still moving

(final email to my pals from panama)

it´s my last day of my trip, so please don´t think i´ve gotten lost in some cave or a lonely beach or at the bottom of a river or stuck in a gutter somewhere in panama completely drunk if you don´t receive any more of these emails for a while... i´m going to be back at my mom´s in marin county as of tomorrow, and probably won´t send out a travelogue for a while (at least not until my next excellent adventure).

Carnaval was fun, even though i ended up with a fever. Estelle and Katia from San Francisco joined the dynamic duo for the festivities and we went to Penonome, where instead of floats throwing beads to shirtless girls, you get hosed down by a water truck. Reminded me more of burning man than any carnaval experience i´ve ever had. everyone was of course drunk in the streets. I laid off the booze for the most part because i was still getting over my sickness. after carnaval, we went back to gabriela´s beach house, which i´ve been hearing about for 17 years. it turned out that her pals from high school had coincidentally rented the house next door, so we continued the party the next day by the beach, and decided to blow off going to a crowded drunken wet street party and stay put. it was nice and relaxing, sipping bloody marys while swinging in a hammock overlooking the pacific... haven´t had any days like that in so far on this trip.

Yesterday i took a solo day-trip to a town called Santa Fe up in the mountains. it was beautiful and cool, a nice break from the hot sun at sea level. i went horseback riding again, and my guide was trying to sell me 3 acres of land. he kept asking me to imagine my cabin overlooking the mountain range at almost every turn. I must say, it was always quite an inticing image.

Most nights when I´ve been on some crazy adventure here, when I go to bed at night, I can still feel the motion of my activities earlier that day--be it river rafting, horseback riding, snorkeling, or simply riding in the back of a 4 wheel drive over some rocky roads. I wonder why our bodies hang on to the feeling of movement when you´re lying still in a dark room...