Today is my last day in Panamá. Romeo is already on a flight to Pittsburgh, and I will be flying out later to Connecticut for work tomorrow. It´s been a blast, and I can´t wait to share that piece of paradise through some of the photos Romeo and I took. Panamanians have been so welcoming and open, it´s been a pleasure hearing and sharing stories with the cabbies, bus drivers, and others. I think we´ll have to come back, my Spanish could use a little more practice

Despite my love and admiration for them, their stories don´t make it to this blog very often, but this is a day I have to brag about. Mom and Dad have been married 30 years today and they are still crazy about each other. Whoever says that marriage kills love has obviously not met my parents.

Mom, Dad, Happy Anniversary! and may you continue on this path together for many more years. You are an inspiration for many of us. Thanks for sharing your love.

Those ice-cream flavors sound pretty surreal and I swear I have not been drinking or smoking anything lately. Romeo and I were just walking in the streets of Casco Viejo in Panamá City where he took me out to some fancy ice-cream and sorbet store he and his brother had run into earlier. And there it was, in the middle of the mango-passion, banana-coco and strawberry sorbets: basil, lavender, and rosemary ice-creams that actually tasted good!

We continued our tour of Casco Viejo, the oldest part of town, recently classified as World Heritage and with on-ging renovation. This part of town also hosts the mayor of Panamá City, the President of the country, a museum on the Canal, and a bunch of tourist-trappy fancy artesan stores where Romeo and I bought a couple hammacs for our Massachusetts piece of paradise.

After the private island resort experience, we were another boat-ride away from the village where Romeo´s brother and sister-in-law live these days: Santa Catalina. When you ask anyone in Panamá about Santa Catalina, they will immediately assume you are going there to surf. Research on coral reefs huh? I am not sure the locals will believe that!

That village has some of the best surf in the world, but it is still mostly un-developed. By that I mean that none of the money-sucking, big-scale, environmentally-unconscious developers have touched it yet. There are a few ex-pats from all over the world, who bought land parcels for restaurants, camping grounds, bed & breakfasts… but they blend in and there is no big-scale resort bus-ing people there yet, which is great.

As I said, I don´t know how to surf, but that doesn´t mean I can´t appreciate a view on that famous surfing beach. So Romeo and I stayed in a little cabanita (actually, it´s called a rancho), made out of bamboo and palm leaves, with the most breathtaking view of the ocean. Mike´s camping ground is on a hill-top right above the beach, surrounded with palm trees and a bunch of other tropical trees I had never seen before. Romeo and I slept on a bamboo bed for 2 nights, waking up to a beautiful sunrise on the water, went swimming and just hung out in hammacs. Pretty little piece of paradise some 2 days away from cold old Massachusetts!

After the fabulous boat-ride, we got to that private island, and it was worth all the plane, bus, and boat rides it took us to get there. Sure, the guys still had work to do, but the girls got to hang out with pelicans, toucans, humming birds, iguanas, blue herons, parakeets and a large variety of multi-colored birds that I would not know how to name, all running wild. Rumor had it that the guys had also heard howling monkeys on the island, but we were not so lucky and missed out on the monkeys.

We stayed on the island for 2 days, with great company, and got a chance to go snorkeling on the Coral Reef. The visibility was not the greatest so I don´t have any good shots, but we still got to see quite a few tropical fish up close. And the best part of the snorkeling was the birds We got to see them up close, and witnessed a flock of pelicans feeding on some jumping fish we had been admiring a few minutes prior. As Romeo´s sister-in-law put it, it was National Geographic live for the two of us!

The girls left Panama City after some night of partying and spent the better part of the following day traveling to a little village on the Pacific Coast. Not just any little village though, Santa Catalina has one of the top 10 surfing beaches in the world! Not that I know the first thing about surfing, but Romeo´s brother sure does.

The guys were supposed to meet us there with a boat and take us to that very private and special island hosting the Liquid Jungle Labs. The romantic meeting only happened the next day and was not all that romantic at first given how much work the guys had to do on the way to the island. Anyway, in the meantime, the girls continued their partying, went to the cantina to get beer and drank it on the beach with a cool surfer that was also waiting for a boat pick-up by a girlfriend on her sailing trip around the world. No cooking for the party junkies that night and we went out to dinner. The guys´ racket we had been longing for woke us up from our beauty sleep the next morning around 11 !

The boat ride was amazing. In addition to the sensors mounted on a metal towfish (a bunch of metal bars and flat panels built in the shape of a fish and designed to carry a bunch of electronics), the guys had attached a multi-beam sonar to the side of the boat, and according to Romeo, that sonar is like a disco party for dolphins, so guess who showed up? A party of dolphins swam right by, and followed us for a little while. We also got to see manta and eagle rays jumping out of the water, fish of all sizes jumping out of the water presumably to avoid being eaten by bigger fish, and flying fish. There is a true difference between fish jumping, and flying fish: the distance they travel. The flying fish are unbelievable, they can actually stay suspended in mid-air for quite some distance. I had never seen that before, and it was quite amazing.

Romeo and his brother have a research project going on in Panama, looking at nutrients, temperature, salinity, and other signs of human and development impact on oceans and coral reefs. The two of them have some really cool research going on near a billionaire´s private island set up with a research lab. Given the pretty sweet location, it did not take much persuasion on Romeo´s part for me to use a few vacation days and meet up with him.

His sister-in-law and I flew down together to Panamá City, hoping the guys would be done with their work and that we could kidnap them away from their exciting research. Except that´s not how it works in the research world, instruments fail, boats don´t run and data is not collected quite as planned. Data is the Holy Grail for many research scientists so our little romantic take-over was going to have to wait, and the girls decided to stay in Panama City and see what Carnaval was all about!

Well, in a few words, we had a blast. Panamanians sure know how to party: live music, food, beer and some good body moves. We experienced the night-time version of Carnaval because we had been too busy sight-seeing during the day, so we missed out on the parades and costumes, but it was still quite an experience.

I used to love flying. Not any more. It has nothing to do with increased security, long lines at ticket counters, delayed flights, or anything. It is more of a bug issue. On the flight back from the Phillie wedding, we waited on the tarmac for quite a while, it got hot, and I opened up the little fan thingy that started blowing fresh air into my face. The problem with that air, is that ”fresh” is the wrong word for it. “Recycled”, ”cooled”, or “bugged” may be more appropriate. To keep the story short, someone on that plane that day was sick, really sick, and the recycled air was blowing for quite a while before it hit me: I was getting sick too. From that very same air that was keeping me cool.