Jan 23rd Shopping and the Rush to Produce Episode 2

 
Allie and I speak English to each other, “we need at least 10 days on Coiba!” “yes I Agree!” “Just tell him that we are experienced kayak expeditioners and have a locator beacon and a VHF radio”.
Allie turns too Yann and discusses the issues in French (Yann’s native tongue and Allie is fluent), he then picks up the phone and calls the number on a piece of paper. In fluent Spanish Yann request Senore Santiago Rojo the Jefe Grande of the ANAM Coiba. It is our third call that day in a French, English, Spanish communication train that has been us trying to confirm permission to circumnavigate Coiba Island by Sea Kayak. The first call found Senore Rojo, not in the central ANAM base in Santiago town (funnily enough also the first name of the man we were trying to track down) , so we had to call isla Coiba. That last call found Senore Rojo not at the main office and we would need to call back, though it sounded positive from his underlings there that it should be ok.
Yann now made the call and Senore Santiago Rojo came to the phone, a fray of quick Spanish conversation began, during the course of it, the tones in yann’s voice and the little Spanish we could understand, made Allie and I both feel we were losing. However at the end of the conversation, Yann thanked Senore Santiago hangs up and exclaims in French, Spanish and English “tout va bien”,” Todo es Bien” and finally “it is all good!” wonderful, it appears we are all good to go.

That was two days ago, yesterday we were shopping for our food supplies in Santiago town, we hitched a ride into town with Mike McKenzie of Fluid Adventures as he was purchasing the food for the trip with his clients we will be guiding. He also took our supplies back for us, as we remained at a hotel here to use fast internet to allow me to get the final edits of the second Episode of TRAK Files through for work. I had worked on it all night and I am still working on final edits right now.

9pm
I am sitting and waiting for the final good version to upload to the server before Allie and I can leave back to Santa Catalina. The first upload was full of errors and now we have missed the last bus back to Santa Catalina. However we found a taxi who would drive us for $50 now we can leave here when the video uploads again, the taxi and driver wait for us outside (  other drivers tried to charge us $70). It is a close push for time and it has been very unfortunate that internet in Santa Catalina has not been fast enough to allow me to upload regularly from there, however that is filming editing and producing on the road while adventuring in Panama. Let’s hope this cut is good enough as tomorrow we leave for over 2 weeks to Isla Coiba.

12am
We have just got back to Santa Catalina, the upload went through just before 10pm, we hoped in the taxi and dark safe ride of 2 hours has us back at our tent. In 6 hours we must be up again, pack up our tent and gear load on the launcha with the clients and head out to Coiba; we are soon on our way, for now a short sleep waits.
J