This week we saw six kids, ages 10 to 14 or so, drunk. One of the younger boys was so drunk he was passed out, and the oldest boy was carrying him slung over his shoulders. This was a mixed group of boys and girls, walking and stumbling along the trail, not long after they got out of school for the day.

Well, to finish on a better note, we saw the puppy we may adopt next month. A guy who often works with our former host family has a nice dog, and it had eight puppies, and they are cute. Actually, they are kind of gross; dirty, with odd crusty sores, but they still are cute. In about a month, they'll be big enough to leave their mom, and we may well take one. We had wanted to adopt an older dog, but there really aren't any strays, and it doesn't seem like people ever want to give away or sell older dogs. The dogs that our former host family own love us, and sometimes follow us over here to our house and hang out, but we can't steal them.

I did dishes in our kitchen sink yesterday. Now, this may not seem like an event worth reporting, but it really is. We have lived here over a month without a kitchen sink. At first, we only had water coming occasionally out of the shower, so we did laundry and dishes in five-gallon buckets while squatting next to the toilet. It sucked. Then, when the water was not working one day, we quickly cut our main pipe and installed a second pipe going around the corner of the house, then up to and into the kitchen window. But still, no sink. Finally our landlord brought a tina, which is a 150lbs. cast concrete sink. It sat at his house for a couple weeks, then he brought it over and sat on our porch for a while longer. You see, we still didn't have the concrete to make the base for it. Finally, we got the cement, screwed up the base once (I made the mix too dry to adhere well), got the base right, grabbed our neighbor to lift it onto the base, and YEAH, we had a sink! But no water: the water stopped working for about 2 and a half days. We were hauling water up from the river and catching rainwater in buckets. Finally, last night, we got water flowing, and it was lovely. Last night marked another crazy luxury, hot water. A long downpour all afternoon made it actually pretty chilly here, so we were dreading our much-needed showers. To make it more do-able, we warmed up a couple gallons of water on the stove, and added it to the bucket for our showers. It was heaven. Such little luxuries mean so much sometimes. Of course, our neighbors would be horrified that we would use propane gas for something so crazy- even when they have a gas stove, they often cook things like beans that take a while over a wood fire, simply because wood is free, yet gas is $6/ tank. In fact, the lady at the nearest store wouldn't sell us dried beans, because she said they would use too much gas to cook. Ah, cultural differences, always great fun!

One step away from nailing pancakes to the wall.....

2006-10-29T12:59:00.000-08:00

Well, that title is not accurate. It refers to a Peace Corps legend about a volunteer going crazy and being found nailing hundreds of pancakes to the walls of her house. I just thought it made sense with this picture. Why, yes, that is indeed a sawfish bill (snout, nose, what?), it came with the house.

We went to Panama City for the first real time this past week, and it was fine. Not as big as I´d have thought, but still plenty loud, dirty, and odd. Everytime we leave our site I´m shocked at the disparity between the rich and the poor of this country. The poor don´t have shoes, while the rich buy $400 Gucci loafers. We have the weird experience of having a foot in both worlds, since we live poor in the campo and yet can still afford (rarely) going out and splurging on a meal that costs $20 a person.

The road to Chitra is truly sporty these days. When we headed out last week, we had to stop and flip the beer truck back over, since it had lost its four wheel drive and tipped over trying to make it up a moderate hill. It took about an hour and a half, but would´ve taken longer had the chiva driver not gotten frustrated, and simply took off with his truck. It was still attached by a chain to the stuck truck, and yanked it rapidly over some boulders and almost over a local guy who wasn´t ready for the speed of it. The guy in the beer truck was livid, I haven´t heard such bad language in front of women yet in this country.

Other than that, time is just flying by. I can´t believe we´ve been here over five months. Sometimes it feels like it has been so busy, but other times I wonder how its gone by so fast without accomplishing much. That being said, we are accomplishing stuff, like building a demonstration coffee solar dryer, harvesting coffee, and so on. We are living in our own house, and fixing it up not only takes a lot of time, but so does simple things like cooking beans. Good news includes the fact that our big bed finally made it to Chitra, almost a month after we bought it. We also will soon maybe have a sink, and not have to do our dishes in the shower. Oh, such luxury!
So, to summarize, things are settling down into the kind of routine that brings unexpected things every day but somehow makes every day go by very fast, if that makes any sense at all. I´m tired, so we are going to go shopping, see a movie, go to bed early, and be ready for the adventurous 4AM chiva ride up the hill.

2006-10-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

On the left, the lovely storage area of our new house. On the right, the lovely storage area of our current house. This is also our bedroom, and does for sure resemble a prison cell with dirt floors. Actually, it serves as our gringo refuge, where we retreat when we need privacy, etc.

Home Sweet Home
Let me begin with a warning. The following stuff was written over the last two and a half weeks, which have been somewhat crazy. Since I wrote this stuff, we saw another puppy likely die, I got my first case of combined vomiting and diarrhea, and we made major home purchases, namely a mattress and a stove. We also had the most mellow chiva ride yet, no getting stuck, no break-downs, just a hungover driver. Most of the pics in this one aren´t very pretty, they are of our new house, which is getting so close to fruition.

¨More thoughts on work¨
We have been back up in Chitra for a week, which fortunately isn't enough time for me to be utterly fixated on the food we aren't getting up here, so readers, you are lucky for now. I spent about 5 hours today clearing a field that has been overgrown by brush so that it can be planted with corn and beans. It is hard, dirty, scratchy work, and I'm tired. During that time I was working pretty much alone, which is a good/bad time for thinking. Good since it is plenty of time, and thinking things over is always worthwhile, but bad since maybe tired, bleeding, sweaty, and hungry doesn't define the best time for honest reflection. I was getting kind of down on being here, going through the usual frustrations of any PC volunteer; feeling like your efforts are wasted, that the culture gap may be too large for effective teaching and working relationships, and generally missing the way we do things in the States. And also generally wondering just how much rice I've eaten during our four months here. I estimate that it is easily more than we'd eaten in the year before arriving here. So many of the things I like are not possible or available here; hell, even just going out with friends for a beer isn't an option. In fact, yesterday I had my first beer in a week, it was a warm Guinness snuck in our room after dinner, and it was heavenly.
Uh oh, getting sidetracked, damn appetite-driven fantasies.

"Home Improvements: minor details, like a roof"
Well, moving into our own house is getting closer to fruition. The owner's brother said he's got about a third of the stuff needed for a new roof, and as soon as he gets the rest, we can put it on in a day. He suggested leaving it roofless for at least one good rainstorm, to let the rain wash away some of the guano that has accumulated, and that sounds good to us. Then, after the roof, we'll need to work on the plumbing and electrical systems, but fortunately both are very rudimentary and should be straightforward. Ha! Oh, and it is pink, as I think I've mentioned, and has unparalleled luxury for a site as remote as ours: three bedrooms, an indoor bathroom with a toilet, glass windows (a couple), and a yard big enough for a good garden. It also has a sad, straggly coffee plant in the backyard, as well as maybe 25 banana trees, which is good. It turns out that Bob Vila, the former "This Old House" home repair guru, was in the Peace Corps, and maybe he picked up some of his skills in a situation like this. I think the guy who agreed to rent it to us and his brother, who agreed to fix it up, might have underestimated the work and expense involved in making it habitable. But every time I go to clean or rip out rotted wood or decaying furniture, I'm more able to see the potential it has to be a nice house, and I look forward to it. Oh, this picture is of the current tenant of the house, a big ole tarantula. Fun stuff.
Wow, getting late here, after 9pm. Of course, by some standards, that is really late. Sites without electricity, of which there are quite a few, often have a bedtime around 7 or 8 pm. And the fact that it is Saturday night has zero relevance for pretty much everyone around here. All it means is that for many of the men, they can get going on their drunk tomorrow morning, be stumbling around by 10 am, and passed out somewhere by about 2 pm. Ah, what a life.
The road to our site is getting worse daily, making us really dread our upcoming trips out of here. The more experienced truck drivers just keep a snorkel attached to the air intake so the big river crossing that marks the edge of Chitra doesn't swamp the engine. This last time it was a close call: our driver didn't put one on, and water was up in the engine compartment and coming in under the doors. Another highlight of the last trip up was the driver seeing a snake in the road and stopping, yelling, "Hey Reuben, there's a snake!". Reuben is the local representative of the Ministry for Agricultural Development. So of course, Reuben jumps out of the back of the truck, grabs a rock the size of his head, and runs off chasing the snake into the bushes, trying to kill it. Now, I don't know, it might've been poisonous, but they kill every snake they see here, and always nod sagely and assuredly when asked if it was poisonous. I guess getting touchy-feely with snake mortality around here is a bad idea, since many dogs are killed by snakes, and people are often bit as well. And word has it that the only Peace Corps volunteer in recent groups to get bit by a snake was actually trying to grab it to prevent his neighbors from killing it.

"The school is 33 years old, lets get drunk!"
The school here may have turned 33 years old (all records were apparently burned by a corrupt and disgruntled official, so no one seems to be sure) the other day, which was an occasion for an interminably long beauty pageant for 12-14 year olds and more importantly, for people to have an excuse to get good and drunk on a weekday. The cantina was hopping, with many, many guys there "gritar-ing". Now, one of these days I'll have to discuss this further, but its basically guys yelping loudly, sometimes like dogs, sometimes in a practiced call & response pattern, and at least in our community, seems to be mostly associated with drinking and drunks. Often annoying, sometimes melodic, always loud.

"Radical Change of Subject"
Several books have had great influence on how I think about development in countries like Panama. They are "Dark Star Safari" by Paul Theroux, and "Living Poor" by ???? Both are non-fiction and both writers were in the Peace Corps. Many events here mirror those chronicled in "Living Poor": binge drinking with an edge of desperation, the difficulty of actually working to get food when you haven't had anything to eat, and the binge eating of volunteers when they go to a bigger town with restaurants. Time and again ??? faces frustrations with just not being able to understand motivations, actions, culture; we face that all the time as well. We read it before we came here, and I think it was a very valuable preparation for being here.
On the flip side, Theroux is viewing his Peace Corps experience in Africa from a different perspective, as he's visiting and traveling decades later. It is actually one of my favorite books of the past few years, full of insight that goes beyond that of most travel literature. Theroux has some serious doubts about how we (both in the Peace Corps and do-gooder western aid organizations in general) have gone about this thing called development. He taught in schools in East Africa, I forget which country, and when he returns, he finds his school an abandoned shell, and naturally feels extremely frustrated that even with decades of "help" from him and countless others, they haven't been able to get it together and run their country themselves. He also visits a fellow teacher and friend who is now a higher official in the government. He asks Theroux why he doesn't have his children come to Africa and teach as he did. In reply, Theroux points out that the official's own children have mostly left the country seeking better lives overseas, and why should his children come and work there when the country's own ambitious young people need to seek success elsewhere? This point is extremely applicable here: there is a huge age gap, with many of the younger (17 to 35 years old) generation having left and moved to either Panama City or the U.S.A. to seek jobs. It isn't that there isn't a way to make a living here in the campo, but it is very much a subsistence-based system, with very little cashflow. So why are we here? Why should we be spending our time and effort when there are plenty of intelligent, motivated, competent Panamanians who could likely do our job better, since they can actually speak Spanish well? If the next generation isn't going to consist of farmers, but of city-dwellers and emigrants, what long-term benefit can our efforts have? And if the majority of the younger people who do stick around only stay because they can't hack it in the city, where will we find new leaders and innovators in the community? These are tough questions, and I just don't know. Of course, there is always the selfish motivation of self improvement and personal growth, but really Karinne and I are at a different spot in our lives than many other volunteers. Many are younger, and semi-fresh out of college, and trying to figure out what to do with their lives and who they really are. In these cases, I think Peace Corps is great. For us, well, we aren't rushing to any conclusions, and I really doubt we would leave early, but still, it is a subject we talk about often.

Yesterday I was not hungry all day. This is beyond noteworthy, since it is the very first day I can say that about during our time in Chitra. I didn't need to snack, I didn't wait grumpily for a meal; instead, we had two breakfasts, one at home, another with the guy who we were building soil conservation barriers with, and then after working hard for about 4 hours, we had a big lunch. Then an equally large dinner showed up earlier than usual, and I was stuffed. I realize this may not seem like a big deal, but the hunger I've felt here has definitely been a significant part of my experience. Working hard without a break for food for six or eight hours is not uncommon, and it just doesn't agree with my racing metabolism. I've been saved by canned protein powder from the medical office, I can mix up a satisfying if boring and somewhat disgusting drink that has saved my attitude out in the campo many times. Also, by peanut butter, which I eat straight out of the jar. Its the nasty stuff with lots of hydrogenated vegetable oils, but my standards have been relaxed. I don't even want to talk about the ground sardine remains that are another staple of our host family, which they unaccountably call tuna. I had one of those great communication failures when I tried to explain that sardines aren't tuna, but I guess you had to be there to enjoy my defeat.

"The long road to renovations"
Well, the biggest job of our home repairs, the new roof, is pretty much done. I didn't think it was going to happen. The guy we're renting from told me we would get going on ripping the roof off and replacing the beams at 7 AM friday. So silly me, I was there at 7 AM. He showed up 3 hours later. Still, once we got going, it mostly went smoothly, if you discount our landlord getting knocked clean off the porch by an electrical shock, and also getting stung by a bunch of wasps, not to mention the sheer amount of concrete we removed from the structure with hammers. Other highlights included discovering a big tarantula den under some extra roofing stored in the attached shed; it was apparent from the number of shed skins that it had been living there peacefully for quite some time. We may knock down that part of the structure, since all the beams are rotting and being eaten by termites, and it is pretty much disgusting and scary. Oh, and there is a latrine in the back of the house that is in the mid-stages of collapsing into its own hole, which will be a fun thing to deal with in the near future.

"The near-death of Boxsy"
The puppy that has been part of the family here since just before our arrival almost died the other night. He licked or bit a toad that was very poisonous, and had severe seizures for over an hour. It was one of the worst things I've ever seen, and at several points I thought that death would be a welcome relief for him considering the pain and terror in his eyes. This happened in the evening, and even after the seizures ended, he was so weak that I would not have been surprised if he had simply stopped breathing and died that night. But by morning, he was able to move a little, and after some milk and protein powder (courtesy of the Peace Corps), he recovered quickly, and was back to his rambunctious self by evening. It was very hard to watch powerlessly and realize there was really nothing we could do to help him. The only redeeming parts of the whole event were now knowing what the symptoms are like (so we can distinguish it from snakebite) and the Grandma ripping out a very juicy, shockingly loud fart as she was squatted down praying loudly over the dog.

Chiva fresh in the big city

2006-09-07T08:01:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this entry knowing that it may be weeks before I can put it up on the web. Our chiva ride back to Chitra took almost five and a half hours this past time, and that misery is a pretty good dissuader of frivolous trips out. I feel a little wussy now, since a 100 year old woman was in the same chiva, though she rode in the cab. I can't imagine the change she has lived through: imagine being born shortly after your country seceded from another, living through it being mostly rural with one chunk occupied and modernized by the U.S. military, seeing the arrival of a road and electricity (though those only recently), and such wonders as television, telephones, airplanes, cars, plastic, etc. It is amazing, and makes me wonder what the next 100 years will be like.
Anyway, life is going along up here in Chitra. Wake up, sharpen the machete on the big rock, drink coffee, have breakfast, head out and do some work. Usually shortly into said work I'm demoted from actually using my machete to clean-up of the cut stuff, since I tend to believe that my machete skills are so freakin' good that I'm making the locals feel somewhat embarrassed and inadequate. Or they don't want to carry me down the hill after I cut off my kneecap. Still, we are out working, which is good, and also pretty mysterious. We never know for how long we'll be working on any given day, or if there will be food, or what exactly we are supposed to do, and even what the heck that guy with like 6 teeth is even saying to us.
I would like to address the language gap we are facing now. Our understanding and speaking abilities are improving, but while we are getting around 50-85% of what is said, sometimes that remainder is really important, involving questions regarding where we want to live, if we would like to attend church this sunday, and even if we want some food. So more and more, we tell people that we don't understand when we don't, which itself brings some interesting reactions. Our host family is great and will repeat what they said or explain it again patiently with different words. Others just keep going, or laugh, or are obviously uncomfortable and don't know what to do. But still, it is getting better.
That leads me to the people here. As uncomfortable and at times scary the chiva ride the other day was, what amazed me more was how cheery everyone on it was. Let me describe this situation a little better. Everyone was at the bus stop at 3:30am, cramming 16 people into a pick-up truck. We drove around, picking up bags and chunks of wood in Santiago for half an hour before heading up the hill. One guy had diarrhea, and has to holler for the truck to stop occasionally to run off and take care of it. Even though the road is fairly dry, there are still ruts and muddy spots big enough to get the truck stuck and bottomed out; sometimes we bounce through them, tipping precariously to the side while the women shriek, "Dios mio!", other times the driver stops and fills in the holes with rocks before trying it. Some parts we even walk because they are too scary. Throughout this over five hour ride, everyone on the chiva and almost everyone we see on the trip is all smiles, friendly, joking, laughing. I can hardly believe this. The same thing is the case up here most of the time; as we go around meeting people, they are mostly happy and friendly, even to gringos speaking terrible spanish and asking them to repeat themselves. They offer us food and coffee, help us sharpen our machetes correctly, and offer us fermented juices of weird fruits. It is impressive, and I'm glad to be living here.
I realize that machetes have come up in almost every tale on here, so at some point I will elaborate on the importance of the machete here, but lets just say that machetes are to rural Panama what cars are to the U.S. Everyone has one, everyone can use it without even thinking, and they are both tools that are inseparable from the culture of Panama and the U.S. I'm taking to bringing my machete pretty much everywhere, because there is always some task that needs it, even just whacking open a coconut for juice or cutting up some sugar cane for the same thing. Oh, speaking of coconuts, as I was pulling some down out of the tree today, I pulled a good sized one directly onto my head. It hurt almost as much as it does when I walk into a low rafter or doorway here, which happens about once a week, since the locals are short and build for their height. At least both events have good entertainment value. And really, what more perfect tropical experience can you have than pulling down coconuts, husking them (of course, with a machete), drinking the water, and eating them?
And while I'm thinking about the tropics, last night is was cold enough here that people were putting on warm hats, sweaters, etc. Even I pulled on a wool shirt. It was a frigid 78 degrees farenheit. Crazy. We really are becoming acclimatized. We have been here 3 months, and in some ways it feels longer, and in other ways, so short. It sort of feels like time stopped when we arrived, since many things were so different. Yet the parts that feel odd now are the American-feeling experiences: sipping coffee and eating pastries in a cafe, shopping in a big, well-lit supermarket, hot showers, air conditioning, meals that involve something other than rice. In fact, these are also a big part of staying sane. Many volunteers have remarked that they crave certain experiences here that they would avoid in the U.S., like McDonald's hamburgers, going shopping at the mall, or watching bad action movies. Even when you are acclimatizing and happy, you still miss what you know, even when you know it isn't all that good.
Oh, crap, getting philosophical, sorry. I wish I could relate the many funny and valuable experiences, like watching a meeting slam to a halt so everyone could go chase and kill a snake spotted nearby, or realizing we are pretty much drinking water out of the river and not getting sick, or especially the 9 hour hike we did, leaving at 1am, to a "neighboring" town. It was perfect, with a full moon and lost gringos, scary bridges and bad directions, dumbfounded locals wondering where we had come from and hot showers waiting at the end. I want to do more hiking around here, and soon, since putting things off often means you realize it was a mistake to put things off as you pack up to go home.

"Stupidity transcends culture"
I said that walking back from a meeting yesterday. It started 2 hours late, which is the median so far for meetings in Chitra. We were talking about such concepts as cultural sensitivity, adjusting our expectations, and how to deal with things like this. I'm of the opinion that starting that late is just simply stupid: everyone who shows up on time gets bored well before people run out of things they want to say, and even those who were late often lose interest, especially when the meetings digress to other often contentious topics (that come up again and again). It would be stupid in our country, and it remains stupid here, since it just isn't a good thing. At least yesterday the guy running it kept things rolling, since he had to leave Chitra after the meeting, and if the rains come in the afternoon, as they almost always do this time of year, the river crossings become dangerous to impossible. One other meeting started almost 3 hours late and then lasted 3 hours; by the end I felt like I'd been beat up, especially since there had been no food. And in defense of myself, there are plenty of cultural things that are different that are just fine, and I'm ok with those (how magnanimous!). These things include stuff that would be frowned upon in our culture, like spending the whole day drunk, or making plans with someone to do some work when you really don't want to and just not showing up as a better alternative to actually telling them that you don't want to. Maybe its just because those haven't impacted me a whole lot yet, and mostly because I don't care: if people don't want to work with us, I'm totally fine with that, even if it is for ridiculous reasons. But I'm digressing, back to stupidity. There is a ton of stuff going on in the U.S. that could be considered culture, but that I also think is just stupid, like our wasteful driving habits, consumption rates, and most popular country music.
Thunder is rolling hard in the background, as it does pretty much every day. We're lucky here, since we live right in the shadow of the Continental Divide, we can watch storms pour over the peaks. There seems to be a lower spot to the east that the badass storms come through, giving us the show without the downpour. Almost every night the sky is clear enough and there are enough storms around that the sky is punctuated by frequent lightning flashes, most too far away to hear the thunder. It is quite lovely, especially considering how crisp it can be at night: I need a blanket and wool socks or I wake up cold.
We have found the house we are 90% certain we will move into around the beginning of October. We really like the family we live with; they're warm, funny, patient, and willing to teach us stuff. But more and more, the simple attractions of living on our own beckon. Primary among these is dietary self-determination- being able to eat something I like when I'm hungry. This is not the case now, and I spend too much time hungry and waiting for food. And when the food does come, it is too often too low on protein and too high on rice. I say 90% certain, because the house needs certain, uh, repairs before we can move it. In other words, its a wreck: rotten roof beams, rusted out ripped up roof, rotting furniture inside, standing water in the living room, tons of bats. But the owner's brother, who we're renting it through, has said he can have it fixed up within a month (this was accompanied by a reflective stare off into the distance that could have several meanings. I hope that, "there is no way I can lie so blatantly to these gringos while looking them in the eye" isn't one of them). We like the location, the layout, the rent, and the yard, which is perfect for a small garden. The owner's brother is also the store owner, and as such is likely to have the capital to put up for said improvements, plus we think he's a good guy overall. And a bonus is that the peace corps cell phone will work a short walk up the hill from it, so we can even be in contact without waiting in the dreaded Pueblo Nuevo phone queue, which may be a good topic for another rant.
A few other things that are worth sharing. I may be the first gringo to go mountain biking around here. I base this on the stupendous knowledge and memory locals have for events out of the ordinary: a visit by a couple of gringos eight years ago to go hiking around here is recalled by many. I get stares that are almost comical; I could throw a baseball into their mouths their jaws drop so far. People are shocked by how far I ride, and seem to chose not to really believe me sometimes. But its fun, and breaks the ice, since when we go around visiting, many have already seen me or heard about me.
The locals drink freaking rubbing alcohol. This was told to us by our host-family, who say that the hard core drunks, of which there are too many, prefer it, because its dirt cheap and is actually close to drinkable when mixed with milk and sugar and water. I guess it gets you really drunk fast as well, which is seemingly the sole reason to imbibe. Even our host-dad, a generally level-headed and responsible guy, won't eat anything when he goes on a "chicha" (fermented sweet corn beverage) bender, since he claims it "hace dano" (causes damage, yeah, but only to his buzz). Nobody seems to be on board with the concept of having a drink or two with dinner or after dinner, it "hace dano" for some reason.
I realize I haven't really talked about our host family. We live with a couple, their 7 year old girl who is cute but can also be a bit of a terror, and their semi-crazy grandma. They are farmers and focus on vegetables and organic methods more than most other local farmers. Most just plant the staples of rice, beans and corn, so the frequent cucumbers and tomatoes are a rare treat. The wife is a hell of a cook for the limited ingredients she has, and last night we had delicious fried armadillo with a really garlicky spicy sauce. The girl enjoys being wild and torturing the three dogs, who put up with it surprisingly well. The grandma often takes off barefoot for hours into the local woods collecting huge piles of firewood; she also spends enough time talking to herself and inanimate objects that I have a tough time knowing if she's talking to me. It doesn't really seem to matter, since I can barely understand her at all.
A regular cast of mostly guys comes around to socialize, and fortunately this is mostly alcohol free, and sometimes interesting, though a bunch of them seem to mumble a lot which makes comprehending and following the conversations exhausting. Plus, they have a decades long common context of events and people, so much of the talk is about people we don't know and events we haven't experienced. We live in a cinderblock house with dirt floors. There are holes in the walls for nice big windows, but those holes are completely boarded up, so the house is kind of cave-like. They have many home improvement projects envisioned, and I think that the real windows that are expected are still far off. I don't like dirt floors, though it isn't terrible, and the lack of natural light just means we spend most of the time out in the "dining room", which is a curious mix of half-done projects and half-destroyed projects. The kitchen is the sole remaining room of an old wattle and daub house, though the next room out has an intact roof and most of the beams, so that is where we eat. Central to that part is an 8 foot deep pit, surrounded by wood piles, and fairly creepy looking. Its the planned location for a septic system when the kitchen building is demolished or collapses and they move it into the house. Sometimes small chickens fall through the wood down the Pit (which definitely ranks a capital letter), and it seems like the wife has drawn the permanent short straw for rescue operations. She gets to climb down through the wood and grab it; this trip is scarier than it sounds, due to the Pit seeming to be a perfect environment for spiders and scorpions. Oh, speaking of which, saw one of the little painful scorpions in the house recently, right next to where I'd blindly put my hand a couple seconds before. And we've also run into big coral snakes and water snakes pretty close to the house, by big I mean over five feet, and by run into I mean like almost stepping on or totally walking right under. I'm bad with these digressions, but at least I'm not bitching about food this time.
But to get back to the rubbing alcohol: this town has a lot of drunks. Today is sunday, so just walking through the central part of town is almost a guarantee of getting accosted by someone or several someones who can barely stand up, but still want to chat with the gringos. It is definitely sad to see, even just from the economic standpoint. Most of these guys work, when they are working, as laborers for $3/day, or maybe $4/day for hard stuff. Beers cost $0.40 each, which goes a long way to explaining the popularity of rubbing alcohol.
Another event is noteworthy just by its lack: illness. No "explosiva", no vomiting. I find this surprising, considering some of the dodgy beverages I've had out of 5 gallon buckets with scary cups, but hey, I'm not missing it at all. In fact, we have gotten off easily so far, just some minor funky fungal stuff that is a given in the tropics. Though I have to admit that the malaria medication is living up to its reputation for increasingly vivid dreams. I generally get woken up several times a night by mine, but I guess it is a small price to pay.
Ok, ideally this blog will be accompanied by a selection of beautiful photos of this area, but let me reinforce that idea: it is gorgeous here. Cool shady waterfall-ridden rivers, tall arid mountains, the continual bank of clouds spilling over the continental divide, walking on trails though lovely coffee plantations, more stars at night than seems fair, and many wild butterflies. Sometimes the scenery looks like eastern Washington in the spring, complete with scattered stands of pine trees on the ridges, other times it looks like a place that a dinosaur would feel right in. I urge any of you who are tempted to come and visit to do so, and do it during the summer (Dec-March) when the road is better and the rain has gone.

From aspirantes to voluntarios

2006-07-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

We swore in as PC volunteers yesterday. Everyone was happy but tired. I will just simply put a few more pics, since we are off to the beach shortly.
It was hard, but totally worthwhile. However, having not spoken enough spanish in the last couple weeks, it'll be hard to resume.
Since we will be out in the boonies for a while, I will likely compose stuff for here on our laptop, then download it in town. Until then, adios!

Grape Nut flavored ice cream

2006-07-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

How do some foods get invented, and then become popular? Today´s example is grape nut flavored ice cream. It is exactly what it sounds like- vanilla ice cream with grape nuts in it. Not very good, but somehow immensely popular here. Odder still is the fact that nobody eats grape nuts cereal.

Why?

Enough on the food. Later this week we will swear in as volunteers. Everyone is ready, though there is definitely an undercurrent of nervousness and trepidation. We will go from being told about stuff in english in a group setting to having to teach it alone in spanish with locals. It will be interesting.

But before that, we are finally going to the beach. We have been in this skinny, coastal country for over two months, and have not even dipped our feet in the ocean. That is wrong. We are tired of training, tired of being always on someone else's schedule for eating and doing everything, tired of the heat. So getting to our site will be welcome.

Once we are there, this thing may not be updated for a while- the 4 hour or longer chiva ride between our site and the nearest computer is a bit of a hindrance. Plus, we are planning on not leaving for the first month, to better assimilate into Chitra. So adios for now, we will be back online with tales and pics sometime in late august or september.

, not quite chitra, but our site looks just like this. Tough! much better than the imprisonment of training!

Back from Chitra, semi-intact

2006-07-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

Well, the word chitra means this awful little biting insect. It goes after exposed ankles and arms between dusk and dawn, and you don't generally know you are getting bit until hours later, when a terrible patch of itchy red dots surface and take up to a week to go away.
Chitra also is the name of the district that we will live in for the next two years. I would love to attach some pics, but truth be told, I am too tired to go to the trouble. Woken up at 2am by a big storm, realizing it would make the truck (aka chiva) ride out much harder, didn't really get back to sleep much before 3:30am arrived and we had to get going. We were told that it was so muddy that the chiva might just start out waaaay down the hill, so 4:05 found us stumbling down said muddy road in the rain, slipping and sliding. Soon, the chiva actually came barrelling past us, Karinne and I jumping off into the ditch as it careened down the hill to a spot it could stop, then jumping into the back with about 5 lbs. of mud on each foot. A highlight was when the road got so bad that we all had to get out of the back and walk while the driver gunned it up a super dodgy hill. Sara was with us, she rode in the cab of the truck and taught the driver and another woman good curses in english.
The scenery is beautiful, but hard to appreciate from the cramped cover over the bed of the truck. Someday I hope I get to ride up front, mostly just to see the terrain, but also so I can have fear in advance rather than in retrospect, since you never know what is coming when you are in the back.
Otherwise, we are very jazzed by our site. Good coffee, enthusiastic friendly people, cool climate, mud mud mud, and lots of work to do. Nice swimming holes, lots of hiking potential, and mostly a lack of previously mentioned chitras make it primo. But good lord, that ride. And it isn't even the really rainy season yet. That comes in october, and we may just stay put till december or so.

Cool Boquete and hot coffee

2006-07-08T17:03:00.000-07:00

Hey yáll, greetings from the land of rash covered extremities! Also the land of Old Milwaukee beer, huge sections of store refrig space devoted to awful hotdogs, and soon, the land of a dispersed Group 57. Yup, we will be heading out to our sites for a visit tomorrow, and in a couple weeks, moving to them for good.

Until then, more spanish classes, more charlas on personal safety, and maybe even more shots. Well, I shouldn´t complain. There are plenty of sublime moments or even afternoons, filled with mermaids on rocks in cool rivers, seas of coffee beans to swim in, and when we are lucky, holdras. These are like beignets, but without the sugar and a little tougher. They are often just served plain, owing to the panamanian aversion to all spices and most condiments. Uh oh, I´m complaining about the food, a slippery journey that often gets a little too beligerent for a sober guy. So I will move on. I will say that after our trip to Boquete for coffee training, I have a big bag of some of the best coffee I´ve had, and I think I have gotten our host mom addicted to it. She will have a hard time going back to nescafe when we leave. Or maybe she hates it, but is just trying to be polite, since she can see how much it means to me.
I miss fire season, but as you know, mysterious rashes on both arms and legs is nearly as rewarding. Maybe next time I´ll include pics. I still get to cut down trees, but they are more often banana trees with my machete. Speaking of machetes, I´ve finally scored some points with our host mother with my machete skills. Actually, I think she is happy to have something for me to do, and enjoys watching me flail skillessly. Plus, I´m a tall gringo with a big machete, so I can reach those tall branches that are dying to be cut off.
Tonight we are in the Albrook Mall, the most bizarre place in the world after you have been out in the countryside. Take any big mall from suburban america, drop in intact on the outskirts of Panama City, and there you go. And I do mean intact- it has Wendy´s, Burger King, even a friggin´Quiznos. When you consider that many volunteers live without electricity or running water in shacks that you have to hike to, and the fact that the mall is also the main bus station, it is one heck of a cold culture shower.
Ok, getting delirious for an Orange Julius or similar mall rations. Oh, the prices here are the same as the U.S., too, so when you go from the countryside making $10-day as a volunteer, it is scary. Plus, you start pricing everything else in duros, which are delicious frozen juice bags that cost ten cents. Crap, back on the food topic.
Anyway, I hope to make this blog better in the future, by adding links to other PC peoples sites, ones who have better pics and are less likely to digress to food philosophy. In the meantime, salud from Panama!

Five weeks into Panama....

2006-06-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

I will keep this entry short, since I have been writing emails to cover many details, and focus on the pictures. Panama has been good to us. Five weeks in, we are coming around to the food (though still displeased with the overabundance of white rice as the basis for most meals), getting better with the language, still hating the bugs, and absolutely jazzed about our future assignment. We will be high in the mountains of Veraguas, doing coffee and lorena stoves, among other things. Ok, more details will follow as I have time, but for now, pictures!

Well, crap, the computer is not liking me today. So the pictures will be limited. On the left is the truck that brought us up a crazy road to training last week. Imagine 13 gringas and 2 gringos in the back of that thing. It was like a cattle car. The road was the craziest I have ever been on in a motor vehicle. And the tires were Telly Salvalas bald.

The dogs are typically cute, though bug and skin disease infested quite often.

I meant to include pics of the impressive waterfalls we spent a lot of time swimming near, but darn computer isn´t cooperating. Anyway, this week we are in Boquete for coffee training, and I can´t highlight enough how happy I am about that. Woo hoo! Maybe towards the end of the week I can try this picture thing again, since I have some really great pics of the mountains, the family we stayed with, and so on. Buenas!

Counting down

2006-04-18T17:36:00.000-07:00

A beautiful Upper Peninsula sight, along with a, um, not unusual U.P. sight (no, they are not brothers).

We are done with classes in just a couple days. We are off to Panama in less than a month. This has given each day a twinge of urgency, since many of the things we are doing will be lasts: last ride on the Tech Trails, last time to see some MTU people, last beers at the KBC. Ah, but it is good, moving on is something we're good at, plenty of practice.

Our packing and organizing is picking up, though the last minute always seems to be squeezed full of stuff. Despite warnings about it being a hassle, I'm bringing my bike to Panama. Addiction is a terrible thing.

"To be awake is to be alive" H.D. Thoreau

2006-02-23T05:31:00.000-08:00

We're dealing with the transition of our Peace Corps assignment being something vague and theoretical to concrete, with a real location and departure date. We found out last week for sure that we are going to Panama in May. The news came just in time for a few days of lovely upper mid-western weather here in Houghton, 0 degrees with a -20 windchill. Well, at least it is snowing.
So we have: 7 weeks of school, 3 weeks of moving/storing/driving east, then Panama. 10 weeks is not a long time. I can handle 10 weeks.