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Hello my dear readers,<br /><br />In the past five years, while I travel extensively, I have visited most of the places which "I wanted to visit for all my life". Fortunately I found more places I wanted to visit, mostly from reading other travelers' stories. One of my favorite is Vladimir Dinets. In Central America I follow his footsteps. See "America Latina" at his Internet site: http://dinets.travel.ru/

Central America (part III)

Alex Mumzhiu
2006-03-22 18:36:24

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there. They enjoy the rights of full fledged citizens there. They live on the streets and have very active social lives there, however they behave perfectly, never bark, or bother pedestrians.

Bocas Del Toro is recommended for snorkeling and diving also. Corals do not form a reef there, they cover bottom in some areas entirely, but they are not tall, only about 0.5m tall, and they intermingled with sponges and other plants/animals. Water is very warm and full of micro organisms, some of them are stinging. Two snorkeling trips were enough for me.

From Bocas Del Toro I went to Boquete. It is full of flowers and smells with flowers. There are a lot of Hollanders there, locals and tourists. I rode a taxi, which is very cheap there, to surrounding mountains and rode the bike down to the city. You can ride a taxi almost to the top of volcano Baru, which is right above the town.

From Boquete I took bus to Panama City. Panama City is great! After traveling a while in Latin America you get sick and tired of that typical Latino Americanism. Dirty streets full of street vendors selling different junk, chaotic traffic, air pollution and so on. Panama City is different. It is a big and important port city, something like Hong Kong or Istanbul. It is pretty civilized, I would not say Westernized or Americanized, just civilized.

I attended a great show on Mariflores lock of the Panama canal. Huge oceanic ships were raised and lowered in front of us through the system of locks. Ships are paying in average $150,000 for going through the canal. I stay in hostel Voyager in center of Panama City in dorm for $8 per night.

In the middle of Panama metropolitan area they saved big chunk of jungle, 265 hectors. I rode bike there and saw more animals then in Monte Verde park including pretty funny creature called coati. I found a big construction tower crane in the middle of park for biologists to observe animal life. When I came, it was nobody around. So I ignored all warnings posted around the crane and climbed the crane. It was great. See picture in attachment. I went to the booth of the operator, walked on the arrow and remembered my friend RT, who used to work as a construction crane operator.

Next day I went on Taboga Island. Taboga is a place where the biggest pearl was found. Now it belongs to Elizabeth Taylor. When I snorkeled around I figured out why the biggest pearls were found here. Oysters here attach their bottom half of shell to the ocean floor permanently. So you cannot remove the entire oyster, only the upper shell. I saw several pretty large oyster´s bottom shells, still covered with perfect perlamuter covering. Such an additional security prolonged the oysters life, which in turn results in larger pearls

I already started my long way back home. I went by bus from Panama City to San Jose, Costa Rica. Tomorrow I will continue to Managua, Nicaragua and then to San Salvador. San Salvador is the only Central American country, which I did not visit yet. From San Salvador I will go to Guatemala where I will visit Attitlan lake and the old capital of Guatemala Antigua. Then I will go to San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico. I heard a lot about this city. From there I will go to Mexico City and then to Guadalajara. I do not plan to spend much time there. Then, I will go to Mazatlan, Mexico and sail to Southern tip of Baja Peninsula. I will continue from there to Northern part of peninsula to Tijuana.Then I will cross the border to San Diego, Ca, from which I will fly home in last days of on April.

Alex Mumzhiu
San Jose, Costa Rica
March 30 2004, midnight