End of the Road

Day 15/April 11: Today was my last official day with Floating Doctors, and it was a wonderful day to end on. We were meant to start our day off around 9am, but the usual tropical rains prevented us from getting on the panga boat until around 11. As soon as the downpours were over we jumped on the boat to begin the hour long ride out to a village called Loma Partida. It literally means "split hill," because apparently there is a  very low area between it and the mainland, although the two are connected. The ride was beautiful with mangrove islands, mountains and a pod of 5 dolphins swimming and playing along side our panga!
Today's clinic was different and wonderful because instead of trekking up into a village through muddy paths, tall grass and endless bugs, our clinic was held on the dock of a woman's restaurant/bar. This woman named Michelle is a native South Carolinian who bought land here in 2006 and has turned it into a very nature-esque resort. She lives alone surrounded by many Ngöbe Indians who have almost zero access to medical care. Michelle hosts the floating doctors on her dock-bar whenever we are able to come out. Instead of the usual tree stumps as chairs and dirt floor, we had an amazing setup for a clinic with cushioned bamboo chairs, real tables, running water and electricity! (oh, the things I used to take for granted...)
When we got to the dock at Loma Partida there were many patients waiting for us. We started right away, and I saw about 20 patients total throughout the afternoon. The Ngöbe people in Loma Partida are very secluded from the modern world and it is noticeable. They are quiet people in general; the kids do not cry, play loudly or scream. The women talk very quietly, speak very little Spanish, and do not make eye contact when speaking. It makes physical exam difficult because to me all the children seemed ill! They sit and stare at you but will not smile back or laugh when you tickle them. My very first patient of the day was a 67 year old woman who complained of back pain. She described it briefly, but would not answer any of my questions or look at me. I soon realized that she spoke Ngöbe, not Spanish and her body language was just part of the culture. Once I got the hang of the "cultural vibe" and realized they didn't all just hate me, the day ran more smoothly! ;)
The patients were interesting, one 31 year-old married woman who we diagnosed and treated for chlamydia, a 38 year-old woman with a goiter who had an appointment with an endocrinologist many years ago, but missed the appointment due to transportation difficulties, and many men with knee and back pain. Dr. Ben and I did an ultrasound on a 15 year old girl who was 16 weeks pregnant, and an 18 year old girl brought her two year old baby in with a cold. After I took care of her and her baby, she asked me "do you have babies?"
"no... I am still in school!"
"are you married?"
"no... but I have a boyfriend and we are both in school,"
"how old are you?"
"26.."
"oh, I'm 18. I already have a baby..." Thanks a lot Ngöbe girl!! Haha!
After seeing all the patients, Michelle gave us a tour of her grounds. She has an amazing place out in the middle of nowhere complete with chocolate, avocado, papaya and banana trees, pineapple bushes, chickens, her own distillery and a "pet" monkey! Not to mention an incredible view of the water and mountains. Pretty amazing.

RIP Rafael

The one and only Gladys, at Asilo

Day 14/ April 10th: Today did not have a great start. We began around noon with a boat ride to Asilo. I walked into the room where the men sleep to find that Rafael's bed was empty and stripped. My heart sunk. His bed neighbor confirmed my assumption by telling me, "el se murio a las ocho cincuenta."
"Lo siento," I replied, and let myself outside to take a minute of peace. It is bittersweet that Rafael passed away. He was suffering very much with malnutrition, muscular contractions and multiple wounds that would have taken months to heal if they ever did. He passed away from aspiration pneumonia, meaning he aspirated some food or liquid, and an infection formed in his lung. The workers never called Ben, so I am hoping he did not have much respiratory distress before he passed. I know he is in a better place now, and I hope that I helped in some way, at least by keeping his wounds from worsening, and by being a friendly face each day visiting him at Asilo.

Asilo

We saw a few more patients at Asilo for general checkups. I saw Alfonso, my favorite patient who has mild dementia and talks to God for hours on end each day. He is happy as a clam and is always sitting on his bed looking out the door at the sea. Nikolas is the next patient I saw. He is in a wheelchair due to bilateral leg amputations, and was complaining to me of neck pain. There is not much we can do in Bocas aside from our best physical exam, and after a thorough exam I decided to go for a trial of ibuprofen and see if it improves.

Nikolas

After seeing a few more patients we made our way to the warehouse for clinic. It was another semi-slow day. I saw 7 patients, all of who were pretty interesting. The first was a young woman who had been to the clinic a few weeks ago with a cut on her toe that apparently looked gangrenous. Today she returned and the toe looked horrific. It is granulating and pink and is the size of a grape with no fluctuance or pain. I am honestly worried about melanoma, but Dr. Ben sent her to Changuinola to see a surgeon, so we will get the final diagnosis when the surgeon sees her. My next patient was a 28 year old man with very obvious signs of tuberculosis. He went to the hospital with a month old cough with bloody sputum, chest wall pain, 20 pound weight loss, and two family members with TB. They did not do an X-ray! They only gave him 5 days of oral antibiotics and sent him on his way. We have no X-ray machine or lab to culture sputum, so I took is information we are going to arrange for one of the floating docs to go to the hospital and make arrangements for him to be tested. I really hope he does not have TB.
My last interesting patient was an 80 year old man with a 50 pack year smoking history who came in with obstructive urinary symptoms. I was leaning toward a diagnosis of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), but when I asked for a urine sample I suddenly had to take another route. His urine was grossly bloody. I told him that I was worried about a growth or small tumor in his bladder and that he needs to see a urologist. He then told me that the only doctor he sees are the floating doctors, and that he believes in holistic medicine. He said he has been craving sugar lately and thinks that if he starts eating less sugar things will get better. I am worried that he will not go to the urologist when we refer him. He needs a cystoscopy and we cannot do that here in Bocas. Luckily he spoke English because we needed to extensively discuss the need for him to see a urologist. We will be calling him later this week to give him the name of the doctor and will reiterate the importance of the appointment. I saw about 3 other patients before the day was over. I am drained! It seems to be hotter than the normal 90 degrees today, which makes me feel lazy!
It is really nice to have Dr. Ben here. He cares so much about his patients and also really likes to teach. The other two doctors that have been here since I arrived are very young and don't teach very much, I think because they are fighting to keep their heads above water also. Now that Ben is here everything seems more in sync. Today when we got off the panga at the marina, there was a patient who apparently has HIV and is always at the boat asking for meds. I watched everyone who got off the panga walk right by him with a curt "hello." Dr. Ben was in front of me and walked over to the man and sat right down on the floor next to him. They talked for about 15 minutes and I saw them looking at and discussing the man's bottles of medications. It was a heartwarming reminder of why we are here. The more people we can help the better, and even at the end of a long day it is our duty to enthusiastically care for all the people of Bocas.

Bocas Marina with Costa Rican mountains on the horizon

Tomorrow is my last day on the ship! I am excited because Ryan is heading down to meet me to explore the country together. We plan on heading to Boquette to climb the Baru Volcano, then to Santa Catalina where the waves are apparently 20 feet high this time of year, Coiba Island where we plan to scuba dive with whale sharks and schools of hammerheads, and finally to Panama City where we'll see the canal and the amazing city life.

Buenas noches,
Lindsay

Isla Popa Dos

Natasha and I on the way to Isla Popa Dos

Day 13/ April 9th: Today, after a long weekend we were back to work! Dr. Benjamin Labrot is finally back on the boat after a few weeks trip home to Cali. It's great to have him back and to finally meet him! He is the person who dreamt up this amazing organization and turned it into a reality. Apparently when he was in medical school he went on a lot of medical mission trips to places like Africa and India. He said the worst feeling was when they would run out of medicine with more people who needed help. The more mission trips he went on, the more his bag became full of medicine and supplies instead of clothes and personal necessities. He sees his ship, the Southern Wind as a large backpack that he can pack full of medicine and supplies and take almost anywhere. It was great to finally meet him. Natasha and I have been here for over two weeks and the whole time Natasha has been joking that he's like Jesus; we never see him but we know he's there :)

Today we conducted a mobile clinic at an island called Isla Popa Dos. It is about a 45 minute boat ride away from Bocas, and is a GORGEOUS ride. There is no civilization, the water is clear, and the mountains stand tall behind the mangroves. We saw dolphins beside the boat both going and returning. You have to know where you are going, because when you get there you may see indigenous people paddling in piraguas, but if not you'd never know there was a village nearby. We boated through the mangrove forests and after turning a corner, suddenly the a few brightly colored shacks appeared at the water's edge. We carried our supplies up the hill as school children ran away from us and back to their classrooms.
To our disappointment, many Panamanians are still on vacation for Easter weekend. School was back in session though, so we started the day with well-child checks for the kids in school. We each saw individual children as they piled out of their classrooms forming a line to be checked. I saw about 15 students, and most were very healthy besides bug bites and not having shoes (Jenny is planning on writing to TOMS to hopefully get a donation for these kids) One boy I saw was about 7 years old and had a fungating mass the size of a pencil eraser on his top lip. It is likely a wart and so we are planning to take it off at a later date.
After the well-child checks, we went tow pavilion up the hill and set up out clinic. Only about 25 patients showed up. I saw 11 and most were pretty standard back pain in women and rashes, worms, and URI's in children. An interesting patient was a 38 year old woman with arthritic pain in most of her body, but specifically her left ring and 5th fingers could not make a fist. She had pain with passive fist formation and pain and tenderness on the medial side of her forearm. She denied any injury and is right handed. After much questioning, we discovered that she washes clothes by hand, with her right hand rubbing against her left forearm. We are still not sure what the exact problem is, but I believe it has to do with her ulnar nerve (it almost seems like an "Ulnar Claw," but it is painful and the lumbricals are not wasted. I gave her a pain reliever called Diclofenac and showed her some exercises to do to stretch out her forearm and fingers. The frustrating thing once again is that I feel the medical care I gave her is inadequate, because if we were in the states I could order an X-ray, MRI or electromyelogram. Someone from Floating Doctors will see her again in the near future though, and hopefully she will be doing better. We will be going back to Popa Dos on Wednesday to follow up on some of the patients we saw today.

View from Isla Popa Dos

After boating back to Bocas, we went to town to see Rafael at Asilo. Today he is doing, much worse. His wounds are about the same size, but he is febrile and pretty out of it. He did not speak but I finally got him to lift his head and slowly sip some water. We think he has aspiration pneumonia, as he doesn't swallow well and now has some rales and wheezing in his right lower lung lobe. We dressed his wounds and changed his bedding. He is now only getting oral antibiotics and IM Tramadol for pain. Dr. Ben told the workers that if he has any difficulty breathing tonight, they should call him and he will walk over with an oxygen tank and mask. We will see how he is doing tomorrow.
Tonight Jenny is making spaghetti for all of us and then I'm probably going to go to bed early! Tomorrow we will be heading to Asilo to do well checks on all the residents, and then we will have our regular Tuesday clinic at the warehouse. I am hoping my 11 year old patient with the foot laceration is running around so I can check his foot.

Buenas noches,
Lindsay

Santos Viernes

Day 9/ April 5: Today we had a pretty leisurely morning. There was not much to do until it was time to go to Asilo for our regular outing. I spent the morning reading on the top deck of the boat and then we took the panga into town for batidos (Spanish for milkshake). We boated to a nearby beach where we had the entire beach to ourselves. In the afternoon we took the panga to Asilo and Hanily and Jordan took some of the residents on a walk while Natasha and I took care of Rafael's wounds. I debrided a lot of necrotic tissue and am hopeful it will look a tiny bit better tomorrow. Next we headed to clinic at the warehouse.
Today was not very busy at clinic, and I saw only about 5 patients. I saw a 40 year old woman who was worried she was pregnant because her period was 10 days late. She had taken a home pregnancy test that was negative but was still worried because her periods are always regular. I decided to do a quick ultrasound and to our relief, her uterus did not contain a pregnancy. I will see her next week if she has still not started her period. I'm not sure how much investigation I would be able to do because most of the labs I would need to order cannot be done here at the Bocas hospital.

Another interesting patient was an 11 year old boy from la Solucion who fell and cut his foot open on a bottle. Most kids here do not wear shoes and the ground (in La Solucion especially) is risky for all kinds of infection. I cleaned the laceration and used steri strips to close it before bandaging and wrapping the foot with an ace bandage (my best attempt to keep dirt off it) I asked him where his shoes are and he told me he doesn't own any. We didn't have any spare shoes in the warehouse, so we put his foot in a ziplock bag and sent him on his way. I asked him to come back tomorrow with his mom so I could check his foot and talk to his mom about buying some shoes.

After clinic at 6pm we held our weekly English class. A lot of kids showed up! We taught them the verbs, "to want" and "to have." It was the cutest thing watching them all enthusiastically yell, "I wan a mango!" and, "she needs ice cream!" After English class we headed back to the boat and are now about to go for una cerveza. Buenas noches!

Lindsay






Day 10/ April 6: Today is "Viernes Santos," which literally means saint Friday, but it is their equivalent of Good Friday. There is no school and there are a lot of backpackers and "tourists" from Panama City in town. We were supposed to be having a mobile clinic in Bastimentos, but we are not working because most prospective patients are not around to come to a clinic, and kids are not in school so we could not do the well-child checks like we did in Solarte. We are celebrating Passover at one of Lori's friend's dock, so we have been cooking and for most of the afternoon.
This morning Hanily and I went to the warehouse to see our patient with the axillary abscess and the boy with the foot laceration. Neither showed up. I went looking for the 11 year old boy in La Solucion, and finally found a little boy who knew him. The boy showed me to his house and a woman was standing in the door. I asked her if Valencio, the little boy who cut his foot was home and she said yes and pointed behind her. Then I heard another adult say something behind her, and she suddenly said "no, no esta aqui." Confused, I asked if she knew where he was, and she said no she did not. Defeated, I went back to the warehouse. I learned later that the government pays families based on how many children are in the house.  Apparently many mothers take extra children into their homes even though they cannot afford to care for them, just so they can get the extra money. Jenny thinks that the family did not want me to come to their house because they were afraid I would report the unsanitary living conditions and get their kids taken away. I will likely see the boy on Tuesday because all the kids from La Solucion come to our warehouse to play when we are there. If not I may go look for him again, but preface it with letting her know I have no bad intentions.
After the warehouse we went to Asilo to see Rafael. To my great disappointment, his wounds look worse. The part I debrided yesterday looks good, but now on the other hip he has a lot of pus draining from deep inside the leg. We did our best cleaning, debriding and dressing, and will go back again tomorrow. I honestly don't think he is going to make it, but we will not stop trying to palliate his wounds.
It's almost time for Passover dinner, so it is time to finish cooking and head across the water.

Adios,
Lindsay

La Solución

docking at La Solucion

Day 8/ April 4: Today was a productive day in the clinic! We held special clinic hours for the residents of La Solución, a small neighborhood that has an interesting history. A group indigenous Panamanians called the Ngöbe once occupied the land where the Bocas Del Toro airport now stands. When tourism started increasing and the Panamanian government decided to build an airport here, they relocated all these people to a mangrove swamp just west of the new airport. But the living conditions in La Solución are absolutely appalling. Families live in shanty scrapwood houses on stilts built over filthy water composed of endless trash and sewage (toilets have no plumming; waste goes straight into the water below.) Worse is that their water supply runs in pvc piping through the sewage water, contaminating their drinking source. I have never seen anything like it, and I don't think I could have ever imagined something like it before coming here.
Our clinic today began at 9am and patients began trickling in slowly. I saw about 20 patients total, with problems ranging from parasitic worms to a 14 year old girl asking for the morning after pill. I saw a 6 year old girl with chicken pox, an older man with gastritis and a woman with a yeast infection. I saw a family of 5, consisting of 3 young children, an 11 year old girl who acted much older, and their grandmother who was pure Ngöbe and did not speak any Spanish. The Spanish of the 11 year old was a little funny, so I used our Spanish translator Ally, and the 11 year old translated for the grandmother. Needless to say, it was an amusing encounter. I asked a question, Ally translated it to Spanish, and the 11 year old translated it to Ngöbe, and the Abuela answered to start the language chain all over again.

Beauty and the Beast

My patient with the axillary abscess returned today, and we changed her packing and dressing. She will be back tomorrow for another round. The wound looks good, but Jordan thinks that we will have to open it up a little more. I really hope we don't have to because it is very painful for the poor girl. While Natasha and I stayed in the clinic, Hanily and Jordan went to check on Rafael, our patient at Asilo with the pressure wounds. To my disappointment, I did not get to see for myself, but they say there was a lot of purulent drainage today and they think it is worse. I wonder if (hope that) the Daikon solution just did a lot of much needed chemical debridement and it will look better tomorrow...
We finished up around 5 today and now are back at the marina. Tomorrow we will be going to Asilo, clinic at the warehouse, and then teaching an English class.

Hasta mañana,
Lindsay

Interesting paper about the repression of indigenous people in Panama (especially the Ngöbe in Bocas Del Toro on page 3):
http://lib.ohchr.org/HRBodies/UPR/Documents/session9/PA/CS_CulturalSurvival.pdf

Back in Bocas!

Natasha and me at Red Frog Beach

Day 7/April 3: After a great day off (we took the Panga to Red Frog Beach!) we were back to working hard today! The day started with our routine trip to Asilo, the nursing home-type establishment in Bocas town. We took the boat over from the marina around 10 o'clock and started with Rafael, our patient with the very bad pressure sores. Before we left last weekend, we taught one of the nurses how to care for and change his wound dressings. We even wrote out instructions and numbered the dressings in order of how to use them. After all that and making sure she understood, we  came back to find she had done nothing. The wounds were very bad yesterday, and he even had a fever. I learned in tropical medicine that they often use honey to debride and disinfect wounds, and this is what we did (no fancy Apligraf or muscle flap reconstructions out here!) Last week I had emailed my surgery preceptor, Dr. Halbreich to ask him for tips on caring for this mans wounds. He sent me instructions on how to make something called Dakin's solution, which is water, Clorox bleach and baking soda. This morning I cooked up some Dakin's solution and we tried it on the wounds today.  He looked better today, and he actually spoke to us for the first time (before I was unsure of his mental status) We will go back tomorrow and I am crossing my fingers that the wounds look a little better, even though no matter what they have a long way to go.

Bernardo from Asilo and me at the park

After the wound care, we took all the Asilo residents on our usual walk to the park where we bought them juice and cookies. It was very hot today, but there weren't many bugs! I pushed Venturio, at 82 year old man who used to live in Changuinola Panama where he worked on the banana plantation. He said he doesn't have kids or a wife, so I assume that is why he resides in Asilo.
After our walk with the Asilo residents, we went to start clinic, which we hold on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3-6 in our warehouse. The most amazing thing about today's clinic is that I didn't have to speak any Spanish! My first patient was a 27 year old woman from Finland who was having terrible back pain. She had been to the hospital in Bocas, but because her Spanish isn't very good, she didn't understand what they told her. I checked out the X-rays she bought with her, which were essentially normal, and then performed an exam. To Hanily and me, it seemed like sciatic pain. Because my grandpa has recently had a lot of trouble with nerve pain, I remembered that a good drug is Neurontin. We prescribed that along with Tramadol and Tylenol.

Med/supplies shelves at la clinica (the warehouse)

My next patient was a 6 year old boy who, after a very long exam turned out to likely have mono. The frustrating part about practicing medicine down here is that we don't have a laboratory at our fingertips. In the states we are so dependent on blood tests because it makes our lives so much easier! Here in Bocas, even if went to the hospital he wouldn't be able to get mono titers, because apparently their lab here doesn't have the resources. Normally we would check for EBV and CMV antibodies, but we were forced today to make a clinical diagnosis and ask the mother to return if symptoms changed or got worse (we also had to ban the poor kid from surfing since his spleen was palpable.)
My last patient of the day was a 30 year old woman from Fort Lauderdale eo lives permanently in Panama. She had an abscess in her right axilla, which I got to drain (yay!) and I will see her back tomorrow to change the dressing and re-pack it.
After clinic we went to have dinner at Sky's new house! She has been living on the boat with random volunteers for the past three years, and finally decided since they are going to be in Bocas for a while, to rent a house. Halfway through cooking dinner the power went out in the whole town so we ate by candlelight, which was festive :). Tomorrow will be a long day at the warehouse. We are doing a clinic for a village named La Solucion starting at 9am. I'm in my bunk bed below on the ship and am ready to turn the lights out. Goodnight!
Lindsay

Honey for wound debridement: http://bio.waikato.ac.nz/honey/evidence.shtml

Las Tablas

Day 6/ April 1: We just returned from our three day clinc trip to Las Tablas. I've never experienced anything like it! I also never thought I'd be so happy to be back on our crusty boat :). We left at 7:30am on Friday, taking our bags and medical supplies on our little panga to Boca's town to get on a "water taxi." Because Bocas Del Toro is an archipelago, or giant cluster of islands, they use water taxis which are larger panga boats that take people from island to island for a small fee. After our 45 minute water taxi ride we arrived in Changuinola, where we loaded everything and everyone into a huge van taxi. After an hour and 30 min cab ride we were finally in Las Tablas. When we pulled up to the "rancho" or outdoor pavilion, there were already about 50 people awaiting our arrival. And so it began.
We quickly set up our pharmacy, supplies and work space, which consisted of two small tables preceding three small tables. The intakers sat at the two front tables, taking a general intake history of the patients and then giving them a number. When their number was called they would come sit down at one of the three back tables where the doctors and medical students were sitting. Most of the patients brought their entire families. The largest group of patients we saw at once was a family of 8! We only had 6 chairs total, so we had to use pieces of palm tree stumps and sideways plastic bottle holders as chairs. We saw a LOT of kids with parasitic worms, scabies, rashes and colds. Most of the women had bone pain and headaches (many don't drink any water during the day). There were almost no male patients on Friday because they all have to work long days in the banana fields.

The rock I removed from the little girl's ear!

Although we saw many patients with the same problems, a patient who made it all worth while was a 12 year old girl who came as a part of her entire family. After taking everyone's histories, I asked her "Cual es tu problema?" Her mom told me that she had a rock in her ear that had been there for 6 years. I barely believed her, but I took a look with my otoscope and sure enough, she had a rock in her right ear. We didn't bring the typical tools with us, such as a metal irrigation syringe or an ear curette, but I managed to find a large plastic syringe and some metal tweezers. I filled the syringe with bottled water and took my first try spraying the water into her ear. The rock didn't budge and I got nervous, so I went to ask one of the volunteer doctors who is a pediatrician at home. Carl tried a few times with no results and so I asked if I could try again. I tried two more times, determined to get the darn rock out, and finally on my third squirt the 10mm rock floated out of her ear! I grabbed it and showed her family, and they immediately started screaming and crying, SO happy that the rock was finally out of her ear after 6 years. It was so emotional that I almost started to cry! They wanted to take pictures with me and we celebrated for a few minutes, but soon it was time to get back to my table because waiting patients were increasing by the minute. The day was long and my Spanish skills were absolutely exhausted by the time we were done seeing 48 patients (As a group we saw 134 total).

We went back with the local Peace Corps worker to see where we would be staying for the night. I expected it to be crusty, but this situation never came into my mind! It was a half-finished cement house with open doors and windows, built in the gravely backyard of a woman's house. I cold not believe that this is where poor Doug the Peace Corp worker was living! We hung up 4 hammocks in a cement room and called it a night. It was the first time I've ever slept in a hammock... All I can say is thank goodness I'm short!

The "house" we stayed in :)

The next day we worked very hard again, seeing 142 patients total. The pathology was more of the same, and we ended up running out of Albendazole (worms treatment). When we closed up on Saturday, there was a frenzy because there were still about 50 patients who hadn't seen a doctor. I felt sad as we packed up, leaving these patients without medical assistance. Sky, our director reminded me that we were out of Albendazole along with many other medications and so we would not be able to help many of them even if we did see them. The funny thing about this patient population is that many of them really just need reassurance, counseling on healthy habits (keeping their children clean, drinking enough water, and brushing everyone's teeth) and of course worm tablets. After we packed up we had a few other things to accomplish. Half of the team went to make a house call on a 23 year old woman who was bed bound after a bad labor outcome, and I went to help Jordan our doc from Australia do an ultrasound on a 15 year old girl who was 8 weeks behind on her menstrual period. We took the girl into an apartment where there was electricity and performed the ultrasound. After Jordan realized that the gravid uterus was not actually "the bladder with stuff moving in it :)" we informed the 15 year-old mother of one that she was again pregnant. To our amazement, she was happy. Apparently women in this culture aim to have as many children as possible as a source of social security for when they grow old.
We went back for a dinner that the hosting woman cooked for us, and afterwards jumped into our hammocks, exhausted enough this time to actually sleep in a halfway jackknifed position. The next morning we got up and made a few last minute house calls before packing everything into our pickup truck taxi and squeezing in. Half way back to changuinola, the taxi overheated!!! Of course! It was intereting though because while we were waiting for the taxi driver to come back with coolant (or something) we could really awesome plants! We found a pineapple plant and a chocolate plant. The people who owned the land sold us two chocolate fruits for about a dollar and we ate the delicious seeds. To my disappointment, there was not chocolate inside. You actually have to ferment the seeds, dry them and then roast them.
We are back on the main boat now as the sun is setting. I was so happy to be back near the water and away from the dust and heat. I took a fantastically warm shower and am getting excited for our first day off since I've been here. Tomorrow we don't have to work, so we are going to try to rent paddle boards!
Till Tuesday,
LA