It´s been a while

Hi everybody and welcome back to my blog in what has been the longest period between entries to date. The reason for this is down to a combination of me being exceptionally busy and having very limited access to the internet for various reasons.

Since my last post I haven´t been lazing around as much as I did in Panama. I am now in El Salvador, my fourth country since I left Panama, I have become a qualified scuba diver, i´ve elbowed a striking Nicaraguan transport worker in the face and i´ve bribed a policeman. All in a couple of weeks in Central America.

I guess it is best that i start at the beginning. Once I decided to leave Bocas Del Toro, I headed straight for Costa Rica where my first stop was Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast. It was a beautiful place with a stunning black and beach and I would undobtedly have stayed there for a few days if it had not been phenomenonally expensive. It was also another Caribbean beach, and having spent a lot of time in recent weeks on the beach, I was in the mood for a change. So I headed straight onto San Jose, where I was unfortunate enough to arrive in a huge carnival. This meant tht there were no affordable hotel rooms available, and that there were no buses leaving San Jose that day. This meant that I had to get a taxi to the nearest town of Alajuela (not ideal when trying to stay on a budget) where I stayed for the night. I then decided that Costa Rica was too expensive to dtay any longer and so took the long bus to the Nicaraguan border.

The next chapter in my travels was one of the most unique, scary and exciting moments of my trip. Upon crossing the Nicaraguan border I was informed that there was a transpor strike going on in Nicaragua and that no public transport was running. This was really not ideal as there were no buses heading back into Costa Rica that day and the border was not exactly the kind of place that I wanted to spend the night. Eventually I managed o find a taxi that was breaking the strike and managed to negotiate his price down well anough and agreed for him to take me the two hour journey to the nearest big town Granada (I had to pay $60, but was rather pleased at my improving Spanish negotiating skills as a Nicaraguan who was getting in the same cab was paying $80). This was where things began to get interesting. The driver had told me that he was breaking the strike. What he had not told me was that the unions had set up roadblocks to stop the strike breakers. These road blocks effectively consisted of a group of about 40 blokes with baseball bats. Once on our way the driver informed me of the situation, however assured me that he knew where all the road blocks were and that he knew how to get round them. He did not. We eventually got caught in one of the roadblocks, in my opinion because he ignored my advice to speed up. He told me that there were police officers on the side of the road and that with a foreigner in the car they would stop the union workers. They did not. The car was surrounded by a horde of blokes who began to smash up the car wih baseball bats. I may have made the situation worse, but in my defense it was completely unintentional. This was because the car window was down and wouldn´t wind up, and unsuprisingly I had no seatbelt, this meant that when we reached the roadblock a guy tried to drag me out of the window. My natural reaction when the bloke grabbed me was to swing my elbow, which happened to hit the guy square on the nose resulting in injury. This did not make the baying horde particularly happy however fortunately the driver took my advice this time when i shouted at him to 'vamos' and put his foot down.

This was not however the end of the ordeal as about a mile down the road a police bike caught up with the taxi. The policeman was kicking up a fuss abou the way in which I decided defend myself and the taxi driver was arguing with him and as far as I could tell arguing my case (I can speak ok Spanish now when people speak to me, but when they talk to each other they talk so fast I can barely make a word out). I knew that the only reason this cop was causing any trouble was because he was fishing for a bribe, so rather than prolong the issue any further I asked him if we sort the issue out ´here´. He told me that if I gave him a little something he would give us directions around the strikers so that we could be on our way. I gave him $10 and we were on our way without being stopped again. This route was a lot longer than anticipated as i involved driving along back roads and across farms, but as my driver pointed out I was getting to see ´the real Nicaragua´.

The rest of my time in Nicaragua was completely uneventful, I hung around in the attractive city of Granada for a couple fo days until I heard there was a reprieve in the strike for a couple of days, so I decided to head to Honduras in case it started again. To get to Honduras I had to head via the capital Managua which I would not recomend to anyone and was undoubtedly one of the dodgiest places i´ve been to so far. Next stop was Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras which was almost as dodgy so I left immediately and headed for the Utila, an island just off the North Coast of Honduras.

Utila is one of the Bay Islands and is famed as being one of the cheapest and best places in the world to learn to scuba dive. I spent around a week there in total getting my Open Water License in the process. I really enjoyed the experience and found it fun and relaxing. I consider scuba diving to have a somewhat medatative quality about it, which is probably something to do with the controlled breathing.

Anyway I have since headed down to El Salvador where I am spending the next couple of days.

I will update you all soon
Phil

Bocas Del Toro: Still beautiful Caribbean beaches, just a lot more alcohol!

Hello everyone from Central America! I am writing this email as I am waiting for a boat to take me back to mainland Panama from the island paradise of Boca Del Toro. I have been here for the past 5 days, prior to which I spent around 5 days parting in Panama city.

Panama City was great, a beautiful place with great bars and friendly people. Also where else in the world could you bribe a security guard a dollar to get youself and some friends into the VIP area of a huge boxing match. Unfortunately I could not bribe another guard to let me lean on the ring, which I had drunkenly attempted before being escorted back to the VIP area. I tried to explain to him in Spanish that I was a journalist covering the match, but he didn´t believe me. It may have had something to do with the fact that I was drunk and holding a beer and not a camera or any writing implement, but who knows? Anyway it was quite funny.

So after a great time in Panama City I headed onto Bocas Del Toro. Bocas like the San Blas islands is just off the Caribbean coast of Panama, however it is a pardise for very different reasons to San Blas. The San Blas islands' beauty lay in the fact that they were not full of tourists and you could spend your days truly at peace. Bocas is the complete opposite. The beaches are great, but the islands are full of tourists, bars and restaurants. The reason Bocas is a 'paradise' is because it is the bacpacker equivalent of Cancun, albeit on a far smaller scale. The islands are full of largely American backpackers seeking sun, surf and cheap booze and as a result the palce has a great party atmosphere whilst at the same time retaining the laid-back attitude that seems to accompany backpacker hubs.

I really have enjoyed myself hugely here. This is evident from the fact that i came here for two days five days ago. However I feel now is time to move on, partially because I am already hugely behind schedule, and also in order to give my liver a rest. I have been enjoying Bocas a sit should be enjoyed and have basically spent my time drinking 25p beers in the bars, or lying hungover on a Caribbean beach in the day.

So now I am taking a boat back to the mainland in ten minutes and then grabbing a bus to Costa Rica where I will be for only a short time before heading into Nicaragua where I will probably be at the time of my next post.

I will update you all with my latest escapades soon.

Phil

Paradise has a name and its name is Archipelago San Blas!

Hello and welcome to the latest installment of my blog and the first since my arrival in Central America.
Today I arrived in Panama City following undoubtedly one of the most enjoyable weeks of my trip so far.

After I left Santa Marta where I wrote my last post, I spent a week taking in the sights in Cartagena. The city was unquestionably very pretty, with lots of fascinating colonial architecture. But in all honesty I felt that i felt that its' outstanding reputation was slightly over-rated . I could easily have spent 2 days in the town, rather than a week as there was little to do in the day once you had seen the main sights (there are beaches, but they are far inferior to those of any other town on the Caribbean coast) and the night life was suprisingly poor. However my stay was prolonged due to the fact that I had to wait in order to get a boat to Panama.

It was certainly worth the wait. The trip itself took five days on a 34 foot sailing yacht with 5 other people. The first two days were spent sailing to Panama and the majority of the rest of the time was spent in the San Blas islands. These islands are undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and peaceful places I had ever been. They are completely undeveloped with only a few indigenous huts on the islands, and due to the lack of tourist infrastructure there are very few tourists, meaning that often the people on my boat were they only people on the island. I only wish I could have spent more times in the islands, however I had to move on, and in a week I will be in a different set of Caribbean islands when I head to Bocas Del Toro. It's a hard life!

I will leave this post brief, as I am heading out in Panama City tonight in the hope of finding the night life better than Cartagena.

Speak to you all soon

Phil