Home » Panama » MISTY BRIDGES, TOURISTA COPS AND PARALLEL TRAVELLERS

Misty Bridges,….visions of the sweaty clamouring heaving silicone of a budding porn queen….no, rather the engineering/meteorological interface phenomenon suffered by early risers on a stormy day, the tourista cop, maybe, and the parallel travellers come back to haunt me.

Finally it had rained in Panama after threatening for weeks, or maybe I brought it back to P City from Colon (don’t mention the irrigation) after the transit. Whatever brought it on, it worked, so I left early and went West, funny set-up, but Panama actually runs East - West, not North - South as you would think!…I only discovered this as we went up the canal, at one stage I glanced at the compass, we were heading WNW, I nearly stopped drinking!, but they assured me with another can that all was well, but it still has me scratching, WNW?

MISTY BRIDGES, TOURISTA COPS AND PARALLEL TRAVELLERS

Bill Shum
2006-08-21 17:14:24

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On the first day I broke my leg (it was a sign) and subsequently didn’t pay the list much more attention. However, I’m sure scuba diving would have been on that list and this was the reason that brought me to Bocas on the Carib coast of Panama near the frontera with Costa Rico.

I rolled off the ferry and down the main drag, there was a sign….Starfleet Scuba….I’d found them on the net and we had been in e-touch so were expecting each other. Amazing, the internet, how did we ever get on without it?, for maps, information, contact, now phone calls, and the endless offers of penile enlargement and mortgage reduction, altho’ why do the junk emails always have such weird names as senders?, surely they must know that I’m going to trash any email with that sort of sender information? (Sorry I haven’t replied to those of you with weird names by the way). So to Scubaworld…

First half day is in the classroom studying all the things that can go wrong when underwater, I’m getting nervous…tests and corrections, I can feel the cobwebs stretching and snapping as the cranial cogs start to crank up…

I feel the same about skydiving (also on the list) ..it would be preferable to just get chucked out of the plane rather than spend all that time prior to the jump, learning all that could go wrong!

First afternoon and I get geared up, wetsuit, mask, fins, and the vest, tank and hoses bits, v cumbersome in fact damned heavy, including a belt that the Sopranos would be proud of, seems to have enough lead to take me to the bottom forever… slipping and sliding across the wooden floor, then just step off the back of the deck
and sploosh!..Actually more than just a big step, the official name is Giant Stride, what a fantastic image…into 3 metres of warm, clear water…fortunately the vest is inflated enough to keep me afloat, but the breathing is difficult, a feeling of having to suck the air in and force ...