We took a taxi to Curi Cancha reserve, asked for a map for a 3 or 4 hour long walk, and off we went. To begin with there were a few people around, a Chinese family with some of those really immense cameras all pointing up into a tree. We tried to see what they […]
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Cloud forests are very lovely
Our first trip to the cloud forests. We went to a canopy walk, a very lengthy (and expensive) one. Rather busier and less wild than I would like, at least the paths and so on — the forest itself was spectacular. We didn’t see any animals but we’d have to come with a guide to […]
Rainy season
Today we left Panama – a very hot and sunny Panama, and flew off to Costa Rica — a very cold and wet Costa Rica. Our driver arrived a bit late but eventually turned up and then took us up through the hills to Monteverde where it was pouring, not surprisingly given it’s the rainy […]
Not pirates at all
We arranged for a man with a four wheel drive to take us from the Pacific to the Atlantic, cutting across Panama. We drove through the hills that form the spine of Central America, lush green hills with vegetation piled over vegetation in the way that makes me truly miss the tropics. Then we arrived […]
Three cities
In the morning, we walked across to the fish market, which I had read was the place to have lunch in the city. It was a short walk over very large but quiet roads along the glittering Pacific. The market itself – the wholesale market was being washed down, but along the front was a […]
Canal with a country around it
We are in Panama. As we got off the aeroplane and walked through the bridge to the airport, a fleet of black helicopters roared overhead, a suitable welcome to a very strange country. We are staying in the historic old town, Casco Viejo, a pleasant old place with coloureful ornamented buildings, though a great many […]
Those I’ll never see again
For some reason dogs seem to like me. This is not exactly reciprocated, as I don’t particularly like keeping pets, and especially indoor dogs, but I don’t mind dogs as long as they aren’t noisy and boistrous. Anyway, the dog at my Spanish school really seems to like me, but in a rather sweet way […]
Successes and failures
After lunch we took a cab to La Catedral, formerly prison of Pablo Escobar (built to his specifications and so equipped with tunnels and various luxuries) and now an old-age home run by monks. The road climbed high in the hills behind Envigado, and it was startlying how suddenly we left the city behind: a […]
On the gripping hand
I clicked over to the Star, the Malaysian newspaper, to skim the headlines and perhaps longingly read a (probably paid-for) review of a curry mee place, and found this excellent photo/headline combination.
Voices not heard
I read this article a couple of days ago and it has stuck in my memory. It’s an account of growing up in a lower class family in Garhi Shahu; he must have been only a few years younger than me so there are points at which our worlds touched and others that are so […]