After a great time in Costa Rica, we traveled to David, a city back in Panama near the border (crossing the border between these two countries is a story in itself, and re-entering Panama caused me a bit of anxiety, to say the least) to teach the workshop to the members in that region.  We stayed with my partner, McKay’s, sister and her husband and son.  They were super welcoming and fun people to spend time with, and they gave us some great suggestions of how to spend our free time in the city. Our first two days in David we only taught in the evenings, so we first went to a quaint mountain town called Boquete.  It was a lot of fun, and beautiful.  The next day, we went to an island called Boca Brava.  We first traveled for about two hours to get to the coast then took a small boat taxi out to the island.  There is a string of islands near the coast in that region, and they seem to do pretty well with ecotourism.  We met a nice guy from California who owned a few lodges on one of the islands, and he offered to take us to the island in his boat since it was on the way to the island where his business was based.  The island is so close to the coast that when we started I actually thought we were traveling down a river to where it enters the ocean, but the other “bank” of the “river” was actually Boca Brava. We docked at the hotel and then started our hike to just explore the island.  We first went to a rock beach and had a great view of the ocean, then decided to walk around the shore to find the next beach rather than hike back up the trail.  We were in our swimsuits, but also had our backpacks on, so it was a bit of an adventure trying to keep our stuff dry when the waves came in higher than we expected, but luckily nothing was ruined.  It was a ton of fun, and we actually ended up walking underneath the trees where a troop of monkeys lives.  We could hear the barking from a ways away (they actually sound like they’re barking rather than the typical monkey “ooh-ooh- ahh-ahh”) and could catch glimpses of them when we were underneath, but they were too high in the trees to get a good picture. There are also TONS of millipede looking creatures. I could tell if they were insects or crustaceans, but the sit on the rocky walls along the shore and scatter when you get close.  When they all move, there are so many of them that it looks like the whole rock surface is moving.  It’s a bit eerie, but really cool to watch. There are also tons of bugs that were biting me, but I didn’t even notice until after we’d gotten home and just had a bunch of red bumps that itched up and down my arms.  We finally made it to the other beach.  It was small and the tide was up, so much of the sand was underwater, but it was ringed by palm trees and there were coconuts all over the ground.  We totally put Tom Hanks to shame and each opened our own coconut and enjoyed the fruits of out labor, literally.  I can now officially say that I’ve drunk fresh coconut milk on a Pacific Island, and in my vast coconut-milk experience, it’s the best way to do it!  We then decided to keep hiking, because I thought there’d be another beach with more sand and open space between the ocean and trees (the other two beaches had trees right up to the water), and met two crazy German ladies, one who had joined some island religion from Jamaica and the other who was her friend.  We asked where we could go to get to the beach, and the older friend said, “Well, don’t go that way,” and pointed to the path they had just come from, “that was is just lost. Lost lost lost. But if you go...” and then she gave us directions to a beach. I was a little apprehensive, because I’m pretty sure her ‘pilot light was out. She was playin’ hockey with a warped puck.’ (if anyone outside of my family can tell me what I’m quoting, I’ll give you a Balboa, which really is just a dollar, because they use the same money here, but that is what they call it), but we followed her directions and.... soon found ourselves back at the same beach we had just come from. I guess there are just two beaches on the island, and we’d already visited them both.  When we returned to that beach, I saw a jellyfish on the beach drying up and attempted to rescue it, but those suckers are hard to pick up from the top! And I didn’t really want to try touching the tentacles. I eventually got it to the water, but I think I may have accidentally punctured it... I wasn’t able to see it anymore after it was in the water, so I’ll never know.  Overall, it was a wonderful day, AND I remembered sunscreen this time, so I’m not burnt in the least.