Isla Mandungua (Big Boob Island)

Today's first stop occupies an even smaller island than yesterday that housed a family and a plethora of farm animals, apparently. We wandered around seeing the roosters, chickens, dogs, cats, and even pigs. After this, we learnt the traditional dance, which was simultaneously simple yet difficult. Fun nonetheless. We even played some ghetto basketball with a plastic crate as a net. Safe to say, my game suffered under these non regulation circumstances. One of the children from the island was showing us up, though. This was the end of our time on Isla Mandungua, translating to literally big boob island. Our next stop was a much larger island than we were used to, that had a very well maintained and sized volleyball court. It was time to test the skills we had learnt throughout the last couple of days. First, we had to have some lunch and were taken on a snorkelling trip. After our volleyball (and during), we had earned a few hard earned frothies. After an afternoon of this, we took the traditional row boats to our accommodation for the night. I forgot to put my phone on the boat and so it was incredibly important we didn't fall in. It wasn't looking great as we began going the wrong way but eventually found our feet and continued on. We may have come second last, but I just didn't want to fall in. We pulled up, dropped our bags off in our own private rooms and went to explore the town. I say town, but probably not in the sense most westerners would feel. Most buildings were made of grass and sticks. Only the schools and prisons were made of cement. We got a guide to take us around the city where he explained how the city works, how they interact with the mainland, and to what extent they are left to their own devices. He explains that everything is self governed and they only seek help from the panama government when in need of something. For example, not that it has ever happened, but if a drastic crime happens, they would call the police for their arrest, otherwise they simply dictate punishment on their own accord. We then got a demonstration of how the traditional dance is suppose to be done. We then had some free time to play with the local kids before returning to the hostel for sunset and a bit of fuck the dealer. A great and dangerous drinking game. Safe to say we got smashed. Coz and I stayed up a bit later than everyone else, just chatting and drinking before eventually carking it early in the morning.Read more