Panama

I'm in Panama, its beautiful, it's also impossibly hot and despite it being rainy season, so the sun hasn't actually been seen for days without a cloak of clouds shielding it, and my liberal application of sunscreen, I have managed to burn myself quite impressively. 

Living in a city, in an apartment with noise reducing, double paned windows, a balcony and a couple of pet fish, its almost impossible to imagine that in other parts of the world people live on tiny islands, in small wooden constructions with thatched roofs and glassless windows, on stilts, in the ocean. There are monkeys in the surrounding trees and dolphins in the water under the house. This is something that only exists in the medium sized black boxy thing that sits in the living room of our apartment, under the books and knickknacks, not out in the real world where the crocodiles live. 

We sailed down rivers and along the coast and out to little islands which look like tiny forests sticking straight out of the ocean. We paddled the dingy through Jungle, surrounded by giant snappy teeth, and flocks of parrots, listening to monkeys howling at each other, or us, either way they are loud and sound far bigger than they actually are. They sound a like a pack of dogs that have barked themselves almost horse all screaming into a megaphone at once. We met the people who lived in the houses on stilts and the children who all stopped to stare at us as they rowed to or from school in their canoes and their uniforms. 

and I'm pretty sure I discovered several new species of crab, that I shall name appropriately...small yellow feather duster crab is my favorite so far. 

Currently we're in Bocas del Toro, theres a town and bars and shops and an airport that runs the length of the island. 

I miss the monkeys.