DEPARTURE: the 10th March 2006 we took the first flight from Bologna Airport to Schirpol Airport in Amsterdam. As we got a cheap flight we had to stop for a day and a night in Holland… without any hesitation we decided to take advantage of the situation and we booked a room in the city center… it would have been the first time in Amsterdam for both of us. The museums are beautiful there, starting with the Van Gogh Museum, just in front our hotel. The day after we took the flight to Miami, where we had to take a further connection to San José… after the usual 2 hours to pass the US customs, we managed to reach our gate just in time. We landed in San José really late and we got out of the airport at midnight, luckily we booked a night in a hostel and the transfer in advance. The hotel was just perfect: located in the very center (in front of the Public Court House), free internet and coffee, low price international phone calls, free kitchen use, really clean place but, even more important than that, a really good atmosphere and a safe place (Backpackers Hostel, http://www.costaricabackpackers.com). Just around the corner there was a wonderful restaurant serving delicious local food: good prices and outstanding quality! Some dishes are even served on a piece of wood covered by banana leaves. The morning after we woke up early and decided to walk around the city center to find a “posada” (a local restaurant) for breakfast, then, finally with our backpack on, we went to the bus station, the Terminal Caribe. The buses for the Caribbean side leave from there, while the buses heading to the Pacific coast leave from the Terminal Coca-Cola. We had planned to go to Puerto Viejo but, while on the bus, we met an Italian couple who told us about Playa Cahuita, some kilometers before our original destination, so we decided to follow their tip and then to go to Puerto Viejo after a couple of days. That proved to be a great idea as the road was in such a bad shape we arrived hours behind scheduled: after a Survivor-stile trip, we reached the small village of Cahuita really late and we had to look for a place to stay in the total blackness of the Caribbean night. The day after, as we opened our eyes to the new day, we understood that such a beautiful, untainted, place was worth such a trip: the village is placed between two different, amazing, natural backgrounds…at its left-hand side there is beautiful “Parque National de Cahuita”, a thin strip of white sand covered by a plushy tropical jungle hosting blue crabs, slothes, white-faced monkeys and so on. At the opposite side there is Playa Negra, a totally different environment. Its volcanic sand is the darkest I’ve ever seen, glowing under the ruthless sunrays; the desert, never-ending, shoreline disappears at the horizon… While discovering the natural beauties, we also found a modest but really peculiar hostel with a great location and low prices…we slept there for a few days more, dazzled by the beautiful surroundings. We even started to walk barefoot as the locals, who seemed to appreciate it a lot. Unfortunately we had to leave too soon our new friends to move on to Puerto Viejo where we slept in an even more basic camping site that hosted backpackers only. At night, while sitting all together around a big fire, everyone had a travel tale to tell, first of all the owners, 4 Argentinean globetrotters turned into “hotel managers”. Moreover, even though Puerto Viejo is a place for nightlife, we found its surrounding nature as beautiful as Cahuita’s, just a bit more crowded. The locals too had been really nice with us, once they understood we were travelers on a short budget and not tourists willing to waste loads of money. We met a good deal of people and we stopped by to chat with everyone in the amazing settings of the sunset. After two nights there our trip schedule forced us to move on to the border with Panama, so we took a local minibus heading to the Guabito-Cahnguinola border. No need to explain how the trip had been as enchanting as uncomfortable, a slow ride along the border of banana plantations where tiny villages of country people seemed raised overnight. An enchanted little world where no one complains if they have to divide the narrow minibus corridor with chickens, cocks and cheeping chicks. We finally arrived to the border town of Guabito under a driving tropical rain, we got out of the bus and reached the borderline practically swashing into the thick mud. In fact the “frontera” is just an old railways bridge crossing a large river: on one side you are in Costa Rica, on the other you already are on panamanian soil. The best border-crossing of my whole life! Once we reached the other side walking on this wobbling bridge and had our passport stamped, we manage to reach Changuinola’s little harbour, where the water-taxis leave for Bocas del Toro Islands. We shored in the main island, Isla Colon, so called thanks to a visit of my fellow countryman Christopher Columbus. That’s about the only interesting thing we’d found there: the massive tourism years can be easily outlined by the number of vacationers walking along the overcrowded main road. Most of them seemed to be there just for the “sex, drugs & rock’n’roll” environment. The also the locals seemed to be just too used to massive tourism…as soon as we shored in the main island we had a lot of people trying to bring us in their “recommended hotel” and trying to sell just anything… We missed a bit Cahuita’s & Puerto Viejo’s people, who stopped to talk with us with no second meaning and gave us a lot to think about. We decided to look for a quieter island straight away and we left for a small paradise called Bastimento where we slept 2 night in the beautiful “Hostal Bastimento”. We highly recommend this lovely located and furnished place: among its facilities there are a small internet café, telephone, shared kitchens with new refrigerators, a little bar and much more. Due to the non-stop rain that ruined our plans, we decided to head to the Pacific Coast where rarely rains in the summer (December-April). We got back to the harbour town of Changuinola and then took a bus for David, Chiriquì region’s main town. It was night when we got there but we still managed to jump on the last minibus heading to San Felix from where we took a taxi for Las Lajas Beach. Luckily it was low tide so we managed to reach Las 3 Palmeras Beach Hostel (Now known as La Palmera) by car, as it was located 4 km away from the main road (the cars can go on the shore only at this time). The midnight ride we took on that beautiful, desert shore, under billions of stars, is carved in my hearth. As soon as we got out of the pick-up, the guy at the bar ran to us and give us a friendly hug as he already knew Massimo from a previous trip in 2004. All the local people there threw a party for us, as if we were long-time lost relative and not strangers. The days we spent there were slow and relaxing, the time given by the high and low tide, the sunsets, the daily little night parties, the arrival of new, interesting people. After a while the locals got to know us, thanks to both my cooking skills and Massimo’s beach-soccer matches…after a week we already felt a part of that wonderful community…in the nearby village everybody seem to know us and waved at us, even though we had never seen them before. Every single person seemed to want to chat with us for a while. A day we were downtown and, while waiting for someone to pick us up, we’d seen a beautiful garden with a really strange inhabitant: a “pavo real”, an outlandish huge peacock with a turkey head and really aristocratic manners. While standing there, looking puzzled to that bizarre bird, an old woman came out of the house and started chatting with us. She asked where we came from and if we liked Las Lajas. We told her we were Italian and that the beach and its surroundings looked like a paradise to us. So the old woman gave us a strange look and said: “I can feel you are goods people, you should look for some land and come here to live with our community”. We stood there, amazed. The old lady gave a delicate laugh and quickly disappeared into the house, leaving us there, looking speechless at each other. The woman just said what we did not dare to express outside our inner dreams! From this moment on, both our trip and lives changed… As previously planned, we left the day after for the San Blas Islands, the legendary territory of the native Kunas. We spent 4 days in that untainted Caribbean paradise: 365 coral isles among which only 60 permanently inhabited. The Kunas’ strict laws achieved something extraordinary in these days: keeping away holiday camps and resorts. Moreover every single business in the “Comarca” is for Kuna only, be it related to fishing, to tourism or to the export of coconuts. A genuine Caribbean environment as it was elsewhere in the age of Gaugain! After spending 4 days into the Kunas’ Paradise, relaxing under a palm, snorkeling around, eating fish and lobster just caught, we flew back to Panama City, almost with suspense, to catch the first bus leaving for our “personal paradise”, Playa Las Lajas. As soon as we got back we started to look for this “land of promise” the old lady was talking about and in just a few days…we found it!!! We got into bargaining with the owners, promising to come back soon to close the deal and to make that piece of land the starting point of our dream. Our disappointment grew as we soon had to leave Las Lajas to catch the flight back to Italy from San José. After a day spent on the bus along the Interamericana Highway, from San Felix to Costa Rica’s capital, we finally arrived at the Backpacker’s Hostel (the best in town) just in time to have a shower and a short sleep before running to the airport. Once we got back home in Italy, we couldn’t think about anything else than our Las Lajas dream, so we started studying hard: from Panama’s geography to its economy, from its 8 different ethnic groups to the different climate areas. We kept our dream secret: we were a bit afraid of the reaction of friends and family, we expected them to call us insane… After six troubled months we eventually managed to take a flight back to Panama: the 12th December 2006 we finally landed in Tocumen Airport. We had to stay 2 weeks in Panama City to set all the documents and bureaucratic matters. During this period we learnt to love our future capital, from the poor but peculiar Calidonia and Casco Viejo neighborhoods to the financial district of Marbella with its skyscrapers reflecting on the bay. But what we love the most are its wonderful living quarters (among others the Jewish zone and Bella Vista), plenty of decadent colonial-style villas with their wonderful gardens: pieces of jungle right in the city center… We arrived “home” a few days before Christmas and started to work in our land at once: first cutting the high grass and cleaning the soil, then the building of our first restaurant, a provisional kiosk, (soon we’ll start building the real restaurant), a bit lopsided but entirely made with our own hands. A feeling beyond price!!! In January 2007, after 2 months of ascetic full-immersion into the unspeakable beauty of the surrounding nature, we received the visit of 3 friends from Italy. So we used this occasion to go touring the mangrove forest all together. A local friend of our, Raul, offered to bring us there though the forest canal and then up to a lone hill just behind the beach, the only one around. We were told that on its top there were some ancient and unknown hieroglyphics carved in porous volcanic rocks, as well as a wonderful view on the 14-km shore framed by the 2 rivers and the islands in the front. The Indio’s hieroglyphics, they told, were fainting due to their old age and the everlasting wind erosion, moreover just a handful of foreigners went up there before… We left the following day at 2 p.m., from time immemorial the moment when the low tide come in leaving the shore dry for almost a kilometer and decreasing the depth of the mangrove canal. They said it was the only “safe” moment to wade. We went to the meeting point with our trekking shoes on: our guide started to laugh and patiently explained we had to cross the forest barefoot ‘cause it’s not possible to walk into the mud up to our waist with them on. A bit puzzled and also lightly scared, we put on our flip-flops and started to follow Raul in single line along a grazing, bordering the mangroves to one side and the coastal road to the other. At a certain point there was a barbed wired corral: we had to pass through while our guide kept the wires open with the tip of his machete. Of course I left a torn piece of my t-shirt hanging there. We finally were into the pasture land: the grass was so high it reached my waist…luckily there was a narrow path up to the “manglar” entrance to follow but, when at halfway though, a big group of baby bulls, young but already provided with a good pair of horns, started gathering, looking puzzled and scared at us. We instantly got worried about that but our guide managed to comfort us with a “don’t worry! If you don’t raise your hand they will not charge us…”. We frantically reached the forest border, from where the mangroves looked a lot higher and shaggier than ever. Our guide told us that a couple of years before a canal, deeper than the low tide level, has been cut through the knotty weave formed by the massive roots of the mangroves in order to place a water pipe: we would have had to follow it up making use of the neap. We took our flip-flops off and started, one after the other, to move forward into the slimy water, stepping onto the sunken roots. As we could not see where we were putting our feet, at times someone’s leg went down a gap in the weave, making us sink in the mud up to the shoulders. At this stage I asked myself: “what were you thinking when you accepted to come???” but suddenly a group of small, bright green plumaged, parrots flew just above our heads. The striking beauty of nature, so savage, rough but positively delicate hit me so deeply that I did not mind anymore the dark, muddy water I was soaked into. Eventually we reached a small “bridge” that let us walk, instead of swimming, through the last and deepest part of the canal. We stopped there for a while admiring the inner part of the forest that stood still in its mystic silence, interrupted only by some rare leave swish and bird twitter. The grass there is a lot higher than in the pasture land, easily reaching my shoulders, so our guide took his machete to make a breach through it. I almost felt sorry to ruin the peaceful, delicate fluctuation of that green sprawl. Then, after promising Raul we would not have looked to the shore beneath before reaching the top of the hill, we headed toward the “cerro”. Even though our flip-flops proved not to be the best choice to hike up there, we kept on ascending ‘till we reached the flat summit. Up there the sparse low trees looked more like shrubs due to their gnarled trunk, shaped by the strong pacific winds. Among them, scattered around, as if a giant flung them there, lied many huge volcanic rocks, porous and crumbly as well as covered in lichens. Our guide took his machete and made its tip slide along subtle patterns we could not even recognize at the beginning then, suddenly, we managed to recognize the shape of the ancient hieroglyphics. There were many, the best part worn out by the salty winds and the strong winter rains: a dragon, an eye, a crocodile and other patterns we weren’t able to recognize. As we had been so busy playing “the little Indiana Jones”, we had almost forgotten about Raoul’s “surprise”! We turned around and gazed southbound, the view was breathtaking! We experience a primordial feeling of freedom while up there, just above the shore, on the roof of that little natural world. We could clearly see all the islands down south laying as emeralds on the deep blue ocean. Then we admired the outpourings of the 2 rivers broadening into lagoons and the amazing shore, growing larger and larger as the water receded, leaving behind a mirror-like watery film that reflected the sky above. After a while we got to a nearby stream and wash away the dry mud that covered us with its clear, freezing, water. While doing that we’d even seen a lizard running onto the surface of a bordering pool…Then we went ahead, coming down the other side of the hill where we reached the main road to the beach. At the opposite side laid a huge pond cohabited by cows and pink, black and white flamingos, among other birds. We finally took the way home along the shore, really tired but filled up by the wonderful experience we’d just had. We kept on walking barefoot on the soft sand, with the sunset just in front until we reached our bamboo huts, where finally we had a couple of Atlas (a local beer) and a plate full of fried chicken and rice. To our despair, we had to leave our paradise in March 2007 to organize the big moving from Italy and still we have few months to go before we eventually can come back for good in Las Lajas…on the other hand, November 2007 is not that far away and it will be the starting point of our new life!!! What do you think about this?