Playa Blanca and My New Business Plan
Saturday we’re off for a day on Playa Blanca. First we fuel up on pancakes and coffee, another much appreciated offering at Mamallena. We’ve bought tickets through our hostel, but they must be exchanged for other tickets at the port, which must be exchanged for yet more tickets and something about a port tax, which gives us a receipt that then is exchanged for placement on a list. The port is chaos on a Saturday morning, so we decide out best bet is to stick with the lady with the clipboard. It seems to work, as they are very vigilant about making sure everyone on the list gets on the boat. The only problem is that it takes several passes through the list before people recognize their name. Turns out Douglas Smith can be pronounced many, many different ways.
It´s only about an hour ride over, and I am literally hanging onto my hat – a large floppy number I couldn´t resist at the Panama airport. As soon as we hop off the boat, we are inundated with offerings of fruit and beer and cabanas and knick knacks and massages. I trick Courtney into teaching me how to say “estas me molesta” and “no quiero su mierda.” After Nate swats a random hand off his back, which it turns out was trying to massage him, we flee to a quieter part of the beach as she angrily yells something involving “policia.” Once we settle in we do accept bowls of very fresh fruit drizzled with sweet condensed milk and a mojito that involves even more work than the you might think a mojito involved based on the reaction of a bartender when you order one in the states. He cups open and carves open the coconut, muddles mint and sugar and some sort of packaged candy, he then tops it with a generous amount of rum and goes back to a cabana somewhere to fetch a block of ice which he shaves in. This is my new standard for a mojito. 
Lunch too is fabulous, a whole fried fish with rice fried in coconut milk, plantains, and some sort of corn fritter I buy for $0.50, which I am going to make a killing selling as drunk food in D.C.”… for $5.00 a pop.
Back at the hostel we throw cards around with Amy and Neil, teaching each other new games and playing late into the night. We also enjoy burgers and long conversation with another couple from the UK, an older couple who have sold their house and are on a six month trip around the world, or “maybe longer if I get my way” she says to us with a wink. This gives me hope that maybe I haven´t missed my chance after all. Maybe this is what I will do with the profits from my corn fritter dynasty!
