David, Tuesday

What an adventurous chap I am.

I woke up about 7am and did the dozing thing. About 10am I started to feel I ought to get up but I really didn't want to face all the stuff I was supposed to be organising. At about 10:30 someone knocked on the door and said they wanted to examine the room (it turned out to be something vaguely electrical) so I was forced to get up.

I had a quick look at the guide book while I was turfed out. Getting cold feet about the hot springs (Los Pozos de Caldera), I flicked round a bit and saw that Boquete was also shown as a good place to access the hot springs from. If you consider having to get a taxi 18km as a good thing. At this point I very nearly gave up on the idea.

I ended up speaking to the owner-y chap I met yesterday and asked if I could use the phone, so he called up (on the second attempt, the number in the guide book was out of date so I had to get it off the web) the coffee plantation people and I spoke to them and arranged to do a tour tomorrow. They even seem to have one at 1pm which will save me having to get a 7am bus over there for a 9am tour.

I also asked the guy about the hot springs and he didn't immediately react with a horrified "you can't be serious" attitude, in fact he seemed to think it would be OK. He advised me to ask the driver to drop me off at the access road.

So I hastily packed my backpack (well, mostly *unpacked* it of the other junk it normally contains), got a cab over to the bus terminal (evidently not where I got dropped off on my arrival here, I walked past there yesterday, it is the company's own office) and managed without too much difficulty (the bus bays are - gasp - labelled!) to find a bus going to Caldera, the town nearby, and after nipping off to buy some more bottles of water and - in the absence of anything else to eat - some bread type things, I got the bus.

About an hour later I got chucked off with some very hazy directions, but fortunately I had spotted a sign just beforehand which pointed in the right direction. So I walked down the nominally 2.5km road (also labelled "7 min", which cheered me up until I did some mental arithmetic and realised that must be by car). It didn't really branch except at one point where it went over some very modern-looking canal, and there it was fairly obvious you should go straight on. So I ultimately got to this sign saying "Bienvenidos a Los Pozos" or something like that pointing off the (very poor by this stage, probably 4WD only) road. So I followed it. And kept walking. There were no branches on this path, but it didn't look very promising.

Eventually it terminated in some sign which said  (in Spanish) "welcome, mind the trees" (welcome to what?) with just beyond that some private property sign. I didn't see a soul all this way so I couldn't ask for directions even if I wanted to. I decided to double back to the sign by the road to see if I'd missed something, like a turn off. I hadn't.

The sign by the road didn't look as though anyone had accidentally or deliberately moved it to point in the wrong direction, but I tried going straight on up the increasingly poor (and rather steep) road on the offchance, but it was so obvious that wasn't right and the footing was sufficiently bad that I gave up and turned back.

At this point I took a photo of the welcome to Los Pozos sign as a kind of proof that I had indeed had a go. :-) I then for the second time went down the path off the road. This time when I got to the private property sign (maybe 500m or more from the sign by the road) I advanced a bit more and saw in smaller print underneath something about how the springs were private property and to get permission before using them, admission USD2. (In Spanish, of course). So this was in fact the right place after all.

Some old woman emerged eventually as I stood there dithering and I paid her the USD2 while some (fortunately tied up) dogs barked rather unpleasantly. She then waved me round the corner.

It turns out the springs are these fairly small pools, rather underdeveloped but I guess you could also say authentic if you were so inclined. The first one I saw had some youngish boy lounging around nearby (fully dressed, he wasn't using the pool), he seemed to say something to me I didn't hear so I asked him and he said there were four. Being oddly disinclined to get undressed in front of him, I wandered round and found another. I think it was probably about 2pm by this time.

And the water was indeed rather warm and it was quite nice. In fact, it was sufficiently warm that after a few minutes I felt oddly dehydrated and slightly sick, so I got out for a bit. And I kept that kind of thing up most of the time I was there, cycling between being fully in, a bit in and fully out.

It started to rain at one point, getting moderately heavy. Obviously I didn't care from an immediate personal perspective at that point (it was even moderately pleasant), but I was a bit concerned about the 30-45 min walk back to the road if it started chucking it down. But I stayed put (after covering my non-waterproof backpack up with a carrier bag) and it did indeed ease off and finally stop.

About 3pm a group of three young women turned up, who as it happened were English (from London, Sheffield and York, if memory serves) and who had met at Hospedaje Casco Viejo (i.e. the hostel I was at, though we just may not have overlapped in our stays, but it wouldn't surprise me if we had, since I never really met anyone there it is perfectly possible) back in Panama City.

They had come down from Boquete by bus and were intending to catch a bus at 4pm. We all got out about 3:50, they got dressed first and set off ahead of me, although I followed not long afterwards and passed them on the road. (They must have picked up the pace afterwards, as they arrived at the junction with the main road only just behind me. I didn't walk back with them once I met them as they seemed to be going pretty slowly at that stage and I was anxious to get to the main road before it started to rain heavily, it was starting to rain slightly when we left. Plus I wanted to get a bus and get back ASAP.) I bumped into a guy who I take to be one of the owners of the springs on my way out, we chatted a bit and he gave me a leaflet advertising the hour riding tours he does. I don't know if I'd be interested anyway but I don't have time anyway. (He did in fact overtake me on horseback, leading some other horse, as I was walking back towards the "welcome to Los Pozos" sign, which was slightly disconcerting somehow, a bit like I was being hunted down. :-) )

There was a bus coming when I got to the road so I hailed it, though it wasn't going my way or theirs. I waited across the road from them as I figured my bus would be going the opposite way and I did not want to take any chances on seeing it coming in time to flag it down. In the end the rain started again and I had to move down the road to some little shelter.

I was waiting for an hour and so were they, eventually they decided to try to get a taxi and after some negotiation with the apparently unhelpful staff at the little restaurant near the junction a taxi was called for USD10 between them to take them to Boquete. They offered to take me with them and said I could get a bus to David from Boquete, and although I was a bit torn I did accept in the end unless my bus turned up. And amazingly enough, it did, even though it was coming in completely the wrong direction (I think I was right about the correct direction, but the bus turned round and doubled back on itself a few hundred metres up the road). So in the end I didn't need to mess around going to Boquete tonight. I hope they got back OK. My bus driver seemed quite keen to pick them up but they kept explaining they had a taxi coming.

I was feeling incredibly thirsty all the time, I don't know what it was about the spring but there you are. I had taken about 1.5 litres with me in three small bottles, but it wasn't really enough. I deliberately held off on the last bottle while at the spring to save it for the walk back (which was moderately strenuous, though nothing amazingly difficult) and I had about two mouthfuls left by the time I finally got on the bus. I could have tried to buy something at that small restaurant, but I just did not want to take any chance on missing the bus going past.

I bought a big bottle of soft drink at the bus terminal in David, then had something to eat at the cheap restaurant at the terminal (USD1 for a bowl of soup - I pointed at the soup in the cafeteria style display and asked "que es esta?" (I am not a total idiot, it was very heavy on the chunks of chicken and I was actually trying to locate something I could order to go with some rice) and the woman sort of shushed me and served me with a bowl, I found that odd but there you go - maybe this is the down-and-out special, as at the drink+payment section of the line I wasn't asked what I wanted to drink, I was given a metal cup of cold water and charged a dollar for the soup) and got a cab back to the hostel. I ate at the bus terminal mainly so save the hassle of getting two cabs or wandering around the area near the terminal trying to find somewhere to eat.

They were obviously talking about me when I got here (probably about 7pm) as the American guy said "oh, here he is" when I got out of the cab.

Anyway, that was quite entertaining, though I wish things had been smoother getting the bus back. As I say, I was torn about accepting the offer to go to Boquete with those women, but having been waiting an hour for the bus and not much fancying being stranded in the middle of nowhere I decided I would, and would have done had my bus not luckily turned up. When I spoke to the guy at my hostel this morning he said I'd be able to get a taxi for about USD20 if necessary, but with the guys at the restaurant apparently not being that helpful, I didn't really like to rely on that in case my bus didn't turn up after further waiting, especially as sunset was only maybe an hour away.

I am not going out tonight, I am writing this on the laptop in my room waiting for it to charge and will probably go out and see if I can have a beer or two on the hostel terrace while surfing, once it's charged.

I still need to book some accommodation for my return to Panama City and to try to find some canal trip company who will accept a booking on the web. Failing that, I just may ask if I can call from the hostel here tomorrow, though with it not being a local call it seems a bit cheeky. Though I don't mind paying a modest fee, I mean, it cost me over a dollar in quarters for my abortive attempts from payphones last Friday. I really hope I can find a competent company to go with, or at least a reseller, but I am not optimistic.