one year+one girl+one panda hat = one epic adventure!

Teresita Rosita has officially been on the road for one whole year!

Time has flown, and time has crawled and she's seen a lot and not seen much at all. She's made plans and changed them - over and over and over again.

So where do we find our little adventurer one year from the time she packed her bags and headed off into the wilds of South America?

Well... Not too far from where she started actually. And she'll be back in Mexico in a couple of weeks just to complete the circle good and proper.

 Teresita Rosita is in Honduras. Finally facing her fears of the deep and getting her scuba on like a pro. No more submerged freakouts. No more not being able to breath. Totally cool, calm and collected is this little explorer. Three dives a day, seven days a week and Teresita Rosita is now officially an Advanced Open Water Diver with a fish ID speciality. She does so enjoy spotting and identifying those little underwater critters, especially while floating upside and peering into coral caves and crevices.

All of this is happening because Teresita Rosita is getting truly spoilt by her dad who has come to visit his long lost child as she intrepidly travels the deepest darkest, not at all scary, corners of the world. It definitely is a nice change from living out of her green backpack in the caves and dungeons and storage rooms she's learnt to inhabit on her journeying.

 But that's now, and lots of other things have happened in this past year that need to be elaborated on, including how on earth she managed to find herself in Honduras and what has kept her occupied these last twelve months of existence.

 So it's gone like this.

 Mexico - Colombia - Ecuador - Colombia - Panama - Honduras - Mexico (soon enough, anyway). Talk about traveling in circles. I'm pretty sure the plan was a lot more linear than the one just outlined, but these things happen for a reason, and it turns out Central America is a pretty awesome place, and Teresita Rosita can see herself spending a decent amount of time exploring the group of little countries that form this commune of banana republics.

In her time on the road Teresita Rosita has climbed many a volcano, swam on many a tropical beach (be it Caribbean or Pacific), seen many a big city and met many a fellow traveller she has not wanted to part with (but has inevitably). It has been a year of new places, new faces and new experiences. And Teresita Rosita and her panda hat have loved it all.

Rock concerts, hostel work, boat trips and bus trips. Tacos, banana chips, fried chicken, guacamole, coconut ice cream, guanabana and more fried chicken. Old friends, new friends, new friends now considered old friends.

But I digress.... Everyone knows what this girl and her hat have done and seen and felt. What's new? What's the haps? Tell us the good stuff!

Teresita Rosita made it to Panama, yes. And there she hung out a lot with Colo Rùccula and got to know the high rise lined capital and its heat and chaos and general awesomeness. They ate CHEESE! (Trust me, that's a big deal). They snuck into Donald Trumps hotel to hang by the pool. They explored the old city and rode bikes at sunset.

Then Teresita Rosita went back to San Blas and lazed on tropical islands for a few days - think coconut palms, white sandy beaches, snorkeling, boating and general lazing.

Then she went inland and went crazy for carnival. There was water, water and more water. And beauty queens and dancing in the streets and fireworks going off under your feet and more water sprayed from all directions so our girl and her panda were well and truly soaked to the bone. It was wild, and mad, and heaps and heaps of fun.

But after five days of so much carnival-ing Teresita Rosita decided it was time for some rest and relaxation. She went north to the lovely gringo-a-fied town of Boquete, to its river and good food and sleeping in hammocks to the sound of bubbling water and overall general tranquility.

For one whole day.

Then she decided it would be more fun to climb Panama's highest peak.

At midnight.

Five and a half hours and 3547m up, with a torch and the stars. It was tough. It was fun. The chocolate along the way was amazing! And the sunrise... Totally worth the effort!

With the Caribbean on one side and the Pacific on the other, Teresita Rosita watched the lights fade in the cities below and the sky turn orange and pink and blue and bathe the world below her in its glorious warmth. She defrosted her unmoving hands, ate more chocolate, and basked in new day and the fact that she was pretty darned lucky to be experiencing a something so unique.

It's moments like these that make a small girl and her panda hat feel truly alive and happy that right here, right now, they are off exploring the world, seeing things and places and people that they could only look at online from their desk back in the so-called-real world.
Yep, she was one lucky panda hatted explorer this one.

And you know what? This one year mark is no-way near the end of it. Because even though she had to say "hasta pronto" to her partner in crime, Colo Rùccula (there were tears, there were hugs, there was "this is not goodbye"), she's got another bad influence heading her way ( I'm looking at you Fran Bear!) and way too many adventures up her sleeve than she knows what to do with. I reckon it's pretty safe to say that we haven't seen the last of Teresita Rosita and her travels.

Not by a long shot.

Hi Ho Silver Lining - Teresita Rosita FINALLY makes it to Panama

Teresita Rosita finally made it somewhere new and is currently settling into her new digs in Panama City. It was so long, and thanks for all the fish Colombia and helloooooooo Panama!

The last months in Colombia passed as they do when you're working and have settled into a routine. Teresita Rosita and Colo Rùccula worked and worked and worked a bit more. Bogota was generally pretty cold, but pretty cool as well. There were many moments enjoyed wandering to parks, finding new graffiti, exploring graveyards and holding fiestas for various annual occasions in the form of Christmas and New Years. In a brief summation - there were Hawaiian skirts, pineapples, and spicy guacamole.

Teresita Rosita ventured off by herself for a brief foray into the steamy valley of Cali where she danced her socks off every night for a week and unfortunately participated in the not-very-pleasant-at-all tradition of going to a bull fight. Not cool. Not cool at all.

It was a whirlwind break from the drizzly capital - Cali defintiely lived up to its reputation as the salsa capital of Colombia. Teresita Rosita as usual had amazing fun and made a group of new friends she didn't want to leave behind, but suddenly it was new years eve, Bogota and Colo Rùccula called, and the beginning of 2013 was upon her. And with a new year, it was time for new adventures.... The dynamic duo packed their steadily diminishing backpacks and hit the road again.

They stopped in Medellin and caught some cable cars, ate their weight in delicious cake, saw a million gazillion Christmas lights, soaked up the delightful heat that finally defrosted the Bogota cold from their bones and definitely did not participate in the open mic night held by the hostel they were staying at!

And then it was off to even warmer climes... 14 hours or thereabouts and Teresita Rosita and Colo Rùccula climbed off the bus and into the suffocating heat of Cartagena and the Colombian Caribbean coast. It was the sort of climate that encouraged absolute nothingness. So it was pretty lucky for the girls that they only had one thing on their to do list - find a boat to Panama!

Unfortunately their usual method of just rocking up and everything falling into place didn't work as well as planned in high season.

All the popular boats were completely booked out and unless they wanted to wait around for about 2 weeks there was no way they'd be getting on one either. Unfortunately they weren't at liberty to be doing that much bumming around right at that moment.

It was time to take matters into their own hands. So off they trotted to the docks, to some round about communication issues and some waiting in the scorching sun, but eventually they had not only met a captain and seen a boat, they were booked in and ready to sail off into the sunset and to Panama. And with only two days wait.

So they melted in the heat some more, checked out sunsets from the old wall surrounding the city, took photos of countless balconies and ate empanadas and pizzas prepared by one of the countless Argentinians who had taken over the city. And now that I mention Argentinians, it wasn't the last time Teresita Rosita would find herself outrageously outnumbered by these southerners of the Latino world, oh no it wasn't....

Boat day came and the girls packed up their belongings once more and prepared themselves for the ocean (read sea) crossing they had before them. What they hadn't prepared themselves for was being part of a boatload of these lovely creatures known as Argentines.... Yes, Colo Rùccula did carry a passport proving her citizenship of said country, but she was quickly transforming into a semi-Australian, and these Argentinians were a breed of their own. So without going into it too much, for that would ruin the absolute awesome-amazingness of the whole experience, let's just say that luckily for Teresita Rosita and Colo Rùccula they had brought a couple of good books with them and they were pretty good at entertaining themselves without the help of any third party.

But the boat, the boat. It was all about the boat, and the sea, and sailing and islands and swimming and five days of utter paradise. Wait, scrap that. Three days of utter paradise. Two days were spent in a haze of giant swells, knock out sea sickness pills, groggy sea gazing and half a ham and cheese sandwich. There were some dolphins too that helped to break up the monotony a bit. But then they arrived and it was a-ma-zing!!!

Teresita Rosita and Colo Rùccula found themselves gliding into the most tranquil turquoise bay either of them had ever seen, a backdrop of white sand and coconut palms completing the perfect picture. And they swam and lazed and swam and ate fish and got sunburnt all over their Bogota-bleached-sun-deprived-lily-white-bodies.

But it was worth it, and as they were rocked to sleep by the gentle waves lapping outside their cabin that night they thought to themselves "Life can't get any better than this". But it could and it did. Sunrise over the swaying palms, and a wake up dip in the Caribbean and a day sailing past island after palm lined island until they arrived at their next personal tropical paradise, with some more swimming, more lazing, more eating, more swimming, more relaxing.

It was a hard life but someone had to do it. And then, just as our girls were getting used to the life of leisure, of gently rocking boats and brilliant aquamarine seas, it was over. They sailed into Panama feeling like proper little pirates, salt drenched hair, sun baked bodies, the irresistible urge to say "Arrrr" at the end of each sentence.

They stepped ashore, made their acquaintance with this new country, this new continent, it's food, beverages and crazy drivers and then they found themselves in Panama City - home to skyscrapers, panamanians, heat and who-knows-what adventures to follow...