I hope my sappy, vomit-worthy e-mail found you all well. A quick addendum here will have to do for I am pressed for time. It´s quite intriguing how the dynamics of a place can change with the addition of new people. Not only did we have ten of the Shitamas with us for the holidays (they left yesterday), but two of them have stayed to work until June. Marico and her lovebird Loren are 22 and 24, respectively, and my opinion of my living situation again has turned around... you´re probably all sick of me changing my mind, but you must be used to it by now. Marico has an iPod (i got to hear one of my favorite tunes, Etta James - If I Can´t Have You and some Marvin Gaye... how sweet it was), and also we are awaiting the container this week from the states (which is passing through customs in San Jose right now), which has a bunch of goodies on it: a bose stereo system, two bicycles, a kayak, a portable bandsaw mill, lots of cookbooks, a computer... basically most of the things that I´ve been missing. I´ve also had more work to do, and we started a grand gardening project that keeps me busy and loving life. Yesterday we transplanted 100 birds of paradise, and there´s an infinite amount more to do. Today I got to ride the quad into town to do some errands (and I haven´t been online in almost two weeks so it´s quite a treat)... a beautiful, hour-long drive through the rainforest and along the Golfo Dulce, passing monkeys and morphos is just the usual. I have been eating like a queen and have free reign in the kitchen... pizza from scratch, spanish rice, homemade alfredo sauce, fresh fish, on and on, I love to cook... So, all-in-all I still am weary of the snakes (though we haven´t found any terciopelos in two weeks), and it´s something I´m willing to live with. I went for a great seven-hour hike on Friday with Zach (one of the Shitamas) and we didn´t see any snakes...

So, about that hike. We decided to hike down the Cayunda River that´s accessible just below the house. Since we´re both pretty much insane, we jointly decided when we arrived at a waterfall (only about 6 meters high) that, instead of turning around, we would jump in the pool below with no chance of getting back up that way and we would instead continue hiking on all the way to the Pacific Ocean (which at the closest point is 4 km from the house). There are a few reasons this was probably not the smartest idea... we didn´t bring any snacks (though we did have water), we had no idea how far the hike would be, we started hiking a little late in the day (around 11 a.m.), and the only form of light we had was a lighter (for smoking spliffs in the rainforest, of course - sorry mom). At what seemed to be about 4:00 p.m., heading east (remember, we were looking for the Pacific ocean), with only two hours of light left, we seriously contemplated the fact that we would be left to sleep on the banks of the river with no lights (and the moon had set earlier in the day so we were shit out of luck on that front). Anyways, we luckily didn´t hit any mangroves (with crocs) and the river was relatively shallow most of the way (though we had to climb down a few waterfalls)... we found a trail to the main road around 4:45 p.m. and oh my how good it felt to take off my soaking socks and rubber boots. My feet were mushy... so now, all we had to do was get back to the house. We ended up walking about a half kilometer up the road where we found Adrian Forsyth´s property. We walked up his road and found his house. This house was sooo nice, right on the ocean, beautiful dark wood shutters, high bookshelves, spiral staircase, swimming pool... a modestly rich tropical home. If Adrian had been there I´d imagine he´d have been smoking a pipe in a lightweight silk robe on an armchair reading a book about beetles. Anyways, we scared the crap out of the caretaker´s wife, curlers in her hair, the only one on the property. We had been snooping around through Adrian´s open house, exhausted and dirty as hell, looking for someone so we could use the radio to call for a ride. Anyways, all worked out and then we went to Puerto Jimenez and hung out with Erick and partied at the disco. Gotta love it here.

Well, it´s almost 1 p.m. and the grocery store will be re-opening. Hope you all have a happy and safe new year´s eve...ciao.

Well, I survived the border again and am back in Puerto Jimenez where it´s 3 bucks an hour for Internet and $1.15 for a beer. Surprisingly, I miss Panama just a hair. It was nice to have a new friend to hang out with. And he was so cute too. Ho-hum.

I need one of these to make me feel better...

I´m just going to post an old favorite photo every once and a while until I resolve the camera situation...

Andrew in Awe : Vernal Falls, Yosemite National Park :: May 2004

For those of you who (1) still check this page every once and a while, and/or (2) get discouraged with giant strings of text, you´ll either have to be a big boy or girl and do a little reading - or contribute to My New Camera Fund. (Donations are now being accepted through PayPal - my account is paypal@jdangelo.com. I guess this is a good place to insert a Happy Holidays greeting, so... Merry Christmas everyone! All of your gifts are in the mail, but they´ll probably get stolen before they get to you.) I suppose you could stop visiting here too, but I´d really prefer that you just stick around and wait it out!

I´m not going to lie: I think my camera still technically works. But, the flash is done for as well as the LCD. It is quite a lovely abstract piece of artwork that appears on the screen that resembles the feather of a neotropical bird, purple and black, cracked down the middle. I may resort to taking pictures with the viewfinder, but I still have no way of controlling the manual settings (and I doubt I left it on automatic). So, basically, it needs to be repaired. Yesterday I found this to be impossible unless I go to Panama City or San Jose. Bleck.

Since I find myself here in Panama with too much time on my hands, I decided to provide the journal with a quarterly report on some important issues in my life. But first, a little overview of the past two days:

Yesterday was much like today: woke up, walked to get breakfast, went shopping in the central part of town, went to a movie (Elizabethtown and A History of Violence), walked to the Internet cafe, and later I will go to play pool. I met a nice boy there last night, Olmedo...I only understood about 70% of what he said, but hell, that´s close enough. He was a spitting image of a friend named Drew, mannerisms and all, except he´s brown and speaks spanish. The boys here are sooo different. It´s all about the blue eyes here, like they´ve never seen them in their life. I imagine it´s what it is like to be a supermodel. It can be annoying at times, but I suppose it´s better than dealing with all you crazy American boys. You all have way more issues than you know.

So, on to some important things. Keep in mind this is all a bit relative to the moment...

First of all, I know how much I raved and raved about this new job, but two weeks later and I am on the brink of hating it. A few reasons:

I live in the middle of the jungle. There are seven-foot snakes seen on a daily basis, we caught 8 terciopelos in the past 10 days before I left right near the house (these are some of the most poisonous snakes on earth), and I really just don´t like snakes. There are a lot of them. I walk through the yard in fear with my rubber boots (I don´t ever walk on the lawn with my sandals because of the terciopelos), and I know they can still give a wicked bite through the boots. Granted last year there were only two people bitten, it´s a halfway rational fear.

As far as the creatures, I think the only other ones I worry about in the back of my head are the wild cats... I think it would be soo amazing to see a jaguar, puma, ocelot, or jaguarundi, but at the same time, I wouldn´t want it to be within 10 feet of me. Jaguars are 200 lb. cats for chrissake.

The second main point is that I am living without music. I never imagined how difficult this would be. I have my guitar (which I finally started playing again after I got some new strings), but there is only so much music we can make with one guitar and a few harmonicas. The variety of music that I like cannot be produced by measly me and Tom (who by the way, is an excellent bassist and guitarist from St. Augustine). Case and point: During Elizabethtown, tears started rolling down my face when I heard Jim James singing. It was a feeling I have never experienced through music before. There is no better feeling in this world than the feeling I experienced at that moment. It´s kind of like embracing your lover after a long-awaited return or what I imagine it´s like to see the Taj Mahal in person. Tears of love.

So, I´ve come to realize that it is possible to live in the most beautiful places I´ve ever been, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and one of the most biologically diverse National Parks in the world with bone-chilling sunsets, and not be happy. It may sound nice to have a job where you do virtually nothing but cook and clean a few hours a day, if at all, but it´s not very rewarding. But, the reason that tops it all is the isolation. I have zero social life living in the middle of nowhere. I live two older guys, one is 56 and one is close to that. They are great people, Craig is an amazing person with great stories and sense of humor and all, but I need more interaction. We only go into Puerto Jimenez twice a week and I´m always in a rush there and the Internet cafe is relatively expensive. Other than that, we went out one Friday night to the only local bar within 40km (it´s fabulous and also expensive). Everyone in the Osa speaks English! It´s so frustrating. One of the reasons I came to Costa Rica was to immerse myself in Spanish. I miss Uvita and all the people there so much. So that´s that. My tentative plan is to return to Uvita sometime at the end of January. I will be returning there for New Year´s Eve and I already can´t wait.

Okay, so this first important issue in my life lends itself well as a segue. Every now and again (like yesterday) I get overwhelmed about being so ungrounded. What the hell am I doing here, what am I looking for, if anything? At times it´s hard to accept that I don´t have a home anymore, nothing cozy to return to. I have to start all over when I get back. And I haven´t a dust particle of an idea of what I will do for work when I get back to the states. But, I also know that everything will work itself out as it always does.

On a more positive note: I´ve realized within the three months that I´ve been here that it is more than possible to be cognizant of what is happiness. Overall and aside from the new job, I´ve been more happy in the past three months than I´ve been in years. That alone makes this entire trip worth it. That, and I can now have three-hour conversations in Spanish. I still have a lot left to learn...

i´m hanging out in david, panama for a few days so i can renew my tourist visa in costa rica... i´m only allowed to stay there for three months at a time and need to leave the country for 72 hours before i can return. so here i am in the third largest city in panama. i might as well be in miami, except that the internet is 50 cents and hour and beers are 32 cents.

I went back to Uvita for two days to visit some friends, and originally i was supposed to take this little vacation to Panama with my friend Tom in Uvita, but he had his dogs fixed last week and they were having some problems. Soooo... I didn´t really have a choice but to come by myself. I talked to Jack extensively about getting here, the buses, the border, where to stay, if it is safe, etc... and i was all set.

so, on the bus right before neilly, about 20km before the border, there were a few cars stopped and two seriously mangled cars in between, car parts and gasoline all over the road. it had been a head on collision that happened a few minutes before we arrived. there was a huge crowd of people around the area, and everyone got off the bus. not surprisingly there were no medics or police in sight, but the drivers had been pulled out of the cars and were being helped by people in the surrounding neighborhood. it´s unbelievable that they were conscious. about 10 minutes later, the fire medics showed up and a few minutes after that the drivers were both taken to the hospital in taxis. about a half hour in the police showed up to do some measurements, and two hours into this traffic started moving again.

during that whole incident, i met a young mexican couple, Sara and Miguel, that was on the same bus and they were also headed to david, so we shared a taxi from neilly to the border. at the border, i got my exit stamp from costa rica, and went to get my entrance stamp to panama, but the woman at the counter was telling me i needed to first buy a $25 ticket before i could enter, a ticket that showed that i was going to leave panama... I knew she was full of shit, i told her i knew that i didn´t need to spend $25 bucks to get into panama. i was so pissed off at this point, the mexican couple were also told the same thing. we were also told that we could each pay only 10 bucks if we give it to them directly and they would let us pass. so, i ended up having to slip 10 bucks into my passport to these corrupt assholes just because they can see that i´m a stupid american chick. the mexican couple had to do the same.

the different between panama and costa rica is a lot more drastic than i expected. i figured it would be like passing on I-95 from south carolina to north carolina. the first thing i noticed is that there are real four-lane highways that are paved and without potholes! these people know how to maintain their asphalt. Most alarming to me is that the people are sketchy as hell, and there is not even a hint of the pura vida vibe. it´s a lot like the united states here. they even use the US dollar.

well, i have a few days to explore the country and change my mind. the mexican couple tried to convince me to take the overnight bus with them to Panama City but I was so furious about the border and exhausted that I just decided to stay here for the night. I might head to Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean side for a night, but for now I´m going to look for a cheap CD player...

it has been a while again since i´ve written, and i´m afraid i´m not going to be able to update much in the next month or so until we get internet at the house here. at the house, we have two methods of communication - one a two-way radio and the other the cell phone, which we have to drive to the top of the mountain to use. so it goes here.

this is the most amazing job i´ve ever had. you would be wise to visit here and this project. there is wayyy to much for me to write about to get it all down now, but i am in the midst of a great opportunity. there are so many talented people working on this project and others in the Osa. I am getting to meet some very high profile people and am getting to work on a worthwhile project. In the next month or so, we are working on installing Internet at the house... you wouldn´t believe the craziness involved in doing so. right now the gov´t has a monopoly on these things... there are other options, and now with CAFTA there are other possibilities that may be available in the near future. i´ve been writing in my journal on paper, so someday i hope to have time to transcribe... for now there´s just too much to say. On December 18th, we will be hosting one of the investor´s and his family, the Shitama´s, 10 people... it´s going to be quite busy for me this month.

I miss everyone and I wish I had more time to write about this... I must meet back up with Craig in a few minutes to head back to the house. This project is called Cerro Osa, by the way... the Web site is under development right now, and I´m also working on getting that moving... there should be an abundance of info there about the project soon.

other tidbits, some of our neighbors include a German rock band, the head of entymology at the Smithsonian, Heart Pheonix, many others... pretty neat. also, we ride the quad into town, the road to the house is inaccessible by car it will be fixed in the next month, the quad is so much fun... 22 km, some parts at 60km, with sweeping views of the pacific... i´m in heaven here. come visit.