Panama - Playa Venao

After a lovely breakfast at our hostel in Pedasi (fresh fruit and eggs, served out under the trees), we did some exploring of the quaint little town, checking out the local church and the town square, wandering up and down the few streets and peering in at people's houses. It was amazing, as all of the houses were rather small affairs, but without glass windows or air-conditioning, despite the brutal heat. I guess when you can't afford it, this is just how you live. Yet, it seemed that people had everything they needed in this small village, with a lively atmosphere on the streets and porch fronts, because everyone was outside trying to get a breeze, it being too hot to stay cooped up indoors.

I have to say that I was plagued by the question the guidebooks said I would be, which was, "What on earth do these people DO?" It was rather stunning how in the middle of the day on a Monday, people were just sitting on their porches, walking out in the streets, and just seeming to while away the time. Aside from the few hotels and cafes (that were almost never open), I could discern no viable industry in Pedasi. While some might argue that the wonderful way in which people seem to have nothing but endless amounts of time is a wonderful mark of the slow pace of Caribbean life, you can't help but wonder if it might also be a reason that Panama is never quite considered a financial and industrial powerhouse. We might work too much in the US, but at least we seem to have the prosperity to show for it.

After a morning spent wandering around the town, we got in the car and drove 40 minutes down the road to Playa Venao, where we were staying for the next few days. We were staying in a lovely hotel right on the beach, and so we arrived at 1:20 PM, eager to have lunch at the hotel restaurant before they closed at 2 PM. Yet, when we arrived, we discovered that this restaurant didn't work that way, as you generally had to book in much in advance, and they were completely unprepared for our last-minute request.

You have to understand, everyone was feeling VERY hungry, tired, and cranky, and this was just not what we wanted to hear. Yet, before people could get too pissy, I ran out to the car, grabbed all of the remaining Oreos I could get my hands on, and then we set off on a walk down the beach to find another restaurant hopefully further on down the beach. (Not to imply that I was in great shape either, because I was starving and as short-tempered as everybody else. Yet, I seemed to be one of the few people in our crowd with the self-awareness to do anything about it).

We walked down the beach to where we found a great little thatched-roof cabana-style restaurant, seemingly populated by shirtless surfers, offering a very chilled vibe and a cheap and simple menu offering just the type of stuff we were looking for: Fresh fish and burgers.

So we stayed for lunch, drinking Panama beer (the local brew), and just enjoying the sea breeze coming in off the ocean as we ate our lunch. Got talking to the proprietor, a guy named Alex, and after a fantastic afternoon and completely satisfying lunch, told him that we'd be back for dinner.

After lunch, we slathered on the sunscreen (having discovered that our short jaunt down the beach had resulted in us getting quite pink) and jumped in the swimming pool at the hotel, where we spent some time talking to more American retirees. Kind of fascinating, they said they thought that Costa Rica was going downhill, that crime there was getting worse in recent years. That Panama was really the place to be. Obviously, they're probably a bit biased, but it was interesting nonetheless.

In the evening, we went back to the restaurant we'd fallen in love with that afternoon, where we found that they had indeed reserved a table for us. Had another fabulous meal, drinking wine and chatting late into the evening. We'd actually had some of the wine from Bodega Fin del Mundo that afternoon, and enjoyed it so much that we insisted they set aside their remaining two bottles for us that evening. Just as delicious as we'd remembered.

After dinner, we walked back along the beach by moonlight, which was amazingly bright. You have to understand, there were almost no developments or anything on this beach, and the stretch of sand that was a 20-minute walk back to our hotel was illuminated by nothing other than the moon and stars. Yet we could still see quite well with the full moon overhead. We had some good jokes about how we were living out every cheesy personal ad in the paper, taking "romantic moonlit walks on the beach". It reminded me of what a girl had once told me years ago when I'd been in Costa Rica: Such situations are "Ro-tic", which is to say "Romantic, without the 'man'!"

As we walked back along the beach, we were suddenly alarmed to see a giant shape moving ahead of us, which upon closer inspection we realised with a giant sea turtle! Admittedly, the turtle seemed as eager to get away from us as we were to get close to it, and quickly it had scuttled out to the ocean and was carried away by the waves. But how remarkable, to actually see a sea turtle out on the beach like that!

Finally we got back to our hotel, where we arrived hot, sweaty, and sticky, to a beautiful, crystal-clear swimming pool bathed in moonlight. Nobody was around, and suddenly we all had the same idea: Why not jump in?

Not wanting to bother going back to our rooms to change, the girls all decided to go in stripped down to our underwear, but since it didn't make sense to get our expensive bras wet, we dispensed with those and went in simply in our knickers. My brother thought better of the whole thing however, and just went for the Full Monty, going in without clothes on at all. Suddenly inspired (because skinny-dipping is so much more fun!) we all then shucked off our clothes, until everybody was swimming about free and easy.

We must have spent hours in that pool, hooting and hollering and laughing, and to my astonishment, nobody ever came out to discover us all swimming in the buff. Our only company that evening turned out to be some VERY large frogs!

Eventually, we all had to face up to the problem of getting out of the pool without flashing our nudity to the world, and one-by-one we just gave up, jumping out and displaying our distressingly white behinds for the world to see. Thank goodness for all the towels left out by the hotel staff (and the next morning I'm sure they were wondering why all of the towels had dissappeared overnight!)

The next day my cousin Brendan had the brilliant idea that we all needed to learn how to surf. So he rented a board, got us all out in the ocean, and one-by-one pushed us out on the waves until everyone managed to get the hang of standing up on the board. It was funny for me, because my brother and my cousin Kate seemed to get the hang of it after only four or five tries (my brother was a real natural at it), whereas I had to doggedly persist at it for an hour-and-a-half before I finally figured out how to stand up on the board! (At least to my credit, once I got it, I got it, and I was able to stand up forever after that). I really was amazed at my cousin Brendan however, who never gave up on me, despite surely being tempted to conclude I was just never going to get it!

After surfing for several hours, we stopped for lunch, and then eventually went back to the hotel for some more swimming and just hanging out in the hammocks in a small cabana that we had determined was "our" hangout area.

We then decided that for a change of pace, we would have dinner at our hotel that evening, as we realised that if the hotel was willing to serve us our own wine that we had brought with us, the price differential between the hotel and our favourite restaurant down the beach wasn't that bad. So we did have a lovely dinner, and then afterwards retreated to the hammocks, where we drank more wine and told stories, which eventually descended into a fascinating discussion with my cousin Marie about how she had become a foster child, and what had finally made her decide to be formally adopted by my aunt and uncle when she was 34. It was funny, because although she'd always been around while we were growing up, as small children we didn't really understand the particulars of the situation. Yet, it was amazing to listen to her stories, and realise that while my uncle has seemed somewhat remote and distant to me at times, for my cousin he was absolutely the perfect parent. I guess it just made me really glad to be a part of my family, as while I was lucky enough to be born with stellar parents, it's nice to know that even those who join from the outside are thrilled with the parents they get.

We finished out the evening by telling more silly stories (I was in stitches at some of the stories, which were made funnier in that they were usually all about our parents), and played banannagrams (our new favourite game) before finally heading to bed at another late hour.

The next morning we decided to go surfing again (want to make sure we hadn't forgotten all that we'd learned the day before), and this day my cousin left us to catch waves on our own, which added a whole new dimension of difficulty to surfing. I was quite chuffed with myself then when I actually once did manage to catch my own wave and stand up on my board, surfing into shore!

We then found ourselves in a debate about whether to go home that day (as we had originally planned), or perhaps to stay for yet another day. In the end, we decided to defer to my cousin Marie, as it was going to be her last day, whilst the rest of us were going to be staying in Panama for a while yet. She decided to stay, but our hotel had no more room for us. So we walked down the beach, and found another hotel with room for us....in a five-bed dorm room, with a toilet right in the middle of the room.

Now you see, as we left the previous hotel, we learned that something fishy had been going on. You see, my cousin Marie owns her own business, and does VERY well for herself. As such, she has certain standards in how she likes to travel, the kind of wine she's willing to drink, and so forth. So while everyone else was on a strict budget, Marie wasn't willing to go quite so budget. So she'd contacted my other cousins B&H, and told them to book somewhere more expensive, she would cover it, and the rest of us would just believe the lie that the place was only $20 a night. Of course, B&H told us anyway, as they knew there was no way we would ever believe that such a swank hotel cost only $20 a night. Yet, if we were going to stay, it would mean staying at a place that was REALLY $20 a night.

Hence, we ended up in a small hotel down the beach with five of us all packed into a dorm room with bunk beds and a toilet right in the middle of the room (separated from the rest of the room by a small screen).

This would then lead to one of the funniest parts of the trip, where as we fell asleep that night, Dave insisted he needed to pee. As we all lay in our bunks, we could hear the trickle into the toilet...going on, and on, and on.... Was he a camel? How much had this guy had to drink? The trickling noises continued, as we all started to laugh our heads off, until it became apparent that no human could have a bladder that big.... At last he "finished" when everyone was just about peeing themselves with laughter! (And he even remembered to wash his hands when he was finished!)