Panama team goes to the jungle!

The end of the Panama study is upon us and to acknowledge the momentous occasion, we decided to go on a tour up the Chagres river and visit an offshoot of the Embera tribe.
The Embera tribe is from the Darien jungle (on the border between Panama and Columbia), but two families several decades ago decided that they could make a better living , while maintaining their traditional lifestyles if they moved to this national park reserve.

A 60 min bumpy/windy van ride was followed by a 45min boat ride up the crystal clear waters of the Chagres to where we hiked to a waterfall.I am not sure what Hugues is celebrating in this picture, but there were certainly many aspects of the day worth being excited about. However, Rohit and Jorge seem underwhelmed.
Typical of days where I skip my mid-morning snack, this lunch looked like the tastiest food I had ever seen. It was fried, fresh fish (heavy on the salt) and smushed and fried plantain disks (I am sure there is a more appetizing name for those...).
Now, I am not a huge political activist, but if there were a special interest group working to replace pigeons with friendly green parakeets that eat Doritos and will sit on your finger as long as you let it, I would be a proponent.
The largest of our team members gets a second temporary tatoo...they go on light and get much darker by the next day. (Unless you challenge the biggest guy on the team to an underwater swimming competition in the river with a pretty strong current and loose pretty decisively.)
My favorite part of the jungle trip (other than the super adrenaline rush of climbing up the waterfall against the flow of current struggling to find handholds that would prevent being thrown down the rocks under the pressure of the current) was definitely seeing the Shaman's garden of magical plants. I have a PhD so I have a strong understanding of magic and elves, but even these plants were quite impressive.
There was one stem of a leaf that he gave each of us about 3mm to chew and felt like pop rocks and then turned our mouths numb for about 10min. We all wished we had gotten more...
Stay tuned for the 4th of July trip to the home of the Embera tribe. It is sure to be unbearably hot and humid and fraught with adventure.

Pole vault buddies are special

Cat and Nate outside the Museum of Art on a perfect early-summer eveningEnter: jazz, Artemis, sangria, cheese and berries
Enter: fountains, sunset, and walking in fountains (...ah!, cold!)
Peaches can range from being tasteless and stringy to being the most sublime God-nectar I can imagine. These peaches were the latter.
We biked back up the path from the weekend before and this time stopped in Fairmount park's cemetary. It was a glorious day to honor the history of those who have passed away and contemplate our culture's ritualistic treatment of the deceased.
Gravestones often invoke emotional images for me, but this one is particularly powerful...There just isn't anything more fascinating and inspiring than the lives of the people around us. History is happening right now!
wow, what a great day!
Despite the long bike-ride the day before (not to mention the drinks and dancing later that night), we got up on Sunday and polished off the weekend with some pretty nasty stair sprints and Dim Sum in Chinatown.

Philadelphia - feeling more like a home

Three weekends ago I discovered the beautiful, long bike path that runs along the Shukyll river. It wanders away from Center City, passes through Fairmount Park and continues on for a long way. I don't know how far it goes since I got off at the cute city of Manayunk: a former industrial town now fully revitalized with boutique shops and baby-boomer Harley Davidson riders.

There were a lot of things on this bike ride that reminded me of growing up in Virginia:
romantic bridges...
hospitality...
shallow rivers and dense forests...
...and honeysuckle - one of my favorite smells ever ...

Happy Father's Day, Father!

From the two little girls.Excited (but tired) Cat and parents before doctoral "hooding ceremony"...
Excited Cat with awkward hat and graduate school advisor.
Cat has escaped!!!!! It is time to pretend to be a bat outside the art museum.
The cat-reenactment involved less flying than anticipated.
Cat and the painting that Julie painted...finally coming home from lab

Vegas, baby!

Cat flew from Panama to Las Vegas, NV to meet up with Julie+ SF crew of 9 people. We stayed in a condo on the strip next to the Bellagio. I've got to say, I was expecting the worst from Las Vegas and I was pleasantly surprised - it has a disneyland-thing going for it.
Julie and Cat donned boas to blend with the local culture :)

Who doesn't like short men who are probably very overheated wearing candy-costumes?
The whole crew at the Flamingo's pool. Note: this pool area appeared to be spring-break-24/7 for ex-fraternity brothers and guys who completely missed the boat the first time around.
Las Vegas: home of fountains in the desert and the second largest Eiffel tower in the world.



woven moss...very tasty

Julie playing craps - and counting winnings!
The whole gang
Julie and Cat in Las Vegas :)

Casco Viejo and San Blas

Steve came to visit me in Panama this weekend and it was so great to get to share my Panama-life with someone else. On Saturday we walked around Casco Viejo, a partially run-down but increasingly high-end, group of colonial buildings on the west side of Panama city. Here is an old building that was completely gutted with no roof - which I thought was rather liberating... Steve and I in Independence Plaza. Most of the couples and families strolling around in this area on Saturday afternoon are locals and there was a concert in this square later in the night complete with bongo drums and dancing women and a Aztec beer garden.
Right on the ocean, is this former house / pool / mansion complex that has been abandoned for a long time: there is a tree growing out of the chimney and its ocean-facing courtyard and pool area are now a hang-out for scateboarders....looked like fun
The atmosphere is extremely relaxed and I was so glad to walk around for a change instead of shuttling directly between work, hotel, and restaurants. Later that night, Steve and I checked out Calle Uruguay - a hot-spot in Panama City for restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. there were a few places with huge crowds that spilled into the streets until it started raining heavily.
All in all, our luck with the weather was amazing, given that the rainy season has begun. We took a 6am flight from Albrook Airport to El Porvenir in the San Blas Archipeligo (a native reserve for the Kuna people - one of Panama's indidenous tribes) and arrived around 6:30am. There was a guy from the hotel we were interested in waiting when we stepped off the plane so we hopped in the long, green, wooden boat and moved past several densely-populated islands before arriving.
The smallest inhabited islands are the size of a basketball court. Some islands aren't inhabited at all and the ones that are, are usually packed to the gills with local Kuna inhabitants. The lifestyle that the Kuna people have been able to preserve is relaxed and tidy. The houses are made almost entirely from coconut trees and the children help parents with daily tasks of fishing, cooking, and cleaning but mostly do a lot of playing around the islands.
Here is a picture of me in one of the hammocks outside our room.
Here is a compelling image of one of the many outhouses placed right off the shore - the guide book recommended against swimming near the inhabited islands....
However, there are a bunch of uninhabited islands that our "hotel"'s host took us to. Walking around this island takes about 5-10 minutes, but the water is perfect and the shade of the palm trees on the beach is quite refreshing. We were a little concerned when our boat-guy left while we were sleeping without saying anything, but he left one of the little boys who had hitched a ride to the island with us and he was always nearby lining up some seashells or sleeping against the sloping trunk of a coconut tree so we were pretty cure he'd come back for us.
not bad...
After much lying in the hammocks reading, and then once the sun when down and the generator came on, looking at the incredibly bright stars, it was time to go to bed.

We woke at 5:30am to heavily pouring rain, but by 6am it was getting light and clearing up and we hopped back into the green boat for the 10 min ride back to the "airport" island. Here comes the plane!
The whole 'airport-process' consisted of writing our names on a list and then waiting in a grass field outside for the plane to arrive. It was a full flight and it was pretty funny to see that even with the runway stretching the length of the island we bearly lifted off before we ran out of land...hahaha.

Tribute to West Philly.

I went on a bike ride after it rained last Sunday. I stopped and took pictures in a garden on Cedar street between 47th and 50th.