Still mincing

Life out here has settled down to a a fairly simple routine now. We are doing alot of digging and planting, chopping and shaping. We built a bridge in the village this week too which was really satisfying. Brute force and determination is in abundance among the locals, and a little is rubbing off on me. I think its partly all the insect bites, anaesthetising me against the world... they are getting better now as I learn how to keep moving just enough to keep them off, and not to be shy with the chemical repellant for trips into the jungle. I feel like part of the family where I am staying too, playing with the kids, and chatting to the parents in ever (slowly) improving Spanish in the evenings.

I have been tasting, smelling, seeing, feeling and hearing everything with my senses wide open and with as little prejudice as I can. There are some wonderful things around... surprises of allsorts, from humming birds to flocks of parrots, to bizarre grubs appearing out of the earth we are digging, termites and dangerous looking ants, stick insects like Ents from the lord of the rings, and grasshoppers like world war two bombers!

At the moment I am actually by the sea in Panama, we have come for a weekend away. It is beautiful, a little Caribbean island off the mainland, with a very laid back feel to it. It was a bit of a mission to get here in the end. We set off on the bus at the crack of dawn, and arrived at the mainland town at about nine pm ages after the water taxis had stopped. Somehow we managed to arrange for a local gent to bring us over in his old wooden boat. What a journey though. It took about an hour, out on the sea which was as black as if it were made of obsidian untill the boat cut into it shattering the stillness with its white foam, and the flickering green phosphorescence. That was nothing compared with the stars though. There was no moon to be seen, and the sky was simply awash with pinpricks of glittering light, more than you can count seven times over in a British sky. Our little boat with little us bobbing along on the empty sea shrunk into such tiny insignificance under that barrage of the vastness of the space around us. A very humbling experience indeed. So here we are three days of sand and sea and no digging. How nice it will be... what am I doing sitting infront of a computer?