gringos

I know that the flow of this may not make any sense, but I'm going to do my best to blog more often now that I'm in a faster internet zone, Nicaragua. I'm in San Juan del Sur today. It's a strange little beach town which seems to be a gringo party spot.
I am here on a mission, not really by choice. A friend of mine from Santa Catalina, Panama is driving back up to his home town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He was nice enough to put my massage table, tent, and sleeping bag in the back of his truck and drop them off here, as it's not too far off the Pan-American Highway.
I have been playing in Bocas del Toro with my dear friend, Janey, who came down to visit me from Boulder, CO on her vacation. I am so blessed with good friends! She and I had 9 days of fun and travel in which I didn't need any of that stuff cause she sported the hotel rooms all the way across Panama and Costa Rica.
I did the boarder crossing from CR to Nica today at Penas Blancas. Some of you may recall the first time I crossed this border last Feb. I wrote a mass email about it because I found myself wandering in and out of the Costa Rican border station asking "Excuse me, where is Nicaragua?" until some kind soul finally informed me that I had to walk about 1/4 mile down the road in order to get to the entrance of Nicaragua.
Today, I am proud to announce that I do learn from experience! This and the fact that I am much more facil with the spanish language than I was a year ago. So, I was able to not only find my way through to Nicaragua without problem. I was also able to fend off the 10 or so Nica taxi drivers who kept telling me there was no bus to where I was going while I asked a WOMAN where I could catch a bus. She told me and she was right. These MEN, I swear! They are scammers. Not all of them, but they give the ones that aren't a bad name.
I also have to state, for the record, that Nicaragua has no signage on how to enter their country at this border. None. Nunca. It's a series of buildings spread out across a rather wide area with lots of fences, police, and random scammers running around and nothing posted about where one should proceed. They expect you to know. And if you have to ask someone, you will have to pay them for a correct answer.
Now, I don't want to make Nicaragua out to be like this. This is just the border crossing. The rest of the country is awesome and friendly. I was able to catch a bus (technically, they are right, you need to catch 2 buses to get to San Juan del Sur) and will head up to Inanitah tomorrow after a little night on the town here.

Hey, photos!

Above: Yoga deck at "La Buena Vida"; Santa Catalina.
Above: Looking out from Rancho Estero onto Estero Beach, Santa Catalina.


Above: View from Visitor Center, Coiba National Parque
Above: Blue Chevy Van with shade structure and bike parked in front.

Above: Adan cutting off alligator head with machete on Lagatero Bay.

Santa Catalina

As of Jan 30th, I have moved into the town of Santa Catalina. It's a small place, about 10K from where I was living the two months prior.
My bicycle has been given a rest from the continual back and forth of living in Lagatero, out in the sticks (est pop: 100 persons, 50 chickens, 25 dogs, and 10 alligators) to the bustling metropolis of Santa Catalina; (est pop: 400-500 ). The folks at Hibiscus Garden just didn't have enough work to keep me there. We mutually decided it was best to end our initial agreement of me staying there until mid March.
For a fleeting moment, I entertained thoughts of traveling for 6 weeks until Janey arrives in the beginning of March. That was before my friend Michelle, owner of "La Buena Vida", and fellow yogini, asked me to stay in Catalina and design/teach a series of yoga classes with her, it was an easy choice.
I have committed myself to the practice and study of yoga while I'm here. I am teaching 3 or 4 classes a week, taking another 3 classes each week from her, and expanding my own practice on the luxury of her yoga deck in the treetops.
It's really a beautiful thing to have dedicated myself to this immersion. We are organizing a women's yoga retreat in Santa Fe, Panama Feb. 23,24, 25. It's a mountain town about 3 hours north of here where we are going to spend 2 sessions a day teaching basic yoga techniques as an introduction for beginners to the practice, with time for a long mountain hike one day.
Blessings from Panama.
Om, shanti.

Cha, cha, cha, changes...

And so we are getting near the end of the busy or high season here. Mostly December and January are kinda ¨balls to the wall¨busy and then it slows a little, say the ones who have spent several seasons here. Our guests are fewer and I´m anticipating our pace will be slower even still.
How will I fill this extra time, you may ask? Good question! I am going to begin teaching a second yoga class each week in Catalina at La Buena Vida. Today I went surfing today for the first time since I´ve been here. I forgot how much I like it. Remind me to use sunscreen next time, ouch. I think between yoga, surfing, and spanish lessons with a massage thrown in here and there, I can fill the next 6 weeks without any problems.
Why only 6 weeks, you may ask? You are full of good questions today! Because my dear friend, Janey, is coming to visit me! She flies into Panama City on March 6, so I am going to be done with work and such at Hotel Hibiscus a few days earlier. Then she and I will travel together and explore Panama and some of Costa Rica and she flies out of San Jose on march 14, and I will head up to Nicaragua once more to teach another 2 week intercultural massage class at Inanitah!
Check it out at; www.Inanitah.com. Will be there till April at least, then we shall see.
Ok, that´s the update on plans for the future. Photos coming soon, I hope, and then you´ll have more wonderful questions.

Hotel Hibiscus Garden

I was just looking and its been a while since I last posted. I am getting in a groove of sorts here but I think that once I have some real sort of groove, the music usually changes. The people who run Hotel Hibiscus Garden are a german couple in their 30s about to have thier second baby...like anyday now. Lucia Valerie (not named after me, but a cool coincendence) is due on Jan 11. Her older sister, Karlota, is 2 years old and just stood up on a surfboard for the first time yesterday!
They are growing some wicked cool kids here.
I am spending my days in a combination of ways. My duties around the hotel that pay for my room and board are assiting in the kitchen and waiting tables. These happen for 5 to 8 hours a day 6 days a week. I am also promoting and doing some massage for guests and we should, with any luck, be getting yoga mats today so that I can offer yoga classes a few times a week as well.
I am teaching yoga at a place in Santa Catalina once a week, La Buena Vida. The woman who owns it with her husband recently completed the same yoga teacher training as myself in Costa Rica, so we are practicing a lot of the same style.
However, its 10K to town from where I live, the shuttle only goes sparatically, and hitchhiking is fairly unreliable since there are often not many cars. So, I bought a crappy mountain bike which is now helping me transport in and out of Catalina at will. Ahhh.....this is a blessing.
I will tell you why. The other people on staff at HHG are all German or Austrian, except the chef, another American. The culture is one of drinking a lot, smoking a lot, and speaking a lot of German, which I don´t understand. They are nice enough people, but I have the feeling that even if we were speaking the same language, I couldnt relate all that well.
So I have taken this as an opportunity to create a lot of space for myself. I have moved into a broken down blue chevy camper van toward the front entrance of the hotel. It´s one they are using for spare parts and is parked under some trees off to the side of the dirt road just before crossing the river to where the hotel is located. Neither my roomie or myself were sleeping all that well I think due to the fact that our energies were colliding all night on some level. The van is becomming my sanctuary. I cleaned it out a little each day over the past week or two and finally found a spare matress to put in it yesterday. The gardeners have built a palm roof shade structure outside and I am in the process of decorating it and hopefully have electricity hooked up soon! I will post photos of the Mystery Machine when I get the chance.
Anyway, this is going to be my little haven. Oh yea, and a hammock. And I have lots of time to just be. Its actually very nice.
The horses are kept in this area, which is also fenced off sometimes and this morning it was such a beautiful way to wake up to have them hanging out outside the van. I got up, wrapped the bedsheet around me, and communed with them for a little while.
Loving the slowness here. Hot, hot days and warm, stary nights. Everything is tranquilo. I am learning spanish mostly just from practicing, but also from a peace corps volunteer who is living in Santa Catalina and happy to trade massage for spanish lessons as he is fluent in both languages.
Feeling good and have promised Mick and Heidi I will stay until March here. After that is a mystery. I am absorbed in being present and having a deep appreciation for being alive.
Sending you all warm wonderful vibes for 2011.
With love
Valerie Hope, aka; Esperanza

Panama!

Its been a while since my last installment. This is more due to the fact that Ive been finding the internet connection here extremely slow on the singular computer that is shared between staff and guests here at the hotel. In addition to the general unavailability of the computer, there is the problem that when it is available, the keyboard is arranged for german speakers and the keys tend to stick so one needs to pound on the keys with extra force in order to make it work. Its a hunt and peck situation, folks.
On this lazy afternoon in the tropics I have a few minutes to relate some of my journey since leaving Nicaragua two weeks ago. The journey in itself could really be a blog entry. It was an epic 36 hours between leaving Inanitah and arriving at Hotel Hibicus Garden, my new home. Check it out at: www.hibiscusgarden.com . The epic part was really two boarder crossings, one into Costa Rica and one into Panama. On a bus, everyone needs to get off the bus, stand in line at departure country to get stamped out, walk down the street to the next countrys boarder crossing, get stamped in, then take our luggage off the bus and pass it through security before getting back on the bus to get on down the road. This process took about 2 hours in Costa Rica and about 3 hours in Panama with 50 people cycling through together. Mind you, I had my backpack and a massage table with me as luggage, which made the transport a bit more of a challenge. I found myself carrying the table on my head across bridges, streets, and through bus stations alike, often being heckled a bit by bemused locals.
Once in Santiago, I was met by two of our staff members, where we spent the day doing grocery shopping and other random chores in the big city before heading down to our little haven on the beach. The drive down is about 2 hours normally in the 'flying sausage' van. Named so because it has flying sausages painted on the outside, or did, until Mick recently had it painted white. I think I preferred the character of flying sausages to white unmarked van, but not my call to make. Anyway, flying sausage got a flat tire on the way back home, not surprising due to the nature of the roads here and by the time we arrived I had a full blown fever and went right to bed.
Two days later, I emerged from my feverish state, head clear, and began to have a look around me. We are in a place called Lagatero, which is a bay on the southern coast of Panama. It is about a 10k drive to the larger ocean with real waves and lots of surfers. I discovered why its called Lagatero when I went jogging on the beach one of my first mornings after recovery. Lagatero is the Spanish word for Alligator. I found a dead one on the beach! Big one, maybe 6ft long. I told Mick at breakfast about my discovery and he sent Adan and I on horseback to retrieve the head to make alligator tooth necklaces! This was super cool. Adan weilded a machete and cut off the giant head, which probably weighed 15 lbs. or more and tied it onto a rope which he then tied to the saddle of my horse. So, I got to drag a giant alligator head down the beach by horseback. This was a lot of fun, but kinda tricky because I had to steer clear of getting it caught in driftwood or brush while it bumped along against the surf. The next morning Adan tied it up to a tree and about 100 or so vultures held council around this great feast, divying up the goods. I am looking forward to wearing an alligator tooth necklace when the head has fully decomposed and no longer smells of death.
What else? Lets see...I am doing a few massages on guests and staff and teaching yoga at a hotel in Santa Catalina where the beach is located on Tuesday afternoons in a beautiful treetop studio.
Im working kitchen shifts 6 days a week in trade for my room and board and having a good amount of time each day to reflect, read, relax and melt into a hammock. Its a really sweet way to spend winter.
Ok, more soon. I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season. I turned 37 here last week, which was quite, sweet, and the chef made me a lovely coconut, pineapple, rum cake which was amazing.
Love to you all. Write and let me know how you are...

Days Between

Waking up this morning, I heard an old argument going on in my mind. It said that morning meditation was happening NOW (as dictated by the gong sound down at main camp) and if I wanted to join in I'd better move it. My head was swirling with dream images and lost in a world of disjointed emotion and memory. My body still half asleep, bladder full, eyes open but turned inward I searched for my journal to write down the dreams and flashlight as it was still dark (5 a.m). The ancient argument was between my movement being dictated by a gong and the imminent beginning of a group event of which I wanted to take place or allowing my movement to be organic and in accordance with my inner timing and flow, which would most likely cause me to miss said meditation. The "outer world" movement was tainted with a pang of guilt, reminding me that I had requested this specific meditation the night before and how "bad" of me not to be present for it. It was also coming from a place of habit. Deeply ingrained as a child that when I was woken up, I had to get out of bed shortly thereafter to go to school. I remember my parents frustration at the snooze button on the alarm clock being pressed again and again by my sister and how I tried my best not to provoke the same frustrations when it was time for me to go to school. Getting up at a predisposed time because I was trying to please someone else. That is the habit.
The inner world told me to let it all go and that nobody would be bothered or upset by me taking the time I needed in the morning to wake up the way I want to wake up. The "inner world" voice was also concerned with pleasing others. Interesting. It then told me that it was OK to rebel against the structure set up around me and that I was prepared to accept any consequences of not following said structure. The rebel and the good girl having it out in my head at 5 a.m. How many times have these two had it out? They play against each other, polarizing my personality in seeming antithesis. Furthermore, the dreams I'd had alluded to a time in my life as a teenager where I was in full rebellion mode and that little rebel had the good girl tied up in a closet only to be let out between the hours of 7 a.m and 3 p.m for school and on family holidays. She developed some interesting habits at that time that would do me good to re examine, but that's another blog.
Upon noticing the internal chaos, my guru came in and settled the disharmony by reminding me that my deepest commitment at that moment was to loving myself, and from there, it became very easy to choose the following actions: I allowed that space/time to empty my bladder, scribble notes in my journal, and lay back down to comfortably meditate on my own process. I could hear the screaming going on below as they were practicing OSHO's dynamic meditation, which includes a releasing of held emotional energy by vocalization. It pierced through my heart. I woke up fully (around 6 a.m)...spending time arranging my belongings, and being peacefully present with my own voices, emotions, and judgments.
Here I am a few hours later, realizing that I have only 3 days left at Inanitah before heading off to Panama on Thursday morning. In these next few days I am going to focus on opening up space in myself, in my body, in my heart. Getting clear. I no longer have to have such a strong focus on holding space for others the way I have for the past 2 weeks in class, the way I have for the past few years in session after session of bodywork. The focus can shift freely from one place to another without greediness or urgency or desperation. I will be giving plenty of massages and space holding for others over the next few days, but the bulk of my energy can focus on self love, joy, and the adventure of living.