Sunday night/morning I boarded a red-eye flight and arrived in Panama City the next afternoon. I spent the rest of the day checking out the area around my hotel. It felt quite hot outside so I wore shorts and felt like I stuck out. Everyone else wore pants or a skirt. The security guards with huge guns stationed at every corner in the area near my hotel were a bit intimidating but I was still thrilled to be in a different country.
Early the next morning I was picked up along with a few other ITEC students in a van and we went to the domestic airport where we got a flight out to Bocas del Toro. The plane I was on is nicknamed "the breadbox" and didn't look the least bit aerodynamic but I arrived safely and on time and the view was amazing.
Just up the road is the restaurant where we ate all of our meals and during the day anywhere from a few to a dozen tourists lingered. Almost every meal we ate was fish or chicken, some form of beans and rice, and patacones (sliced bananas flattened with a mallet and fried). There was always highly sweetened fruit juice to go with the meal. The food was delicious.
There were two courses going on at the same time. Tropical Rainforest and Canopy Ecology was taught by Peter, the guy who started ITEC, and had 6 students. Primate Ecology and Animal Behavior was taught by Alain (pronounced like "Allan" but with a slight "i" sound before the "n"), a French-Canadian from Harvard, and had 3 students including myself. There was also a tree-climbing instructor who helped the Canopy students with their projects.