It's gonna rain

Many of you have probably heard the reports of heavy rain, flooding, and mudslides here in Rio. The worst was towards the beginning of the week, and it's mainly settled down now. It's still been raining to varying degrees every day, but the flooding has been gone for a few days. The flooding and damage was bad; the city was pretty chaotic and basically stopped on Tuesday and most of Wednesday. I arrived back in Rio early Tuesday morning after my trip with Rachel, and the city was flooding then because of ongoing rain since Monday. It took me 2 and half hours to get home from the airport with a combination of bus and taxi due to traffic, rain, and flooding. When I got to my hood the streets and sidewalks were full of mud and running with nasty, brown water. It was challenging to walk on the sidewalk let alone drive a car. I think other parts of the city were flooded still worse. I still had school that day, and I had about an hour before I would need to leave, so I went home for a quick nap before heading out again. To get to school, I take a city bus. After waiting for a lengthy period of time, I began to realize that the bus I needed wasn't running due to the flooding. Neither was the secondary bus I could take to get to school. Only a couple of the bus lines that I regularly see running through my hood were running then. The others must have been unable to run because of the flooding. I eventually assured myself the bus wouldn't be coming, and I had no way to get to school. So I went home. And school was canceled anyways because the city was chaos.

The next day, rumors were circling that school had been canceled for the rest of the week, and lo and behold, the rumors were true. School was canceled for almost all of last week. It's been very nice and relaxing, albeit a little less to do than normal because there is at least some rain every day. But I went to see a movie, went out a few times at night, went to the big market downtown. But I could have stayed in Central America with Rachel for a whole other week. The sun is shining now, but it's more than likely to give way to rain later today.

Because I haven't had school this week, I've had ample time to update this blog, but I haven't until now. Go figure.

The trip with Rachel was wonderful. It was really, really nice, and we had a great time. I arrived on a Friday evening, and after waiting for a bus for a half hour in the wrong direction, I figured it out and hopped on the right bus. But then I took that bus too far so I had to take a taxi to where we were staying. I met Rachel and we went out to dinner and just had a relaxing evening because early the next morning we left for the San Blas Islands, which are a large group of remote islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama. We had to leave at 5 am and fit 7 of us into a cramped SUV; not the most ideal conditions for a 3 hour drive. We had to make a few stops along the way to buy supplies, passport control, and breakfast, which was fried dough and a slice of cheese, but it was kind of good because it tasted like a funnel cake. I miss funnel cakes. I haven't had a real one in a while. I love those ones at Six Flags; they're amazing. Anyways, the worst part of the trip to the islands was that about halfway there our journey took us through the mountains. Although the road was almost entirely unpaved and very windy and curvy, the driver didn't seem to care and drove with almost reckless abandon, causing us in the already cramped car to rock violently. And we were driving through the mountains for at least an hour. I think at the very least the road could have been paved. I mean, come on. But it would have been nice if the driver went a little slower and more cautiously, too. So, the violent rocking for an hour caused one of us get a bit motion sick and throw up in a bag over the lap of the other (hint: not me). But, the problem was, there was a hole in the bottom in the bag. That was nice.

We finally arrived at the end, but we still had to take a long boat ride to our island. This group of islands, while part of Panama, is run autonomously by a group of Indians called the Kuna Yala. They have control over the territory. First, we made a pit stop on the way to our island at one of the islands densely populated by the Indians. They live in grass huts with dried palm leaves as the roofs. And they are very small people. I'm not a particularly large person myself, but many of them didn't even come up to my shoulders. The women wear beaded jewelry along the entire length of both legs. Their jewelry and artwork is very nice. And their bathrooms are bottomless holes...with the ocean as the bottom.

We stayed on this island for about a half hour before continuing on to the more remote island where we would be staying. The whole archipelago has over 360 small islands. The trip to the island, and the islands themselves, were gorgeous. Turquoise, clear water, white sand, bunches of palm trees. The scene honestly looked like a computer screensaver. It was beautiful. Each island was more beautiful than the last. We finally arrived at our island, and it was like paradise. We spent two days and nights there, relaxing on the beach or in hammocks, swimming, and snorkeling. It was just an incredible setting. The only problems were that large bugs came out at night (cockroaches and spiders) and the food was insufficient. I expected that we would be staying in a small lodge, but our accommodations were an air mattress in one of their grass huts; not what I was expecting. Neither Rachel nor I are big fans of camping, so that was a little unsettling for us. The food was one plate of a small fish, rice, and a small salad, three times a day, but substituting eggs or bread for fish for breakfast. We brought a few snacks with us, but a huge amount of ants attacked them. So I was pretty hungry the whole time. But, on the whole, the islands were a very nice experience.

We returned to Panama City after the islands. The trip back to Panama City was less eventful, although the road, surprisingly, still wasn't paved and the driver was less than careful. Except that the car broke down for about 15 minutes or so. Also, something funny that happened was that we approached another car later on that had broken down and stopped, as though we were going to help the people from that car. But, apparently our driver apparently thought better of it and after pausing for several seconds, just decided to start driving again. It was like we were cruelly teasing them, making them think help had finally arrived before just speeding it off. I felt kind of bad, but I also thought it was funny.

Rachel and I were a bit tired when we arrived back in the city after doing absolutely nothing exerting for the past few days on the island, so we napped for most of the afternoon. Then, in the evening, we went to the Pesach seder with the Chabad Rabbi in Panama City. The seder was nice, and we met some nice, interesting, and funny people, including one admirable woman who retired to India to help victimized young girls. We went to the seder the second night too, but they were VERY long. We read a majority of the Haggadah, plus each paragraph and blessing was repeated in three languages (English, Spanish, and Hebrew). The food was fine, but there was no matzah ball soup, so that was disappointing.

The next day we did a full day of touring in Panama City. First we went to the Panama Canal, which was very cool. We were fortunate to see a large ship passing through, and saw it raised in the locks. There was also a nice museum we walked through at the visitor's center. After the canal we went to the Amador Causeway, which is kind of like a boardwalk I guess but without the boards. It was really just a long, scenic road which connected three small islands close to the city. After the Causeway we went to a part of the city called Casco Viejo, which is the old colonial section. There were some nice buildings and architecture. Then we went to the second seder that night.

We would have liked some more time in Panama; we were very impressed. Panama City was surprisingly nice; it seems to be a bit like Miami. And there are supposed to be many more beautiful spots there as well. Nonetheless, our time in Panama expired and we left for Costa Rica early the next morning. We spent just a few hours in San Jose, the capital, before we had to catch a bus to our destination, a popular beach spot on Costa Rica's Pacific coast, where we stayed for 4 days. Manuel Antonio was certainly nice, but for being one of Costa Rica's premier destinations, Rachel and I weren't overly impressed. It was beautiful, but we also might have been desensitized after Panama. Manuel Antonio has a popular national park, which we went to one day and saw a lot of monkeys and a sloth. We have some cute pictures of the monkeys. The national park was cool and we were rewarded for walking through it with a pretty, exclusive beach at the end. We also spent another day at the beach, and we did a jetskiing tour, which was a lot of fun. We spent a little bit of time in the adjacent town called Quepos, but there's really nothing to do and it's pretty shady. The main disappointing thing is just that our diets were somewhat limited due to Passover. Otherwise, it was very nice and relaxing.

We spent the last night and day in Rachel's town. I met her host family, and they were very warm and friendly. I like Rachel's town a lot. It wasn't what I expected; I had expected it to be a very rural town with a lot of space between houses and pretty quiet, but that wasn't a case. It was a town in every sense of the word, with everything you might expect there to be in terms of shops, eateries, etc. Her school is very small and pretty. The entire school only has about 6 classrooms and is on less than an acre of land. But there is a beautiful garden, and the school's setting is really nice.

I'll post the pictures soon; hopefully you'll enjoy them. We enjoyed the trip very much and it was sad to leave. But I guess there's worse places to come back to.