Our New Site!

Today we finally found out where we will be for the next two years.  We are in a small town (1400 people) in the province of Herrera in the Azuero peninsula in west central Panama.  We are up in the hills so that the weather will not be so hot. Like most of the people in our group, we have electricity, running water and cell service.   Typically the only people without those services are in the indigenous areas.  Panama's infrastructure has been improved quite a bit in the past decades, so that Peace Corps volunteers aren't "roughing it" as much as they used to. We still have lots to do, though.  Heather will be working with English teachers in the elementary school (grades K-6)  and the secondary school (grades 7-9).  Steve will be teaching environmental awareness in the schools, working with youth groups, and also working with the community on environmental projects. 

The town has an asphalt road leading to it, and regular bus service to neighboring towns.  A number of the environmental volunteers in other places have to hike into their sites, so we are thankful for this, especially when it starts raining heavily.  Speaking of which, it tends to rain a lot less in the Azuero peninsula than it does in the rest of the country.  A major reason for this is that the peninsula has been completely deforested for quite some time.

We are not too far from a forest preserve, so there are some woods for hiking nearby.  There are mountains of 3000 ft in the preserve. We are about 4 hours from Panama City by bus.  Our regional capital is Chitre, which is about an hour and a half away from us.  There are beaches in Chitre, as it is on the east coast of the peninsula.  We were glad to find out that there are other PC volunteers at various places nearby.

We are very excited to finally know where we will be!  It has been a long wait.

Night of the Iguana

Yesterday evening one of Mama Rita's relatives showed up with a very large iguana which had been found and captured somewhere up in the surrounding hills.  Unfortunately the people in the area have a tradition going back many generations of eating iguanas, despite the fact that the species is endangered and it is no longer legal to do so.