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Black headed double breasted bed thrasher.

$400 for med school books, huh. Did your wife buy that BS?

Great story..

Really cool.

My wife is Panamanian. We have a house down there as well as a farm. She just got back from visiting family 2 weeks ago and brought back about 20 lbs of coffee that they grow on the farm. It has been 2 years since I have been down there which is 2 years too long. I love it down there, even the crazy driving.

I posted awhile back about my upcoming fishing trip to Panama and it was awesome. I booked a week long camping/ocean kayak fishing trip back in October my second time with this outfitter. About a month prior to the trip he messages me and says he can't tell me who I am fishing with but it's a group of well known people. Come to find out it's a group from Black Rifle Coffee company filming some videos for their youtube channel. At first I wasn't exactly thrilled based on the stand they have been taking with the second amendment and distancing themselves from Rittenhouse I felt they had sold out and they said I was not alone in that opinion and it was their higher ups. These guys were a great group of guys real down to earth people. 3 actual vets and their camera crew. Black rifle was with their own group and I was with 4 other guys in my party. The camping was definitely roughing it, with the exception of the meals, the meals were first class. Fresh fried fish and sashimi. At night there was a crab migration of thousands of hermit crabs and various others coming through out site and under our tents which i found fascinating. Every morning we woke up with howler and Black faced monkeys. The fishing gods didn't exactly smile on me this trip like they did on my first expedition. I did hook into a shark around 8' which made for a hell of a ride in a kayak. After a hour it managed to break free which was probably for the best. When I arrived back to Panama city I booked a charter to try my hand at peacock bass and landed around 40. Such a beautiful fish.

On my first visit I met a American who was missing a leg and we hit it off almost immediately both of us missing body parts. He was in a bad motorcycle accident in the states. He said he died on the table three separate times before they brought him back. He moved to Panama because he wanted to get off the pain meds the doctors kept giving him and Panama was his best option for stem cell research. Within 5 months he was off all the meds. He owns a Vegas style cabaret/circus Olay type place which he invited me to and the shows he puts on are incredible.
I called him to let him know I was in town and he said come on over he's having some friends over for a friendly game of poker if I was interested. A 100 dollar buy in is more than I ever play, I only play with friends usually 20 bucks max, but what the hell.
The poker gods were better than the fishing gods and I won 2 grand.

While we were playing my friend says everyone is going out on his boat on Saturday and I'm more than welcomed to tag along if I want. Unfortunately I was scheduled to fly to Ecuador on Friday to visit my friend.
I arrive at the gate Friday morning for my flight and the clinic had given me the wrong covid test for entry into Ecuador so I couldn't make my flight. The next available one was Monday so Lemons into Lemonade.
I called my friend and explained what happened and he said meet him at the Marina on Saturday. I show up to the Marina and my friends boat is a 150' yacht. I knew my friend was well off I didn't realize the extent. He told me he made and lost his first million before he was 25 being young and dumb.
It turns out the boat ride wasn't just a joy ride my friend and the guys I were playing poker with we going to look at a island to buy (40 square miles) so they parked the yacht and shuttle me and the other guests to a nearby island to enjoy that and a helicopter picked them up to scout out the island. After what was quite possibly the best day of my life we went back to the club for dinner and round two of poker and the poker gods were still smiling on me.

Monday I made my flight to Ecuador to visit my friend, it's a two hour trip to her city, a had already arranged transportation prior to arriving with a taxi driver who was from the area and who was highly recommended by Americans living there. Safe reliable and spoke English through the course of my research I learned that he is working two jobs trying to put his daughter through med school. I had a idea of what I wanted to do and after chatting with him the way there I felt I was making the right decision and gave him a 400 dollar tip which payed for her books for the school year and then some. In two days I went from experiencing the pinnacle of life to some of the very lows. I walked out of my friends house to see her and her neighbor trying to siphon gas from one moped to another so she can get to work. I never mastered the art of siphoning gas without tasting some but better me than them.

Ecuador was a very humbling experience absolutely beautiful places mixed with a lot of poverty. I plan on going back to explore the galopagos and maybe the Amazon. It's been a little over a year since my accident and it's been the best year of my life. It took a near death experience to get me to start living life.

As I was leaving the kayak lodge the owner said he is doing a two week scouting trip in Indonesia to see if they can open a lodge there. Would Iike to go? Hell yeah stay tuned for part two


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