The next morning came way too early with a "buenos dias!" phone call. Joel came around and took breakfast orders, and at about 7:15 we headed downstairs to the curious gazes of the locals.
Oh my goodness gracious. The food was delicious, or rica. ;-) Wonderful coffee, sugary/cinnamon-y french toast and good scrambled eggs. Mmmm. Patting our bellies, we waddled down the streets of Penonome to meet Brandon, the regional director in Peace Corps for this area. Half of us went to get some sweet rubber boots, the other half on a small tour of Penonome. We saw/stood by the geographical center of Panama, oooo. It's marked by a rectangular-prism thing about three feet tall. As we were standing there, some sort of event was happening at the church with muchos people, including a walk in which the marchers were singing. Beautifully singing, I might add.
We stopped in a store to pick up some paper and look for watches with alarms. (The watch hunt didn't quite work out - they were all $17-20.) Soon after that our group went with Joel to get boots, walking through a market to the designated store. The market, by the way, included a room of only raw meat. Mmm. Luckily that room was soon followed by the open air with all sorts of fruits, vegetables and other goods. We picked up muchos gallons of water (and ordered to have 60 more sent to our village). Got our boots, which are super nifty- sturdy, black rubber because there is a LOT of mud here. Somehow while we were doing this, it was raining (sprinkling) without any clouds (well, barely any) in the sky. Crazy.
We hopped into a chiva, one of two, which is basically a pick-up truck with seats and a cover in the back, entered into by a small door. At the time I believe there were about 8 of us, and we were comfortable-ish. Add the other half of our group plus Joel and Brandon, and you have knees and limbs in all sorts of questionnable places.
So, we sardined our way back to the hostel (if we weren't friendly before, we surely were now), grabbed our packs which the drivers strapped to the top in 15 gallon trash bags in case it rained. This time, we squeezed some people in the other one and had a bit more of a reasonable ride. We were told it would take 3 hours, but it was only about one and a half. We definitely crossed a river in a truck to get to our town. We were almost at the top of a super-steep hill, a hundred yards from our destination, and we got stuck in the mud. Hahahaha. Maybe you had to be there. And so we arrived in San Miguel Centro.
My friend, we are just at the tip of the iceberg.
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