Oh dear, Reggae Night.

Our trip to Panama was so relaxing & stress-free. Instead of taking the public bus & boats, etc to Panama, we ended up taking a 2 night backpackers tour through a company called Caribe. I couldn't have been happier with that choice! 

Our tour picked us up Friday morning on the Carribean coast of Costa Rica at a beach near the border (that I have visited a few times) called Puerto Viejo. 

Playa Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

Thursday night we stayed in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica before heading to Bocas Del Toro, Panama in the morning. We decided to stay at a cute little hostel called "The Lazy Loft" above a really chill restaurant on the beach. 

Playa Puerto Viejo de Talamanca

The owner mentioned to us that it was Reggae night with free drinks for the ladies 10-12. So, when the Reggae music started up, we weren't surprised. At 11, we crawled  into bed, all packed up for our 7AM morning departure, resting assured that the music outside our window would stop in a mere hour. 

Boy were we wrong.

Live music at "The Lazy Mon"

3 hours later, the music had turned from a chill reggae ballad to a bumpin reggae-techno disco mix. The volume had also increased to the extent that when I told Ashley I was going to move to another room- I had to yell. Literally this party was on the other side of our glass sliding door. Finally at about 3:30AM (or was it 4? Either way, I was in an unhappy sleepy stupor) we moved down the hall to an empty room and received some muted relief from the happening reggae party a floor below. It's pretty laughable looking back on it now, to be honest.. to think of how badly we underestimated the owner's nonchalant mention of a "oh yeah and tonight's reggae night". All I can say now is BEWARE OF REGGAE NIGHT!

Next up- recap of crossing the Costa Rica/Panama border & heading to Bocas Del Toro! 

"Begin with the End in Mind"

So this is my friend, Suzanne. She's an intern from Holland at our school and she'll be here until June. We both speak English. So of course, we became friends right away.

I've discovered that in Europe, people regularly do interesting things like...stay in hostels. So, it was naturally her duty to introduce me to my first hostel experience the first weekend that we met! So Friday morning, we got up at  4AM, jumped on a bus from San Jose to Puerto Viejo, and suffered leg cramps and neck pains for four hours in the Tico sized bus seats.

Before this trip, my idea of a hostel was not very optimistic. My thoughts were uncomfortable beds, dirty, bland gray rooms, and a little bit sketchy.

Well as it turns out, that's not how they do it in Costa Rica. (Ok maybe it was a little dirty)

See for yourself....

We stayed at Rocking J's.

Where we slept. We paid $7 a night for this hammock luxury.

So, we spent the weekend relaxing at the beach, trying not to get swept away by the red flag waves.
Suzanne tried to teach me how to surf. Unfortunately, I can't really say with a guilt free conscious that I actually surfed...I only made it past my knees a time or two. Maybe next time.

In the evenings, we had the pleasure of meeting a smattering of people from around the globe. I talked to people from Holland (no not just Suzanne!), Sweden, Germany, Canada, Uruguay, and a few a little bit closer to home- Montana & New York. 

The hostel had a kitchen so we gathered a large group of us together and all pitched in for a cheap dinner. Suzanne, our German friend, and I worked together to cook the "best meal" these traveling guys said they had "had in months". I'm glad the we were able to help satisfy a few bellies!

One thing that I discovered through many conversations that weekend was the amount of people who were "trying to find themselves" through traveling and seeing "where life took them". Some of these people had been on the road for months or just at the hostel "chilling" (and drinking...and smoking...) for weeks. I was burdened by the stories of people who were trying to escape disappointment or dissatisfaction with their lives at home. 

Don't get me wrong, I love to travel. That's why I'm in Costa Rica. But I was reminded of the value of having a purpose and vision for your life. It made me reevaluate my life and where I'm headed.

Our school is centered around Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Happy Kids (I'll talk about this more later). But- one of the habits that we've been teaching our kids at school is "begin with the end in mind". As 7 & 8 year olds, my class understood more about setting a purpose and planning ahead than most of those adults did. It is my desire that if those kids decide that they want to be something or go somewhere, they will commit to it and not end up 10-15 years down the road saying to themselves, "how did I end up here?"