The last few days have been slow as Jeff and I are recovering from NYE. I´m not sure why the recovery should take two days as I didn´t really drink that much. This, I can assure you, is not out of some new found sense of responsibility but out of simple fear. The NYE party we went to was at a place called Aqua which is a bar / hostel that sits right across the channel from us on the isle de Carenero. The only way to get there is by water taxi. Getting in and out of a water taxi is fine when you´re sober but can be a bit tricky drunk and I didn´t want to be that guy who slid off the dock, bounced off the side of the taxi and floated home, even if it was NYE. And believe me, people eat shit right off the dock all the time. Aqua is sort of famous for it as the dock, dance floor, swimming holes and bar are all really the same thing. This will make more sense when the pictures are up but trust me, hang out at Aqua long enough and you´re going to see someone walk themselves right off the dance floor and into the ocean while they´re sipping on something with rum in it and looking off into the distance.

This raises another point about Panama. If they have laws here, I have yet to encounter them. A place like Aqua is a liability lawyer´s wet dream. But then, the lax policy on fireworks sales are as well. On New Years we saw four or five fireworks displays that rival anything that I´ve seen in the states. So what right? There was no ¨official¨ Bocas del Toro fireworks display. It was just groups of people who bought MASSIVE numbers of fireworks and decided to set them off around midnight. I know this because one of the best displays was from Aqua where, to get into the party, everyone had to bring at least one sky burst rocket. And right at midnight there were two guys up on the roof firing the rockets into the air about two feet over people´s heads. I saw more than one misfire slam into the deck where people were standing. People, you want to party like rock stars, this is the place to do it.

But I don´t think it´s the alcohol or the party that I´m recovering from. I think that it´s taken me two days to recover because I´ve got a parasite. Jeff, of course, thinks I´ve lost my mind but I´ve been googling around. Lethargy plus insanity? Classic parasite symptoms.

Other than the NYE party we haven´t done much. Just laying around and reading. The guy who manages the place we´re staying has a room full of books that, under normal circumstances, I wouldn´t consider touching with a long disease ridden stick but since there´s no TV down here in the land of tropical diseases, I´ve given up my snobbery. I´ve been working my way through story after story where the distant FBI agent with the impossibly blue eyes (male) has to work with the brilliant but work obsessed scientist who just happens to be gorgeous (female) to solve some implausible crime that has the potential to rock the world. I know. Believe me, I know.

But soon we should have laptops here and we´ll be back at work, parasites or no.

I´m sure I´m going to regret this but here it goes. I´ve got myself a Panama cell phone and incoming calls are free so if any of you have ever wanted to talk to me, here´s your chance. To reach me simply dial 011-507-6870-2073.

Posted by Ben Corman at 8:00 AM

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