The Blog of John Patrick Larson

(For pictures of this leg of our journey, visit Tracy’s blog here.)

We met the surfing district of the Philippines late at night after a long day of busing about, and were a bit weary for it.  It was on this night that we sat beside the South China Sea, three stories up, contemplating the recommend-ability of our current country.  Despite the starlit beauty of that night on the balcony the jury was still out on the matter.

The next morning presented us with a challenge: Tracy had fallen ill and so I tasked myself with finding a suitable detox center for her condition.  This is a place known for its beach-side surf resorts, so I took a jeepney ride up the coast line to their place of concentration in my quest for recovery luxury.  The first place I tried after being dropped off was full, so I scouted further on foot.  It was then that I happened upon a place unbeknownst to my trusty Lonely Planet, a swank and rather new place of sharp looking cabanas called the Kahuna Resort.  And they had an infinity pool that looked over the surfer-laden sea.  Score.  With just a swipe of the credit card and a drop off my backpack we had a new home base.

Proudly I returned to the hotel we were at, peeled my ailing-yet-lovely new wife off the bed, and proudly took to chaperoning my marital cargo to our shiny new digs.  This was a place to recover in, and good thing, too.  For whether it was an matter of solidarity or my having imbibed the same cause of ailment, I too proceeded to fall ill in exactly the same way.  For the utility of my forage for such paradise accommodations, I am grateful that my illness came those precious three hours later.

What a pair we were, taking turns in the bathroom while watching 80’s movies on our in-cabana flat screen TV.  I refer to this as the “Honeymoonal Celebration of Intimacy and Closeness,” for it was a wonderful testament to our love and acceptance of one another to have that love endure with us both in such a sorry state.

All things do pass, in time.

(I of course mean here the sickness, not the love.)  By the next day our appetites were reasonably restored, and we were content to enjoy our surroundings for more than their “nice place to detox”-ness.  While bobbing about merrily in the infinity pool the afternoon after our second night there, a fellow the western persuasion did a cannonball some 15 feet from me, and after he surfaced we exchanged brief glances: the sort of smiling, mutual acknowledgment that yes, it is nice to be in the pool.  And that’s how I met Darcy.

Darcy is the second delightfully influential Canadian to grace our trip.  With his hearty accent, penchant for playing hockey, and fondness for The Kids in the Hall he also lent fuel to my baser self to presume that I do indeed know all there is to know about Canada (I’m not committed to this presumption, by the way).  Turns out Darcy owned the place, too.  This was useful for a number of reasons.  One of which was that, by this point, I’d been wanting someone on staff I could make known the fact that the perhaps yet under-trained staff (this was still a new resort, after all) seemed apt to gracelessly interrupt naked time with their schedule of delivering 2 measly bottles of water to each cabana in the early evening, and not go away when you tell them to do as much in presumably muffled words through the door.  Strategic rantings aside he was all kinds of enjoyable to talk with, from topics of local culture, doing business all around Asia, and what it’s like to live swankily in slightly cesspool-ish Manila.

Later that night I joined Darcy and his business contemporaries for a bite.  My order of food arrived on two plates: on one a big heaping slice of chocolate cake, and on the other a sad little scoop of rice.  For this not exactly being the model of balanced nutrition, I fetched some odd looks from the gang.  In a striking example of how the universe is not, in fact, necessarily fair, I explained how the former was for me while the latter was for my wife, who in a state of still diminished appetite remained on a strict BRAT diet (Bananas, Rice, Apple juice and Toast).  In a gesture of good husbanding I did however bring some cake back to our room, a few bites of which Tracy was able to enjoy as punctuation to her otherwise bland starch.

In the morning Darcy’s hospitality really shined.  It was time to head back to Manila in preparation for our next-day flight home, and while Tracy and I were planning on another marathon bus ride to do so, Darcy had the good sense to suggest we take a flight back–from this relatively remote region there are only 3 such flights per week, and today was one of those lucky days.  (And luckier still, he and his associates were also heading back and could give us a ride both to and from the airports.)  At $35 a seat the deal couldn’t be beat.

His staff set everything up and that afternoon, with a car ready and waiting to take us to the airport, we were on our way.  Crestfallen though we were to not do any of the surfing we’d set out to do, our time in San Jaun was about the nicest way I can fathom to spend getting through a rough 24-hour bug together as husband and wife.  Such romance!  …did I mention the blaze-orange sunsets?

(For pictures of this leg of our journey, visit Tracy’s blog here.)

From bumpin’ Baguio we took a 7 hour bus ride to remote Sagada through the winding, mountainous regions of North Luzon.  Unlike our relatively cushy ride from Manila to Baguio, this one took some courage and concentration.  Courage to not think to hard about the winding roads and how far there would be to fall were our bus to find itself but 2 feet to the left of it’s current position, and concentration on said winding roads to avoid motion sickness from all the bumps and turns.  (I tried to neglect the latter, but a mere 10 minutes of watching Penn and Teller’s Bullshit on the iPod-of-fun had me distinctly nauseous.)

So there was a balancing act to be done.  And really, once you wrapped your mind around having faith in the driver as truly an expert in his navigating his native terrain, the views were quite breathtaking.  It was a rainy day with lots of fog and clouds rolling through the hills and valleys, and a look down from the bus into a nebulous gray mass gave a certain awe and reverence for nature, not unlike the Cliffs of Insanity.  Also etched into the hills everywhere were step-like terraces for farming such uneven land.  These weren’t necessarily the ancient Ifuego rice terraces, but never the less a treat for the eyes and a remarkable display of ingenuity.

During our bus ride there were two stops in little villages for snacks and restroom breaks.  At the first of these was where met Peter, a friendly fellow from Canada who was exploring the country with his girlfriend Kate from Korea.  It’s great how fast you can make a friend while comparing how the flan in little plastic cups which you both just bought tastes (it tasted good, by the way–a nice remedy to iPod-induced wooziness).  A good thing, too: Peter and Kate would turn out to be instrumental in making our time in Sagada awesome.

When the bus arrived after nightfall in Sagada us back-packer types all dispersed to find lodging, with an agreement to meet Peter and Kate for dinner.  After a nice dinner at the Log Cabin (during which Peter reinforced Canadian stereotypes by tending to the un-staffed fireplace like a pro–he also admitted to indeed keeping an ax in the back of his truck), our foursome went back to their room for what was perhaps the greatest throwback to collegiate days that I can remember.  In their dorm-like room (you know the style: you enter and there’s a bed on the left, a bed on the right, and not much more) we partook of the bounties that Peter had so wisely procured in one of the small bus-break villages: a bottle of reconstituted brandy from Spain, and a loaf of freshly baked banana bread.  I assure you that the latter well complimented the former between shots as we passed the bottle: there’s nothing quite like cheap booze and minimal furniture to foster good times and camaraderie.

In our inspired state caused by bread and brandy we plotted to the next morning all do the 4 hour cave tour, because why not?  Seems cooler than the 2 hour version, and apparently part of it calls for swim trunks.

We were rewarded for our outstretched curiosity: what we got ourselves into we probably wouldn’t have done with full knowledge of it up front, and we are more hardcore and experienced for it.  This was serious climbing around and through some big rocks and slippery formations, with ample opportunities to misstep and fall a good 20 feet.  The whole experience was probably nothing you could ever get away with in a litigious society, and I’m glad we were where we were so as to enjoy it.

Our guides were nothing short of bad-ass.  While we were at times crab walking along with butts touching down every foot or so for stability, they were walking along casually in flip flops while brandishing the large kerosene torches which provided our only light, and carrying our backpacks to lighten our load.

For this, and other feats pertaining to expertly having our lives in their hands, we tipped them well and eagerly so.

After 4 hours of climbing through crevices, balancing on boulders, wading through water, and finagling footholds we were finally greeted by sunlight at the cave’s other entrance some 2 miles from where we initially descended.  We were sore, tired, a little damp and a lot muddy, but all the better for it and feeling triumphant.

Rest and recovery sums up the remainder of our time in Sagada, which suited.  There’s a certain stillness of the tiny, remote mountain town that is hard to describe yet easy to recall.  Within 48 hours of our underworld adventure we were on the bus back to Baguio, and on to the surf district of San Juan.

From the low altitude of the sleepy lake district we took to the high ground towards North Luzon’s mountain region.  On our journey spanning 15 hours of bus time our first stop, following the first 8 hours, was Baguio.

Baguio is a cool college town with an altitude nearly on par with the mile-high city.  But it’s not clear if we made the most of it.  There were a few highlights, like while running an errand along the crowded city streets an older toothless fellow with a hoarse voice who eagerly asked how tall I was, and gave me enthusiastic respect knuckles when I energetically replied ‘dat I was reeeally talllll.  “I knew it, man!!” replied he, and we carried on like this with several more exchanges of the respect knuckles.   (As you might imagine, I liked him immediately.)  But the fact remains that we whiled away some of the hours with frivolities, like holing up in a cafe to wait out the rain and thereat ordering scotch at 3pm simply for the novelty of it (ah, what fun it is to be an adult!).

Perhaps our most creative adventure in Baguio was our effort to make up for poor planning (time-wise) to catch a 7pm screening of the new Harry Potter movie.  We were still hungry at 6:30 with the theater a 15 minute walk away.  We invented and played the “Street-Side Buffet Ballet”, a quest to fill our tummies and make it to the show on time whilst sampling the best of the hoards of street-side food vendors that set up shop all over town around dusk.  It was a flurry of making snap decisions of what looked tasty as we navigated the crowded streets to our destination.  Roasted corn on a stick, 25P, fantastic!  A gyro-like wrap, sure I’ll take that random sauce you offered, 80P, delicious!  5P for some bits of meat on a stick… ugh, gross, moving on!  5P for a baked bar of something wrapped in orange cling wrap, sure, I’ll take 2, thanks!  A tasty carrot to cleanse the pallet after that weird stick meat… don’t need the whole pile, how about 2P for one?  Ok!  Fried banana chunks on a stick…. 10P, what a treat!  And to wrap up after all that, a so-called pimkin that suspiciously resembles a clementine, nice and sweet at 5P!  And voila, we’d arrived at the theater, with 4 minutes to spare!  (As best I could tell from our balcony position, we were the only ones present for that screening, perhaps not too surprising given the abundance of bootleg DVDs of the movie I saw laid out around town earlier.)

And that’s about all I can think to write about Baguio.  Maybe we were big lame-o’s for this leg of the trip, but in our defense at least we got our laundry done and–yeah, ok, we were big lame-o’s.  So the next day, we left town for what was next.

(For pictures of this leg of our journey, visit Tracy’s blog here.)

The next region we stayed (after a brief-as-could-be jump through the hectic capital of Manila) was Taal Lake.  Taal Lake is beautiful and boasts within it the eminently hikable Taal Volcano, which if you didn’t know about upon arrival, you would within minutes of stepping off the bus.

For it appears on the surface as though hiking Taal Volcano is the only reason for non-locals to visit the region.  So if you look like Tracy and I do (ahem, tourists), everyone who works at hustling tourists has but one question to ask you: “So, you guys want to go to the volcano?”  It seems everyone knows someone who has a boat by which to take you, and can get you a good deal, too (without fail, their friend will take you for 1500P).

Even the tricycle driver who took us to our hotel seemed intent to sell us on a tour (“tricycles” in the Philippines refer to motor bikes with a sidecar attached to them–you should have seen the feat of Tracy and I squeezing in with our huge traveler’s backpacks).  I give him credit for holding the bike so steady in 30mph traffic while poking his head in the sidecar to make his pitch.

On our second day we did make the trip across the the lake (1200P, as it turns out we were able to find) and hiked up the volcano.  Feeling fit, young and sexy enough to decline the many offers to ride a horse up, we were only a little winded when we reached the top, and I was all too happy to then enjoy a coconut cut right for enjoying the juice from a straw (best 50P of the whole trip, in my estimation).

Our final hours in the Taal Lake district were spent learning how to sail a Topper at the Taal Lake Yacht Club (there might have been a few liberties taken on the club’s naming, that, or all the Yachts were out that day).  It was my first time, and I’m delighted we got to double down on our reasons to visit the lake.

I actually did find yet one other reason to visit the region: buko pies.  As evidenced by the fact that I have coconuts on our honeymoon registry, I am, um, cuckoo for coconuts.  Buko pie is a traditional Filipino pastry made of tender slivers of young coconut meat, and is absolutely nummy.  So much so that I bought three of ’em just before boarding the bus back to Manila, and somehow managed to stuff them all in my bag like some seasoned pie smuggler.

Best 360P of the whole trip, in my estimation.

(For pictures of this leg of our journey, visit Tracy’s blog here.)

You may recall my mention earlier of the Philippines being a little too rugged and not touristy enough.  Well, I apologize for sloppy storytelling when it comes to continuity because Boracay, the first major stop of our trip, was an exception to all that.  The small island only 7 miles long and as narrow as one mile wide in the middle is sublimely gorgeous, your true-to-form typical beachy paradise with white sand and warm, clear turquoise waters.

In fact it’s so typically paradisey that I’m actually going to skip over describing most of it.  It’s the sort of stuff that if you’ve already been, you know pretty well what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t, well, who wants to hear the ramblings of some dude’s time on a beach when you’ve been rockin’ the non-beach thing all along?  So instead I’m going to opt for telling the weird stories.

Two of the three mornings in Boracay I found myself waking up around 3am, bright eyed and ready for adventure (jet lag can be fun if you embrace such early morning shenanigans).  The rooftop of our resort offered choice views of the partially clouded night, painted purple and yellow by the low hanging, jumbo-sized moon.  It was the kind of serenity you hope for if you’ve ever yelled out “serenity now”, and made a fine occasion for doing a few Sun Salutations (though in fairness to the sun, I was totally saluting the moon instead).  The sandy beach below at 4am, I found, makes a great time to sit on your butt and read Heinlein by the beach-facing floodlights of Fridays’ Resort while giving out respect nods to the occasional jogger who passes by.

One morning (after enjoying beach-side ninja training of a run plus bonus cove abs) I took to exploring more the beach with a single-minded mantra of “keep going”.  I just wanted to see how far I could take it to find what I would find.  Rocky ledge to shimmy around?  Keep going.  Some stairway through dense foliage with a couple dudes standing on it in my way?  Keep going.  Looks like I’m trespassing on someone’s private property?  Keep going.  Obscure, narrow, winding path with many steps leading upwards?  Keep going.  Resort security checkpoint?  Play it cool, like you belong there.  Actually I just let ’em know straight away that I was wandering about, checking out other cool beach-side places to stay.  I was welcomed right in, which gave me rights to strut about the property with impunity.

And what a find!  What I’d stumbled upon was this Ewok village-like formation of cabins and foliage strewn about a dense maze work of stairs and narrow paths, which opened into a system of interconnected sea-facing terraces with many nooks of cabanas and lounge chairs at varying elevations, all with spectacular views.  The place seemed deserted, which perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise since there were about 4 occasions during my journey to it that I thought I should turn back because I didn’t belong.  (In fairness, it is also quite new and “Secluded luxury” is one of their marketing tag lines.).

While staring transfixed by the view the nice lady appeared and handed me a rate card for the rooms on property.  At $20 less a night I was a little crestfallen that we’d already prepaid our 3 nights at the Two Seasons.  We did get to experience at least some of the awesomeness when we returned the next night for sunset drinks.

A now a tale from the Poor Planning Diaries.

Just minutes before we took to the beach bound for the nearest SCUBA dive shop, I realized I forgot my contact lenses (oh I had the case, it was just empty).  My vision is poor enough to make the natural splendor of tropical coral reefs look like boring blobs, so even when you discount the whole “safety” thing my lack of lenses might’ve rendered any diving opportunities this trip completely moot (and I do love me some diving).

I opted that we head for the dive shop anyway, reckoning that I’d “think of something”.  Along the way [confronted with the possibility that surfing would also be ruined for me] we contemplated zany schemes for damage control, like having our house-sitter ship ’em to Manila and we’d somehow pick ’em up there (terrible idea for its complexity).  Hey, what if I could just, you know, buy some contacts here?  On this tiny island?

I had my doubts given my state-side experience, which teaches me that no “respectable” optometrist will sell you contacts unless you present a prescription given during a complete eye exam within the last year (it’s been 3 for me).  But hey, we were in a new world here, presumably a little less sue-happy and perhaps a little less stringent in their dispensary of prescribables,  and I happen to remember my magic prescription number (-5.5)… so why not find out!  I had an hour or two to do it while Tracy got schooled in the PADI basics for her first dive.

Now then, on the beach of Boracay there exists a reckless abundance of people brandishing little cards featuring small pictures of activities with large, inflated prices just beneath, so many so that “Water sports today?” may be confused by the untrained eye to be a traditional island greeting.  With such eagerness to help me get onto a sail boat for only 5000P (about $125 US) I figured I’d reply in earnest what I did need.  “Water sports today?” said the next such fellow along my sandy path  (how do they know I’m a tourist?  Ah, right: I have been judged [accurately] by the color of my skin!).  Instead of the “No thanks” that I was getting good and polished at saying,  I stopped in my tracks, looked him square in the eyes, and replied: “Right now, no, but what I am looking for is some contact lenses, can you help me with that?”

As eager to be helpful as any good salesman is, my new friend Dwayne offered to wander along and help me on my quest to and through D’Mall in search of my odd need.  We talked as we walked of hobbies we enjoyed, he when not hustling activities, me when not saying no to them, and found common ground in dance and bemusement that I suck at basketball.  He was a cool guy.  The second shop we tried at had just what I needed.  The friendly woman who tended the counter asked only for my prescription number in answer to my question (as opposed to demanding to see my papers like in the US, which now seems kinda fascist by comparison), and then wandered over to the display case to pluck out a small box.  900P and a quick use of the backroom with a sink and I was set.  Perfect vision.  No wacky postal pickup in Manila required.  Dwayne you’re the man, and a gentleman for making me work to convince you to take my 200 gratitude pesos.

Ah, and the diving was most beautiful and laden with 20/20 visual goodness.

I’d like to end my recount of Boracay with a tale of how even in splendorous paradise the simple joys never go out of style, and that simple joy is a happy hour bucket of beers.  During a beach walk when things were not yet happening at the tender hour of only 9pm, one of the hustlers at a club bar smoothly offered and got us situated at a cheap plastic table whose legs were planted in the sand just 10 feet from the rising midnight-tide.  200P (about $5 US) for six bottles of cold beer is a bargain at your local friendly dive bar, and seems triply so on the beach in Boracay.  We partook of a local brew called Red Horse while staring out at the sea.

By the time we finished the first bucket and started on our second, the bar scene behind us had filled out with a great mix of both locals and tourists, and the DJ was cranking out some bumpin’ tunes.  A Lady Gaga came on and, perhaps thanks to the graces of moderately consumed alcohol, Tracy was game to rock it out with me (yeah I like to dance to Lady Gaga, so what?).  We gave it our Red Horse best in our center, solo spot on the dance floor, and for it entertained locals and gringos alike.  I know this because they were both clapping and cheering at song’s end.  (That now makes 2 countries abroad in which I have been applauded for dance prowess, sweet!)

The night was rounded out in perfection when we happened upon a beach-side food vendor, serving up some tasty meat thing between 2 weird pieces of bread toasted nicely on his little grill of hot coals.  Ah, the simple joys.

The food sucked, we got majorly sick, and John went to a strip club.

I was too jet lagged to remember now whether or not my first report on our trip to the Philippines was quite so terse, but that, according to Tracy, is how I summed it up to our friend Doc while in LAX’s international terminal awaiting our final connection back to Denver.

Truly, I would require some more sleep and/or practice in choosing my mention-worthy highlights before I could be trusted to paint a fairer picture of the whole 18-day experience.

For it wasn’t that bad, whatever images popped into your head while reading the opening words above is most likely a far cry from how our trip went.  And it is in that spirit that I would like to acknowledge a few things up front and get them out of the way:

First, it is true that, of the now 4 international adventures that Tracy and I have taken together, this one happened to take 4th place.  And I’m not bummed by that.  After all, one of the 4 trips would have to take that slot, and I see no reason to think that particularly disappointing because this one was our honeymoon.  The flip side of that coin is the realization simply how fantastic it is that we’ve enjoyed now 4 trips of a honeymoon-esque scale and radness.

Second, I want to grant up front that I would not recommend the Philippines to a friend.  Tracy and I wrestled with this a bit while over looking the South China Sea from our 3rd floor balcony one night, wondering if that meant we were genuinely not having a good time?  We decided that more than anything the reason we wouldn’t is because it’s TOO hardcore: we love to find travel bliss in more obscure places, preferring to sidestep touristy hot spots, but for even us the Philippines was too far off the beaten path, a bit too rugged, and even (oddly enough) not touristy enough.  One hint that we are not alone in this belief was the sheer regularity of the question “So why did you come to the Philippines?” as posed by locals to me.  I gather that they really wanted to know, as though the obvious rationale of tourism somehow did not apply.

Third, though as a rule I prefer to refrain from being a big complain-monkey, I will go on the record here and now stating that yeah, the food did kinda suck.  There’s a curious and consistent culinary quirk in the Philippines, and that is the sweetness found in everything.  Basic staples like butter and bread are infused (sans exception, it seems) with sugar, and it permeates out from those basics accordingly: even the catchup for french fries and marinara sauce for spaghetti are acutely sweet.  Once the novelty wears off, it’s just kinda gross.

That about covers the upfront caveats: I lay them out here with care because of the tendency for people to expect that your honeymoon should be this magical, unforgettable getaway where you have your first span of time together as husband and wife.  It’s a sweet presumption, for sure, but for it I feel compelled not to dash anyone’s well meaning presumptions with tales of my honeymoon that came in 4th place.

With all of those things said and done with, I wish to clearly articulate now all of the things that were fantastic about our trip to the Philippines.  Tales of our travel–free of superfluous commentary on things like sugary spaghetti–begin with the next post!

Last week Tracy and I spent a week visiting St. Louis, her to shoot a whopping 7 portrait sessions from among the adoring hoard of clients she left behind, and I to visit and catch up with as many fantastic people as I could pack in.

I was struck by how much I love St. Louis.

To wit, merely walking Melbrook lane (a stretch of road connecting the Wash U campus with the vibrant street known affectionately to locals as the Delmar Loop) evoked all kinds of grad school-era memories, which lumped together as on big ball of bittersweet, fond reminiscence.  The smell of the old neighborhood trees and other nature in the heat of St. Louis summer took me back to everything from feeling high and proud walking home after giving my first summer school lecture on programming, to hopeless romantic melancholy of pining over whichever girl I was smitten with at the time (I was so cute back then, my strategy for dating and relationships would’ve been just precious if it hadn’t been so completely ineffective!).   The years of memories unlocked by sights and smells endeared my old stomping grounds to me in the most delightful way.

Add in connections to friends and communities (I was fondly greeted with surprise as though back from the dead by at least a dozen people when out swing dancing), reference for favorite places (here’s looking at you, MoBot) and my body’s strange preference for the 100% humidity and high heat (it’s like a sauna, and the atmosphere is so delightfully full of oxygen!) and there’s little doubt that I’ll hold the ‘Lou as a sacred and special place for a long time.

Now then, this all might be a problem given my current state as a Denver resident and settling in as such via matrimonial ties: there’s probably no better way to discount the merits of where you are by clinging tightly to the merits of where you were.  But rather it has me inspired: if I was able to fall so deeply in love with one town out of living there for 8 years, how quickly can I fall in love with another?

And so I have a quest: to swiftly collect memories, experiences and favorites among the new people, places and events that are here in Denver.  I figure two new disciplines are in order to speed this process along: the first is to be a “yes” to any and all opportunities to be social/get out/experience life, and the second to forgo more often the sweet, sweet comfort zone of hanging out with my kick-butt fiancee in favor of other people.  (The latter is the tougher, but I celebrate that as a healthy sign of our sustained fondness for one another.)  This quest is along lines similar to the Gems of Denver (which is coming along nicely by the by: few clear winners but many worthy candidates), but more profound, I think.  This is more about building meaningful friendships with people, which I suspect will do much more to give a happy anchoring to this town than a really kick-ass restaurant.

The topic of the return from an international trip wouldn’t usually be sufficient to warrent it’s own missive, but this one was adventure enough to justify it.

Why an adventure?  Simple: Tracy and I both had wicked sun burns from our surfing, highly specialized to the back side from all that face down paddling about.  The burns were bad enough and the day was long enough (19 hours hotel to home) that our journey was an exercise in meta-physic:s a game in mind over matter, practice at the transformational distinction between pain (what is) and suffering (a possible interpretation about what is).

Without that sort of mental fitness we would have been quite that sad and suffering pair.  Instead we came up with the following:

• Confidence that we’ll be fit travelers together for at least 40 more years, because we were just fine walking around with the stature and gait of retirees.  Knees buckled, shoulders hunched, slooooooow, small steps: turns out we can travel under these conditions.
• Elaborate strategies for minimizing the number of times we would need to sit down and stand up, including waiting around extra long before boarding the plane (to ensure our window seat neighbor had gotten settled before we took our middle and aisle seats).  (Though some strategies did backfire, like sitting around at Chile’s Too for long innings drinking tall beers.)
• Delight in popping pills together, when we decided to splurge on Airport Advil and have what is probably the closest experience to being junkies that we’ll ever come to.
• A deep and profound respect for one another as hardcore and jovial human beings, able to have substantial fun in the face of substantial discomfort.

The best was when we got back to Denver: it was cold, but with the backs of my knees as red as they were I had no interest in trading out shorts for jeans.  So it was socks, sandals, shorts, and hooded sweatshirt (and don’t forget my hobbling stride).  I looked like absolute hell.  And it was funny, too.  Just ask the lady at the King Sooper’s (grocery store) who openly giggled at me when we stopped in for some late night food.  I’m one major step closer to understanding the mentality of older people who couldn’t care less for fashion, save for perhaps what others think about their fashion.

It’s kind of liberating. :)

It was our last day on the island.  At 4:45pm we would hop a plane back to Panama City, stay another night at the Hotel California, and wake early for our all day adventure back to Denver.

There was unfinished business.  Surfing.

But we weren’t sure if we’d fit it in.  Who knew when and if we could get a surfing excursion that included a beginner’s lesson in time, and besides, that morning we thought we’d do 9am yoga.  I like to think that fate kicked in when we arrived 2 minutes late to what was, in my experience, the first and only yoga venue not laid back enough to admit such barely-late stragglers.

So we wandered the main drag in search of surfing opportunities instead.  Ricardo, the rad proprietor of La Buga dive and surf shop, had a deal for us.  (Ricardo is rad for a number of reasons: wall full of PADI certifications, friendly manner of speaking English with his kickin’ Panamanian accent with which he can always convincingly tell you it’s a great day for diving, and Tracy and I were both pleased and unsurprised to see him doing well for himself romantically, apparently dating the smokin’ hottie who fixed Tracy’s smoothie that morning).  His deal: another person was going for an excursion at 10am and we could get in for $49 a piece, including a lesson, and back on land by 1pm.  Sold.  Pardon us while we run back to our room to change.

The lesson was a quick 20 minutes in a few forms, balance, and a fun test of whether you ride normal or goofy foot (i.e. with your left or right foot forward: the test is to push you from behind and seeing which foot instinctively leaps forward to prevent your imminent face plant).  Our lesson was held on the back porch/dock, and was punctuated once or twice by Ricardo stopping by to briefly and nonchalantly pump some serious iron at the weight station 6 feet away.  (Ricardo, you’re such a bad-ass.)

And then it was off to a nice patch of wavy water just off the beach we’d visited the day before.  We jumped into the water with our boards tethered to us by our ankle leash, and our instructor positioned himself with fins and snorkel in the middle of the bobbing water, ready to guide us to hang ten glory.

The premise of surfing, I now know, is simple: hang out in one spot, bob up and down as you wait for a good wave to come your way.  When it does, paddle like hell away from it so that you have speed enough to ride the wave once it does catch you.

How did I do?  I attained the goal I’d set for myself during our lesson: I managed to stand up and ride a wave for a good 8 or 10 seconds.  That was the last of maybe a dozen good waves I’d caught: on the path to said competence I’d had one good salty gulp of the sea, nearly ran over Tracy once, and appreciated the heck out of the aforementioned ankle leash about 4 times (when you fall off the board, the board keeps going: the ankle leash is pretty much the only thing that puts a cap on how far it goes).

In just two hours out I gained two unexpected things: a sudden and profound appreciation for the scattered bits of surfer talk I’ve heard all my life (ahhh… turns out that “catching some killer waves” is worth getting excited about!), and a wicked sun burn on the back of my legs (I neglected to mention the other side of the surfing equation: after riding a wave, you spend a lot of time lying face down on the board, peddling with your arms back up to where you started–it’s a fantastic shoulder workout).

One of the main perks of heading south for the winter is the fresh produce factor.  Due in no small part to reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which follows the exploits of the author and her family to eat locally and in season for an entire year, I’ve lately kept my choices in the produce aisle pretty narrow during colder months.  (You could, I suppose, argue that I’ve been brainwashed by locavore propaganda, but I’m content to tow the line for perhaps no other reason that, sure enough, tomatoes do taste bland and mealy when you have ’em in the dead of winder–I don’t doubt that fresh veggies have a stereotypically bad rap with kids due to their now commonplace out-of-season mediocrity.)

So to be in a growing region of mangoes, bananas, and pineapples after 2 months of tubers and other root vegetables is quite a treat.  Or at least it should be.  Perhaps it’s just a symptom of island life, but the produce pickings were kinda rough on Bocas del Toro.  There were papaya and pineapple to be enjoyed, but it just wasn’t the delectable bounty that we found in Guatemala (not even any big dudes brandishing machetes ready to hack that coconut to an edible state).

But that’s not to say the food was a total bust.  The pineapples were delicious, especially when bored out to make way for a top notch pina colada.

The greatest culinary gem I found was a hole-in-the-wall restaurant on the main drag of Bocas del Toro, named Chitre.  Pony up $3.35 and pick between pork, beef or chicken, and a sweet older lady will serve you up a full, balanced plate of your meat of choice with sides like spiced rice, homemade coleslaw, or a funky pasta salad (on the lucky days there are little bowls of cilantro’d lentils).  It’s like a lunch lady Doris style experience, only AWESOME.  A number of locals had told me that the great local food to try was the rice, so I think Chitra was the most authentic, day-to-day Panamanian cuisine that I found.  I wish an eatery like that existed here in the US.  Super fast, super cheap meals that are all of filling, balanced, and utterly delicious.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure all the food there was made with love.

For the meat eaters, there’s an interesting general trend that I noticed which juxtaposes with what I found in Argentina: Argentine beef was exquisite, while Panamanian beef was tough and flavorless.  Conversely, Argentine pork was nothing to write home about (it’s true, check out my blog series about it–not a word about it), but anything with pork in Panama was fantastic.  Argentine angus, Panamanian pigs.  I wonder if every country has a meat-based strong suit?