World trip, life journey

This is Dean's self-portrait, taken with a tripod, looking at the Panama City skyline from our hostel window. We're coming to the last quarter of our trip. At the moment, we're both very reflective of how 2008 has been and forward thinking about the year ahead. Travelling is well and truly a part of us now. We are travellers, curious world and life explorers, muddling our way through our journey on this planet and through life. Nothing quite teaches you life lessons like a 12 hour bumpy road trip, haggling with a desperate vendor, sharing a room with 5 other people or losing money to a scam. Nothing quite makes you feel sheer joy and beauty like reading a letter from your World Vision sponsor child describing his elation about your planned visit, having a meaningful conversation with someone in a language that you've been learning or finally arriving at a destination that had previously only been a dream.

Look up "paradise" in the dictionary

Pictures can speak a thousand words. So we won't say much. This is a photo taken in Bocas del Toro. It is a province in Panama made up of 9 islands in the Caribbean Sea (Atlantic Ocean side of the country). The reality TV show Survivor is filmed here, there's an airport on a baseball field, you can get 50 cent beers at Happy Hour and Dean saw 2 feet long lobsters while scuba diving. A travel buddy of ours took a photo of a crab smoking a cigarette here (Hi Rob!). Dean took this photo as storm clouds were setting in, the water was crystal clear and the sand was white. Simply, he thought it would make a pretty good photo. According to Lonely Planet, Bocas del Toro is trying to get into the dictionary definition of "paradise". That says it all.

Random randomness

The adjective "random", as defined by one dictionary, means "lacking a definite plan, purpose or pattern". In colloquial English, we use it to describe anything weird, spontaneous, pointless, nonsensical, unusual, unexpected, one-in-a-million. Something that makes you question if you're a pothead or makes you react with what-the??? While travelling, it seems a lot of random things happen - you witness random things, hear random stories and just generally are the subject of randomness. For example, during the last month in Central America: We met a Dutch guy who has all, but 40, Australian postage stamps between 1913 and 2007. Over dinner, Lina's Spanish teacher explained that the reason she is barred from teaching in the US, is due to a brief lapse in judgment when she flashed her breasts in a highschool classroom. We met a girl who was struck by lightning. We were walking with this Nicaraguan guy when all of a sudden, someone stabbed him. The stabbed Nicaraguan guy brushed off the violent attack as though he had been squirted with a water gun (ah, no biggie). Our Panama domestic flight took off from a baseball field. A couple had sex at our Costa Rican hostel. Maybe not so random except that they did it outside in everyone's full view and went for another round half an hour later. Random ape shit. The randomness of travelling.

Oceans apart

What a marvellous feeling: Having nothing to do, nowhere to be, no one to see except caring for sea turtles on the Guatemalan Pacific Coast. Lina has spent most of her time lying in hammocks, sleeping, eating and practising her Spanish with the locals. Dean has helped to build a new watch tower for the sea turtle conservation project. At night, we walk along the beach looking for newly laid sea turtle eggs to be buried in the hatchery. When they hatch, the volunteers send the baby turtles to the sea. Dean took this photo just before sunset and after a storm. He liked the sunset light coming through the storm clouds. Lina is looking out at the Pacific Ocean, where Parramatta is just over the other side. This photo, like all the others on this blog, has not been digitally altered.