Boquete, Las Lajas, Panama

We can´t believe we are down to our final two days in Central America, and it is with some sadness that we think about leaving behind all the life colour culture and humour we have grown accustomed to. We have absolutely loved Panama, considering we have already seen so much of central america it has almost been suprising to be so charmed. After beautiful Bocos del Torro we headed to the mountain village of Bouquete, the cool climate and mountinous landscape were a welcome change. It is so hard to describe the beauty of this area, the rides we took here were some of the most beautiful of the trip: mountains, waterfalls and river rapids. We lazed around while others did the strenuous hike up the local volcano. We enjoyed the temperature relief for a few days and had to wait out some rain, one of the few occasions we have had to so on the whole trip.

We moved on to Las Lajas an 'undiscovered' pacific coastal town. We were in high spirits when we arrived, the driving had been beautiful and traffic free and we slowly cruised through farm land on our way to town. We stopped at a great German restaurant when we arrived, it has to be said good food has been a rarity since leaving Mexico. While we were there a rather odd hunch backed gentleman in army pants that he was wearing too high was staring at us like he was trying to decide how to kill us for about a half an hour. It was a little unnerving, he then approached us and made arkward innappropriate conversation in a thick Russian accent, and if you grew up in the eighties like we did the baddies always have Russian accents. For some reason he had a boomerang with him and asked Alex for lessons in boomerang throwing, I had no idea he was such a good boomerang thrower!, it almost came full circle on the beach where Alex was demonstrating his skill to this odd gentelman. My admiration for Alex's skill distracted me from my fear about this man's sinister intentions for about thirty seconds. We had been planning to camp next door to the restaurant but after meeting this Russian guy that wouldn't leave us alone we decided to head a little further down the beach. Feeling unsettled and a little creeped out we found the most disgusting room we have stayed in thus far. We felt like we should have committed some kind of crime to be staying there. It was filfthy and furnished with a broom which we quickly discovered was there to sweep out the four inch crabs that were constantly crawling under the door up the walls, yep! they can climb. Another traveller told us she woke up with a crab biting her back, that was enough for us to pitch the tent and place it on top of the bed so at least we could sleep without fear of sharing our bed with the crabs. Feeling fairly miserable we watched a movie on our tiny iPod and that lifted our spirits enough to get us through the night.