Thursday, October 29, 2009

Visa Renewal – ¡Panamá!

One of the quirks you run into when you live outside the US is the set of rules other countries impose on visitors. To make sure we don’t overstay our welcome, we are only allowed to be here for 90 days before we have to leave the country for at least 3 days; then we are allowed another 90 days. We plan to attend ILE for 2 tri-mesters, 4 months each, so we will have to leave the country at least once during each tri-mester. We could have gotten a student visa that would have allowed for us to stay up to one year, but that is a difficult and expensive process.

So this past weekend, we went to Panamá! On Friday, we took a 5-hour, $11 bus ride to the border. We saw LOTS of bananas, or at least the blue bags protecting the bananas. Once we got to the border, we had to buy another $11 return ticket to San Jose and get a $5 tourist card before going to the Panamá immigration window (they also want to make sure we don’t overstay our welcome!). This process took about an hour – did I mention it was raining? A lot?

From there we got a 1-hour, $5 taxi-van ride to the coastal town of Almirante. Next, we got a 25-minute, $4 water taxi ride to Bocas Del Toro Town on one of the islands where we stayed at Lula’s B&B for about $35 a night. It was still raining during our water taxi ride. Needless to say that between waiting at the border, the water taxi, and waiting for the taxi to the hotel, much of what we had in our backpacks got wet!

Saturday morning greeted us with sunshine and blue sky! Woo-Hoo! After some great omelets, Bryan, the B&B owner, suggested we take the bus to the other side of the island to visit Starfish Beach. That was another 45-minute bus ride (I didn’t know the island was that big) but it was well worth it.

The beach was very primitive, in a deserted island sort of way. Palm and coconut trees were growing wild. Old branches and dropped coconuts littered (no, dotted) the area giving it a unique charm. After about a 15-20 minute walk, we found Starfish Beach. The starfish were 8-12 inches across and in water just a few inches deep. We had to be careful not to step on them… yellow, orange, white and many different shades.

After several hours of sunning and swimming, we were ready for lunch. Drew and Jesse, two of the teenagers with us, ordered red snapper and were not ready for the WHOLE fish that arrived. Beth used some of her rice to cover its eyes so it didn’t watch her eat it! We hung out a little longer, before taking a bus back to the hotel. After cleaning up, we were ready for some seafood. Bryan suggested the Cosmic Crab Café, a 5-minute water taxi ride away. Dinner was great and of course it started to rain 10 minutes before we were ready to leave (someone had to have some ice cream or we probably would have made it back before the rain… oops! – sorry).

Sunday morning, after a filling pancake breakfast, we reversed our route and got back to San Jose without incident. We got our clothes washed, did some homework, got the backpacks ready, and called it a weekend! Indeed, missionaries do take time to enjoy what God provides, amen?

1 comment:

  1. rsuarez1@embarqmail.comNovember 13, 2009 at 7:09 PM

    ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL! How wonderful that the Lord has given you such an amazing opportunity to view what he has made. May he continue to bless you both.

    ReplyDelete

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