You know you're in the tropics when you wake up to find that ants have eaten your rainjacket. Yes, eaten. Big holes. And they refused to leave, no matter what I did.

Oh, well. I really needed a new one anyway. It still had that Humboldt mold smell no matter how many times I washed it. I hope it was tasty.

And you know you've been traveling too long when the little white worms in your fruit no longer deter you from taking a bite.

Actually, it was Papi who was responsible for that. He kept bring us guavas and I'd break them in half to check for worms and he'd tell me to just take a bite, not to break them open (but never mentioning our white wiggly friends). Well, I broke them open anyway and found worms three quarters of the time, and then tossed the fruit in the bushes when he wasn't looking. Finally I showed him the worms and asked about them and he just said "Oh, all the fruit have them." That shouldn't have been reassurance, but somehow, coming from Papi, it was, and so I closed my eyes and took a bite and it was just like any other guava. Not vegan, but it's nice not having to break them in half any more.

So here I am, on a little Caribbean island off the coast of Panama, camping on top of a hill in a fledgling semi-Hare Krishna-Rasta-Rainbow community that I found through a guy named Swami, who is actually a legitimate swami but who grew dreadlocks to fit in here when he got back from India.

It's paradise in some ways- white sand beaches, palm trees dropping coconuts (missed my head by about 5 feet this morning), perfect swimming in eighty-degree ocean water, waterfalls in tropical jungle, really nice people and great food.

But then there are the mosquitoes (I’ve taken to wearing long pants and sneakers no matter how hot it is), the fact that my tent feels like a sauna every morning (probably great cleansing), and my shoes that never dry because it never goes more that a couple days without a rainstorm. Throw in the Rainbow kid who won't treat her head lice, the drama queen who is always in crisis and needs help (isn't there always one?), and the call of summertime in the north, and I think I’m moving on tomorrow. But it's been great here. I’ve done lots of hiking, swimming and exploring, this morning it was in these magical caves filled with bats and spiders and magnificent stalactites above an underground river.

The town is really interesting, too. Many of the people here are descended from slaves brought to work in the 1800's, and they speak a Creole that doesn't sound much like English or Spanish. I keep having to remind myself that I’m still in Panama.

So north I go. I hope to be in San Jose, Costa Rica by the end of the day tomorrow, where I’m going to go look for the "Blue Monkey Electric Circus" bus, with which I hope to hitchhike, maybe all the way to New Mexico. The only catch is that you have to perform in the circus to ride with them. I’m hoping to work with the acrobats. But we'll see. Planning something seems lately to be almost a guarantee that it won't happen.

Much love to you all!

Asha