Today was our first morning in Panama! We started the day with the included hostel breakfast - "make your own pancakes" special. A massive bowl of pancake mix was made for everybody, and we fired up the ol' stove and fried a couple. Not a bad way to get going. After talking to some folks about the things to do in the area, we decided we would try to find some of the hotspots on our motorbikes. The roads would be fun, and we'd save on shuttle costs. First goal was a place called the mini canyon. The river narrowed to form a small canyon where jumping, swimming, and climbing were all possible. After riding for what seemed like forever, we figured we'd made a wrong turn and looped around. Exploring all the sketchy side roads didn't help either... they all dead ended. One road led us to a sketchy rusty suspension bridge that was barely wide enough for an ATV... Trevor rode across it, and the whole time he thought he was going to fall through. The steel decking had cracks and holes, and the previous patch repairs seemed dicey at best. He made it across, and found that the road didn't really even go anywhere. What a waste. Time to ride back. Eventually we gave up trying to find the mini canyon, and tried to find some waterfalls. Again, finding dead end after dead end, we were stumped. We talked to about 7 different locals throughout our trip, and they all seemed to give us conflicting information. Maybe they're really hard to find, maybe they don't exist... or maybe we're just dumb. We're probably just dumb. Anyway, for the third objective, we set out to find some hotsprings. After some more sketchy roads and wrong turns, we ended up in a farmer's field with a big private property sign. We almost turned around, but at the bottom of the sign it said we could enter for $2. Cool, we had found the springs! The springs were small - about as big as a small university dorm room. They were a good temperature though, and it felt like sitting in a hot tub. After a little bit of relaxing and some 'splorin the area, we started to ride home. Just too late - got hit by rain. Again. Of course. Oh well.
Later that day, we grabbed some dinner and cervezas from the grocery store. Apparently you get two massive meals, desert, a side dish, and 6 beers for 12 bucks? How can you go wrong? After supper, we had a few more drinks with Miguel (the hostel owner) and some other travelers. One thing led to another and we ended up at a salsa bar getting dance lessons from another traveler. She was the only one who knew how, and the other 7 of us were out there making fools of ourselves. It was a lot of fun, and now we're basically professional salsa dancers. Perfect.
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