Survivor

Bonjour,

So, it’s been a pretty tough month after my computer got stolen, it was going to be busy anyway but that just set me like a week behind and i’ve been trying to catch up since. But, it has also been an exciting time too.
I had the craziest business trip ever in panama. We were doing a project with remote areas, improving access to certain services (can’t go into detail), but this essentially meant we had to go to two of the most remote areas in the country. One, was in one the areas reserved for indigenous Panamanians, and was a collection of tiny islands. It is the most remote place i’ve been.

We (Amalia – an analyst who is based in panama) took this tiny plane, where i could see the pilots in the row in front, we landed in what was essentially a grassy field, and the airport was made of reeds. Then, we walked through some jungle, to get to our airport shuttle, which was a tree trunk canoe thing with the cutest old man, who let us help paddle to get to the other island where we were to be picked up.

It was surreal. I was there, with my suit, tie and fancy noise cancelling headphones – paddling in a canoe. I’m not quite sure what we were thinking wearing suits in the jungle, felt very colonial.

When we got there, we realised there was no mobile signal except on this one bit of the island, so people go take it in turns to stand there. There was no electricity after 10pm. I found out the hard way– and when it’s dark there, it’s so so dark. It was no moon, and when you looked out over the sea towards the rainforest on the mainland which you knew was there, there was just pure blackness, freaky. Now, try finding your bedroom and toothbrush in that dark and you'll see how happy I was at 10pm.

Anyway, enough from me, here are the photos, but it was a veritable adventure. Blogspot has kindly decided to put my photos in reverse order, so start at the bottom if you can.

Alleluia- we arrive at the hospital on another island and have a working lunch from the cafeteria. in the background is the Darien - one of the densest pieces of rainforest in the world, apparently home to some drug smuggling.
Amalia rows the boat ashore
Jungle Mike feels like he might have picked the wrong clothes.
This was the airport. Customs was very quick.
Who needs a runway when you can land on grass. Amalia is standing here proud to have survived