Yes, I am here also!

Our hotel, Hosteria Mar Y Sol (Sea and Sun Hotel)

The grounds are Beautiful!!  Covered with native plants.  More later!

I finally got online and read Linda's Blog.  There is not a lot more to say!  She has covered it very well.  The rest of our group arrived yesterday so we are all present and accounted for.  Dinner last night was our first group activity.  Great group of ladies.  Tomorrow we will all go snorkeling at different sites.  Then set up the clinics to start tomorrow.

Sandy, Leslie and I had a fabulous time with our SCUBA.  Gorgeous fish along the coral reefs.  We only went down about 30 feet but that was fine for our (Sandy and my) first dives since we got certified (in scuba!  not mentally!!  ok maybe mentally, too....).  Leslie has a nice little camera protected in a waterproof case and she got a bunch of wonderful pics.  I will borrow the chip later to get those photos.  Our divemaster was Manuel and his assistant Andres (like the island!).  They really took good care of us!  They put our gear together then carried to the beach for us.  Helped us in and out of the water.  They were wonderful.  We are planning to dive with them later in the week.

This am I got up and took some photos before most folks were up.  Got caught in a little rain squall so Woofie and I just stood under some trees till it passed.  It is very beautiful on this island.

Time for breakfast, so off we go.  Another day of adventures!!

Adventures

I snitched some photos from Sandy's camera! She snapped a couple while they were getting ready to scuba. Some guys from a dive group rented them the equipment and helped with transportation.

 Lava/coral rocks run all up the west side of the island. The scuba folks just pulled over on the side of the road, got their gear, and in they went! This is from right by the first dive site:

While they were diving, Dee and I were on tour with Mitchell. We saw the Island House (a museum of typical native home life on the island) and a few reggae bars. We met a rastafarian, and I photobombed a cute British couple's picture. I really couldn't have helped it. Our car had to stop right behind where they were and it was either look away with a boring face or shout "photobomb!" and make them look away from the camera. So I think I was the only one grinning in the photo. They were nice though, and Mitchell gave them directions for the places they wanted to go. Then we offered to race them: us in our van, and them in their golf cart. We won. Shortly after that we checked into our hotel and Dee and I played at the pool until lunchtime, while Collette went to a pharmacy in town. After lunch is siesta time around here, and some of you have met me, so some of you know that when i sleep, i SLEEP. So the siesta was almost 4 hours long.

After the scuba folks got back to the hotel, but before Collette, Dee, and I woke up from our naps (hey, it was siesta!) some policemen came up to the hotel on their horses. They let Lesley get on one of the horses, but got fairly unhappy when she and the horse started trotting around. I don't think they expected any of us to know how to ride!

 Those of us who were still napping (like me) were woken up in time to hit the town for some dinner fun. We went to a restaurant called La Regatta - the longest running restaurant on the island. Mitchell told me it's been there at least 50 years, and he remembered it from when he was a kid on the island. We could tell they'd been around for a while because the grounds were full of amazing art made with used wine bottles. That many bottles would have taken some time to drink, even for a busy restaurant! Behind the wind-chime bottles, you can see the restaurant itself, built up over the water. The whole dining area was surrounded by windows that could open in nice weather, and close during rain squalls (two of which happened while we were there).

We could see a few fancy yachts from the restaurant, including one that was all lit up for a party. We also saw a bunch of tiny fish in the water. I told them they couldn't come up to the restaurant for at least a couple more years. Then I felt bad for being mean, so I gave them a piece of cheese out of Dee's salad (my food was already gone by then, and she gave them some cheese too).
The most talked-about drink on the island is a Coco Loco, a rum/coconut/something pink mix. Several of our group tried them tonight, and nobody complained a bit!

 We took a few blurry group photos (Collette, Lesley, Suzanne, me, Dee, Stacy, Nicole, Sandy):

And then we enjoyed the heck out of our dinners. Most of the group chose a variety of seafoods, but when I told the waitress I was "vegetariano" she pointed to a rice dish on the menu. So I had that. There were toasted nuts and mushrooms in the rice. It was pretty fantastic. And then we had dessert. This restaurant takes pride in their coco pie, so try it we did! And a chocolate torte. And a panna cotta. There were no leftover desserts.
(Which reminds me about our lunch here at the hotel! Dee got an entire red snapper, face and all, with fried plantains and coconut rice. Our cook, Mercedes, scrambled me up some eggs instead of the fish, and they tasted pretty good with the plantains and coconut rice. Then there was dulce coco. cinnamon-y, coconutty, yumminess. With raisins. I could have eaten much more of that.)
While we were at dinner, the restaurant's speakers suddenly started playing the Wedding March. Then people started applauding. A few tables away, someone had just gotten engaged! So it's not quite as bad as when we crashed a Romanian wedding on accident...
After the long dinner, we went to another supermarket to pick up some drinking water. I have been keeping my eyes open for Colombian coffee this whole time, and so far the markets have sold almost exclusively instant coffee - half of which is Nescafe! Mitchell tells us there is some resentment among the natives towards the Colombian rule of the island, and that the natives are working on gaining independence. It seems that we're in a place where Colombians go on vacation, and they're not about to buy expensive fancy Colombian coffee as souvenirs... So no Colombian coffee yet, but I'm bound and determined to find some! So far, this is the first World Vets trip I've been on that didn't happen near an area with vendors, hawkers, and street sellers. Most of the goods for sale here are in stores, and I've only seen two guys selling shell necklaces on the beach. This island is a different sort of place than I've been before. A few hundred years ago, it was uninhabited. Then the British came along and brought slaves to run sugarcane plantations. The descendants of those slaves are the natives now, and the sugarcane fields have been long-since bought up for housing. There is very little farming done on the island, and now the main industry is tourism.
*Plug for Mitchell* He's been fantastic, full of stories and showing us interesting places that only locals would know about. He's lived on the island his whole life (it's only about 21 square miles) and it seems like he knows just about everyone. We met him because our first hotel asked him to pick us up at the airport, and he's been our favorite ever since!

The "Real" Hotel

So this morning started with a bunch of rain (how else would the island stay this beautiful?) and a nice, easy start. The power went out while we were eating coco pops and other breakfast stuff. I bought a random fruit last night that kind of looked like a persimmon. It did NOT taste like a persimmon. 

After breakfast, our scuba divers (Stacy, Sandy, and Lesley) took off to go scuba. Dee and I took a tour of the other side of the island - and ran into our scuba friends in between dives! They were having a blast - saw lots of fish and some stingrays. We continued on our tour and they went off to dive in another place. Most of the dives around here are just from land, rather than taking out a boat, because the coral comes almost right up to the coast. Yesterday, our snorkelers saw some fish near the beach, and I had a manta ray zip across in front of me when I was walking to the rocky cay. 

We headed to the new hotel after our tour, and got in some pool time at their fun circle pool. 

And now it's lunch time.

Arrival

Aside from being muggy, the airport at Panama City was just about like any other airport: crowds, chain food and beverage choices... Oh, and a random booth halfway between terminals was giving out samples of oak-cask-aged Absolut Vodka at 6 in the morning. Surreal, but pretty cool. I felt justified chowing on a Cinnabon after that, because we really don't have those in Ocean Shores, so it was kind of a cultural experience. We hunkered down on an area of carpet in amongst the chairs full of people waiting, and I got the wi-fi to connect just as our flight was called. See - an airport!

Then we flew to San Andres Island. We made some friends and potential fellow World Vetsians on the plane and waiting in line for customs. It took about a jillion years to get through customs because the airline was supposed to have given us a form that they didn't give us, and we had to have the forms to pay the fee to enter Colombia. Depending on who you talked to, the fee would have been anywhere from $22-28, but the final official who told us we didn't have the forms couldn't accept US cash. So it's a good thing that half of us had gotten some money exchanged in Panama, since the rest of us were just planning to hit up an ATM once we got out into San Andres. So we ended up paying in the neighborhood of $28-worth of Colombian pesos each (except Dee - for some reason she only had to pay $27, and she paid a different guy, and he was fine with American dollars). So we finally made it through and out into the WARMTH. Oh, it was lovely. Then we met Collette the vet and our driver Mitchell. Collette and Lesley had made their travel arrangements separately, so they both stayed in different hotels than we did, but we still managed to hang out most of the day. We piled into Mitchell's van and, first stop, our hotel to drop off luggage and get into beach gear. Our hotel is a house that's split into apartments. It has this awesome terrace-y staircase up to the owner's apartment.  

 

After a quick change, we headed to the Caribbean Sea for some wading/snorkeling/whatever. Yes, it really looks like this. That little brushy thing is the Rocky Cay (shockingly so named because it is a cay, or tiny island, that is very rocky) and the blocky thing behind it is part of a rusty old shipwreck. Most of us waded out to the cay, and some adventurous "other people" climbed on the shipwreck. I didn't want to tempt fate, even with my 100proof sunscreen, so I started the wade back, only to be picked up by a kid on a jetski. My hat flew off halfway back, so we had to turn around and snag it from the water indiana jones style as we rode by. 

Here's a group shot: me, Dee, Collette, Mitchell, Stacy, and Woofie (of course) 

Touching story: The wheelchair belongs to an older lady - you can see her in the water, being supported by her two grown-up kids. How awesome is that! 

 

Next stop - we headed down the coast to drop off Collette at her hotel - where we will stay starting tomorrow. We checked out the grounds and made a friend right off:

 Then it was about dinner time. We found an ATM to get mor Colombian pesos, and then Mitchell took us to Miss Celie's restaurant - where they assured us we'd get real, local food. And we did, except for the french fries. Fried plantains and breadfruit were served with rice and beans for me, or with meat or fish for everyone else.

 There was an awesome drink made of coconut milk and lime juice.

 Sandy "dropped" some of her kingfish, and made another new friend.

 After dinner, we headed to the supermarket to pick up breakfast supplies, as this hotel doesn't serve food. While there, we found some fun cat food:

And, because I am me, and because it was there, I purchased a Happy Piu. It was super yummy.

I'm sure there was more (and more photos) but I'm exhausted, so that'll do for tonight. Blog at you tomorrow!

LAX

Another airport, another chai to steal. Darn Woofie... 

We're still in LA, waiting to board our overnight flight to Panama City. My camera pitched a hissy fit and froze a few times as I tried to take this photo. Thank goodness there are lots of other cameras on the trip! Other than the camera incident, travel has been fairly smooth. We met Lesley, another vet on the project, in Seattle - and it turns out she's on all our flights with us so we'll mostly arrive all in a group. Dee spent the first flight recruiting, and got her seatmate excited to go on a World Vets trip too! Way to go Dee! Goal for this flight: who are we kidding? The goal is to sleep on the plane so we're awake for the city of San Andres (also called "El Central") tomorrow morning.

Sea-Tac

Only a few hours into the trip, and Woofie is already getting into trouble! After a swig of my chocolate chai, he helped himself to one of Dee's lo-mein noodles, and took a nap on the table while his mom helped a passerby clean up a spilled burrito. We're waiting to board our first flight, to LA, and it sounds like they've just moved our gate, so it's time to unplug!

T-minus a Day and a Half!

As the flurry of packing and prepping and checking travel vaccines continues, we steel ourselves for humid, tropical weather, with a chance of warm rain. Well, that leaves some more room in the ol' travel duffel! Research on San Andres shows that most tourism happens toward the north end of the island and includes scuba diving or boat tours. We'll have a couple of "free days" to play tourists/adventurers, but  except for the first night, we'll be staying at the south end. The island itself isn't much bigger than Ocean Shores, so I don't expect too many problems getting around. The culture is heavily Spanish, Creole, and English (all three languages are supposedly used on the island), and the food is mainly seafood... good thing this veggie likes lots of beans, rice, and plantains!
We're excited to reunite with Dr. Sandy Willis on this trip. She's our friend the internal medicine vet from Phoenix Labs, where we send all our lab samples. Don't let that her day job fool you though: she's a pretty fantastic surgical assistant! We're also taking local financial adviser, Dee Harrington, for her first international veterinary experience. You really don't have to be a vet to help on these trips: in the past, we've shared trips with a psychologist, a cop, a hairdresser, a retired office worker... you get the idea.
Next post will hopefully see me ready to go: we leave Ocean Shores on Saturday morning!