Omar Torrijos
Today is independance day for panama (from Columbia) so the entire country is celebrating. I wanted to get out of the city but so did everyone else in the entire panama city. Think about travelling on thanksgiving, but a hundred times more insane, and you have some idea of my morning at the bus terminal. After getting on and off sever busses (without going anywhere yet, just shuffling lines and busses) I managed to get a seat on a bus to El Cope, where I got a ride to the national park of Omar Torrijos a dense rainforest in the mountains. I hiked to a peak yesterday afternoon from which I could see both the pacific and Atlantic oceans, with gorgeous forest in all directions and pictursque whisps of fog rolling through. I stayed at the ranger station overnight and spent the evening teaching him elnglish. I realized the 2 hard things for english pronounciation for people here in English, though I’m not sure I was able to help any. The first is that in Spanish b and v both sound like b, and Latinos don’t have a sound for “v”. I spent 20 minutes trying to teach him to make a new sound comparing it to a car engine starting, etc but to no avail. The second is that since so many words in Spanish end in vowels, they oftern do not pronounce the final constanant in English words. Therefore “read” becomes “ree”. I think we got better at that one! :-) Birds chirping and the smell of coffee woke me at 6am today so now I am off on a morning rainforest hike before i go to watch small town independance day fiestas! The weather is clear and life is amazing. d
