Photo Post of my Site Visit

If you cannot tell from this picture, there are spikes sticking out of this tree. I inquired to my guide what the hell terrible tree would have spikes like this and he replied that it was an orange tree. Oh. To add to that, my region is the orange capital of the country, guess I'll just have to watch out for these spikes since oranges are so awesome. 

One of the many awesome views in my community. 

This is us walking down what one other volunteer called "that big hill" It's hard to tell from the picture but it's a pretty steep incline walking it. Luckily, my house will be on the top of the hill and the road that continues away from the hill isn't that steep. 

Sugar cane

This is a sugar mill. You run the sticks from the previous picture through the middle, where the guy in the red shirt's head is covering and out comes the liquid you see below. 

After straining, it's ready to drink, and it is absolutely amazing. I probably don't want to drink so much since I'm pretty sure it's sugar overload. 

This is the river I had to cross to get to my guide's house. It's generally not so menacing looking, this was after a downpour that lasted about an hour and a half. 

Another amazing view. I'll have to get another picture without such thick fog. 

It's hard to tell here but this is the top of the waterfall right after the rain. There's a better picture further down from the bottom up.

Here is a picture from the bottom of the waterfall looking up. That pool at the bottom is almost twelve feet deep and the perfect temperature. I do believe this will be my favorite place to hang out for the next two years, except for in the dry season because the other rivers in the region dry up and people come here to bathe. 

I'd grown to hate dogs in Panama because they're generally useless in my host family community because they don't act to protect anything and they just walk around being dirty and they fight a lot. Dogs out in the countryside are much more awesome. This guy here joined us every day when we went off to work. My guide told me that as soon as dogs see a machete they get really excited. I do believe now that I'll be getting myself a dog for adventures and a cat to eat all the mice and cockroaches. 

Here we are clearing the path to the water system. More like, my guide and his father are clearing while I take pictures from behind. The path was only about a foot across and then dropped off on the right pretty steep through lots of branches. Good things I didn't fall through. 

After slicing our way through the jungle, we got to the other side and found this barbed wire. This is generally used to mark territory and it makes sense to have but how the heck do they get it to such remote places!?

Here is a shot of the functioning water tank in our community. The water shooting out the top means the tank is completely full of great drinking water. 

Here is the water source. The general method is to find water leaving the side of a mountain, block it up with rocks and concrete, and then funnel that water into a tank. 

After making our way home, I took a shot of all the seeds that had managed to latch themselves onto my pants. I then spent the next twenty minutes picking them off. Next time, I'll be going out with rubber boots and jeans because my guide and his father had in total about 5 seeds on them.