David

I made it to Panama!

Yesterday was a pretty long day. Martin and I got up and left the Flutterby House in time to catch the 8 AM bus out of Uvita, but accidentally went to the wrong stop and weren't able to get on another until 11. The bus took us down to Ciudad Neily, where we then had to get on another bus to Paso Canoas, the Panama border. By the time we got there, it was around 4. Customs took almost an hour after we went through the line once, only to find out that there were forms we needed to fill out before we got into line. Take two. After we got our stamps, we walked across the border where we took the first bus we could find, which happened to be going to a city named David. The bus crossed a border checkpoint and had to stop. An officer got on the bus and looked at each row. Then he walked to the back of the bus and checked my passport. He checked Martin's too. Without checking any of the other 30 people on the bus, he got off and we continued on. Racial profiling!

We had no idea where we were going, so we stayed on the bus until the last stop and ended up in a large bus terminal in what we could only assume was David. It was around 6 and we were very hungry, so we walked across the street to a restaurant where we were served huge plates of some of the best food I've ever had, all at $3 each. Martin managed to completely demolish his in under 4 minutes before eating half of mine, all between sips of beer that I could hardly choke down but he insisted "tastes like vater".

Germans.

After this, we found an internet cafe where we looked up hostels in David and found out that there were only two, both on the same block. We spent about 10 minutes comparing the two websites and decided to go to the one with the pool which, at $8.80 a night, was 95 cents more expensive than the other. We wrote down the address and got in a taxi. 20 minutes and only $1.50 later we were at the Bambu Hostel. The owner, a guy from New York City, was pretty cool. He showed us around the hostel, introducing us to his two dogs who he rescued off the street but are some of the friendliest and sweetest dogs I've ever known. We told him we had just come from Costa Rica. "Oh, cool," he said, "There was a guy here a couple weeks ago who had just come from there, too. Said he volunteered at some place called... the Flutterby House, I think?" So Ryan's been here! We also ran into a German family who had stayed there as well, with two little boys who Martin had given surf lessons too. At least now he has someone to talk to, he's been forgetting that I don't understand any of it and keeps starting conversations with me in German.

Once we were settled in, we went across the street to a bar where I watched in amazement as Martin ate ANOTHER huge plate of food, this one for only $2, after which he said that he was maybe only a little bit hungry now. I have come to a conclusion: either Martin is a tank, or he's pregnant.

We went out to the pool but were disappointed to see that the surface was covered in dead bugs and hair, so ended up just sticking our feet in and then going to bed early. I hadn't even realized how exhausted I was until my head hit the pillow and I passed out for a solid 10 hours.

This morning, we got up and walked to a nearby grocery store. Huge, shiny, and filled with more amazing food than I've seen in my entire life. We spent half an hour running around the store happily like children and got a ton of food for less than $10. Since then, we've been hanging out at the hostel, enjoying the nice weather. Now we're going to lunch, and then we'll go see a movie because they're in English and only $3. After that, I think we'll have done pretty much everything there is to do here, so we might have to get creative!