I leave the country and the Eagles make the playoffs. Figures.

After leaving Mondo we moved over to a place called Casa Verde. I´m not sure how to describe Casa Verde, it´s what you´d imagine a flop house to be if you were on the run from law enforcement and had to stay somewhere that wouldn´t ask too many questions while simultaneously punishing yourself for whatever crime you had happened to commit.

This of course assumes that you´re in the US. In Bocas, Casa Verde is fine living. Private rooms, shared bathroom, shared kitchen, washer / dryer, walls so thin that you can have conversations between rooms with the doors closed. Of course, no one actually gives a shit about any of that because Casa Verde has a private dock. For all it´s downsides, every morning I wake up and take my coffee on the dock while looking out on the ocean and the bright green of the jungle on the islands across from us. I came for the adventure, I´m staying for the view.

Yesterday Capt. Ron broke out the boat and took a few of us from Casa Verde out for a personalized island tour. Capt. Ron is sort of the landlord at Casa Verde while he works on building a number of houses for ex-pats in a stand of mangrove trees on another island. He´s part of this weird ex-pat community down here made up of people who for one reason or another decided that an island in the Caribbean offered more than what they had going on wherever home is. And for them, they might be right. This is a group of people very distinct from the backpacker / surfer crowd staying at the hostels. Most of the ex-pats I´ve met so far are older, around retirement age and have money. Like own 100k plus sailboats money. I can imagine that if you loved to sail, this would be a pretty good life.

While Ron does have a sailboat, yesterday we were in something akin to the water taxis that we take everywhere. 20 foot boat with a 40 horsepower Yamaha engine strapped to the back. I´m sure that this boat has a proper name but I generally refer to it as ¨please don´t let me fall in the water getting in or out of it¨ Rolls right off the tongue doesn´t it?

We´re still looking for something a little more upscale than Casa Verde, like a two bedroom apartment or a house for rent or something but for now it´s nice to have the company. Bocas is mostly a transitory stop for the backpacker crowd. People stay a few months and then bounce either north for Costa Rica or south for Columbia. Knowing people who own their own boats is a big, big plus. The key to making this whole experiment work is to go as local as we can. For the ex-pats that means getting connected with other sailors. For the backpacker crowd that means a job with a hostel or as a bartender. Jeff and I fall out of the scope of both of those and so for whatever else Casa Verde falls short on, it gives us a way to meet the other people who are going to be here for a few months. Well, that and making sure that we´re a regular fixture at happy hour. You know, just so the bartenders know us.

Anyway, it´s almost football time here. The rumor is that there´s a bar here that gets fox and I´m going to try and catch a little taste of home.

Posted by Ben Corman at 8:00 AM

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