My favorite blog posting from my backpacking trip through Central American with La Ruta Inka.

           In the past few days La Ruta Inka facebook page has been reposting some of my images.  I thought it would be cool to pick out my favorite blog postings and re share them with everyone.  So here they are; in order by date:

1. "First meeting with a tribe"

2. "The art of extracting balsamo"

3. "Age old festival in El Salvador"

4. "The Maya juego de la pelota or ballgame"

5. "Assimilation of Christianity and Mayan religion"

6. "Finally Tikal, Guatemala"

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Travel Photograph Wednesday - Panama

Panama City, Panama.

Travel Photograph Wednesday - Panama

Panama City, Panama.

Travel Photograph Wednesday - Panama

Panama City, Panama.

From the hot beaches to chilly mountains of Panama

7/29/10 to 7/31/10

The day after the great meeting with the Embera we were taken to go see the famous Panama canal. The Panama canal has 3 locks and we visited the last lock that is Miraflores. A lock is a set of gates that are used with filling or lowering water to help ships move along the canal. As we was there a large group of navy personal had arrival. It was quit a sight, a sea of white uniforms.

After the canal we went to the ruins old Panama. Old Panama was burnt down by the Spanish governor at the time so pirate Henry Morgan would not capture the city and there wouldn't be a good chance that British would get the city. When Morgan showed up to the city it was burnt down and he took all the gold and jewels from the city. When Morgan showed up to Britain Spain asked to them to put him in jail, so they did. But he was in a jail with what ever he want, in British he was looked at as a hero for bringing down a Spanish city. I had a great time learning about Morgan because when I was little boy my grandmother would tell me about him as bed time stories.

The next day we left Panama City and started to work our way north to the border with Costa Rica. We had to go up to the mountains and we he stopped from town to town sit seeing, hiking, and eating typical food of the area.

Here is my attempt to shoot a still-life that I found instead of setting one up, influenced by Hallmark Institute of Photography panelist Grant Peterson.

Start of La Ruta Inka and great Panamanian dances 7/27/10

The main reason I went on this trip is because I was told about a group named La Ruta Inka. The point of La Ruta Inka is to backpack through South America and meet with Inca and native tribes so that the participants can go back to were they are from and explain about what they have learned and give more awareness of these cultures. But this year they had two routes one that started in Bolivia and ended in Colombia that was about Inca culture and the second was from Panama to Guatemala this one on the Mayan culture, this is the one I participated in. Participants come from all over the world, in our part the countries that were there was Spain, Poland, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, England, Holland, Italy, France, US, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia(if I forgot a country, I'm sorry).

We had to meet up for the first time at the University of Panama. Here we got greeted by the university and the tourism department of Panama and also got to know each other as we waiting for every one to get there and they got the events they had plan for us ready. They had tons of native dances and live music dancing. At the end the dancers went into the crowd and started to dance with us. After they feed us they took us to were we were going to sleep, that was a sport complex with multi bed dorms.

Back from a great trip through Central America

Hello there everyone I haven't written anything in a long time because I was out of the US on a backpacking trip through Central America. I thought that I would be able to do posting as I went on my trip but it wasn't that easy, most of the time I wasn't able to get any Internet. So now that I am back in the states I will try my best to add a posting every day of a day on the trip.

On 7/26/10 I left from New York City to Panama were I started my backpacking trip. The first place I stayed at was Hostel Panama by Luis. It was a very nice place, very comfortable and in a very safe area of the city.

Hostel Panama by Luis

Hostel Panama by Luis

Hostel Panama by Luis

That First day I went to El Casco Viejo, that is the area of Panama City that is the historical part; the oldest part. The first thing that stood out to me was that there were a lot of women with color full dresses on and their hair covered. After asking why was they dressed I found out that they were ingenuous people and that is their typical attire.

There were a lot of little parks through out this area and I was really interested with the people just hanging out there.

I tried to do some shots with lighting with two Canon speed lights, didn't get anything I liked but hey at lest I was trying.

After a long day of walking threw historical Panama I was really happy with this shot and was ready for bed and to meet up with La Ruta Inka the next day.