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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force it out…is this right, am I going to drown here??..some dodgey backyard dive school in some 3rd world country..aarrgghhh ..but no, it’s all good…I get used to the breathing routine and with Jose, my instructor we sink down into the magic, strange realm that the hydrologocally challenged will always approach with caution, just fantastic, the closest thing to weightlessness, rolling over, spiralling around, then shit!…where’s Jose?..the disorientation is immediate and un-nerving, I roll more and there he is, it felt like I had to turn 460 degrees to do a 360 revolution, better watch out for that one…anyway, time for class…Jose and I kneel on the seabed and go thru’ the routines of on and offing the mask, losing the mouthpiece, balancing and other life-threatening ways of surviving life-threatening occurrences (?)

Day 2 and 3 we dive twice in the mornings, checking out different sites each time, sharks, stingrays, a big stone fish yesterday, lots of coral, black and regular, and of course fifty million little fish of the most mind boggling colours, electric bright blues and purples, shoals of differing brands of fish just grazing over fields of seaweed, sucking and spitting at bits of something in the rocks, a massive grouper hiding in the back of his cave, Jose tickles a shark to get him going, also the stone fish so that suddenly, the dull, browny grey rock sprouts little purple and white fins and cruises off, unmistakenly pissed off with the disturbance.

Last exam and I’m qualified, so today I get a couple of free dives as part of the package from Starfleet. In the few days I’ve been here I’ve met so many really nice people, Tony and Georgina, the owners, their friend Lee who left yesterday after 7 months to go back to the old dart but he’ll be back, Jose, my instructor, Mike and Lidia more friends, who have the restaurant upstairs, their staff …farck, it just goes on…Marcus and Louisa, marine biologists, ...