the final countdown

top three favorite things about bogota:
1. the random passer-bys who whistle christmas songs. i witnessed this three seperate times.
2. the white dog (named renoir) that lay in the green grass in our backyard every morning for a glorious hour or two of sun.
3. seeing this dali piece en el museo botero.

i wish i could set the scene right for you guys; it was an amazing city.
imagine first the cold. it's just really cold there. it rains almost every day around three. the downtown district is nestled up against two steep, dramatic mountains. almost mounds, actually. at the top of one is a huge old cathedral. on the other one sits a huge open-armed statue of christ the redeemer. we took a cable car up to the cathedral one day. this is basically the view. it was sunday and the sermon inside was being broadcast over loudspeaker to the outside visitors. something about the silver tint in the air and how low the clouds hung gave me the chillss. i'm not sure if it felt holy or spooky. the streets below are more like corridors with only solid walls and heavy doors lining the sidewalks. doorbells echo in the courtyards. there is a lot of graffiti. a lot of really amazing graffiti and political stencils. this neighborhood wins the #1 place i regret having a broken camera in. the people seem almost as cold underneath as they are on the surface, but probably just going about their business. dramatic is a good word for things in this city. we spent three weeks there. i wish it could have been more. from all the tiny abuela-run kitchens serving heaping steaming plates of complete protein love to the armed, gloved, almost militia-like policemen on ever street corner. it doesn't cater to tourists much, but i wanted to look at everything for a long time. it just hooked me i guess. we were renting a room in a house with like 6 other people. mostly dreaded. all could juggle and ride unicycles. which they did. somewhere in there, a 1/2pound of the good herb was purchased and consumed. we didn't have electricity or hot water so we went to bed (which was two blankets layered on top of a collapsed air mattress i.e. the floor) with the sun, woke up with her as well, and stunk really bad by the time it was all over.
then we spent a week in la chorrera, the barrio where javier grew up outside panama city. i chatted up his short mom and his even shorter nephew, cooked lots of rice and beans, and stared lustfully at the huge mango tree in their backyard, wishing it was heavy with ripe fruit instead of worthless green rocks of acidity. it was semana santa. the first thing his mom did on the night we arrived was walk through the house with a shovel full of burning incense. there was both a lack of meat eaten in the house and an over-abundance of badly-dubbed religious films on the television, which was on all. the. time. it was nice to sleep in a bed with a mattress and a general air temperature not anywhere near freezing.
it was nice to arrive back in bocas del toro at dawn this morning. by now, it feels like home here. i've stayed here for more than half of the almost-seven months i've been gone. i have a few more sign projects to work on, a couple birthdays to celebrate, and i make the trek to costa rica in a couple weeks to catch my flight to oakland. any requests for panamanian paraphernalia should be submitted now. followed by western union cause i aint got no plata!!
...full, whole-seven-month-shebang-summery to follow...